#narrowcast

The need to cater to a younger audience--specifically the 6-12 age range that Hui is attracted to--is what is hurting the progression of the Xiaolin series.  The majority of the fanbase is ten years older than the original demographic.  What were once 6-12 year-olds are now 16-22 year-olds (in 2013).  Basically an “older teen” audience.  This opens up a lot of territory to be explored for story lines and plot, and XC kind of had this with Shadow’s arc which featured a toxic, abusive relationship.  Chronicles has the potential to explore subject matter like Batman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, Samurai Jack, or even Invader Zim and the original Teen Titans, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Adventure Time, and Regular Show. In short, Hui is limiting her scope through her preferred demographic and is subsequently alienating the original fanbase, which is needed for the narrowcast model she is entering into.

With the new areas Hui mentioned entering, specifically animated shorts, comic books, or mobile apps, there is potential to reach the newly defined older teen demographic.  I don’t think Cartoon Hangover will be featuring Xiaolin shorts any time soon, but a similar--or solo--venue could work just as well.  The other thing to note is the lack of merchandise that the fandom has always craved, and can now afford!  Merchandise sales are usually what pay for production--hence why there are so many Transformers movies and series.

Narrowcast 19 w/ Pin-up Girl Dusty Lashes

GRINDBONE welcomes Pin-up sensation Dusty Lashes to our ABORTION of a podcast.

The first update to NarrowCast is out, which introduces a couple of changes to the UI (the first round of several over the coming weeks):

Changes to the sidebar: You can now search/add podcast feeds from anywhere in the app, as well as collapsed/expand it at will.

Improved player bar: The player bar is now smaller and scales to snap views better.

There's also the usual bug squashing, including a particularly nasty one involving the playback of downloaded video podcasts (spoiler: You can now). If you have auto-updates on for apps then the changes should already be applied, otherwise it's waiting for you with open arms in the Windows Store.

Version 1.2 should be coming out sometime in the next week or two, which in addition to the above mentioned UI changes will also include:

Sleep Timer: Put on the timer and fall asleep to your favourite podcast. It'll automatically pause the currently playing episode when it goes off.

Auto Download: New episodes will automatically downloaded when found (and when the app is running, this will be improved in a future update).

OneDrive support: The current method of syncing will be removed due to reliability issues and replaced with OneDrive support, which should ensure near instant sync.

The very last thing I want to talk about is the lack of a phone version. There's definitely one coming, though I'm currently waiting to see what gets announced at next week's BUILD conference before I start making any concrete decisions, plus would rather at the moment focus on improving the Win 8 version.

Thank you everybody who's bought/downloaded NarrowCast. It means a lot to me.

I find myself watching more and more narrowcast video these days, namely ThisWeekIn - Startups, ThisWeekIn - Venture Capital, TWiT.tv, Beet.tv, TED Talks, and others.  The interviews are a great way for me to attempt to keep up with the latest startups and their innovations.

I think we're reaching a tipping point in access to narrowcast content.  Not only can you watch this content in a web browser but easily access it from your living room couch, watching it on the big screen via your preferred connected device; Apple TV, Google TV, Roku, Boxee, etc.  The ease of access makes it competitive with traditional broadcast television for my attention.  Less Two And A Half Men and more Jason Calacanis is arguably a good thing.

In order to create desire amongst a like minded, interested and relevant audience, I ask the question...which is more effective, advertising via a Broadcasting or Narrowcasting platform...?

http://bit.ly/9o1THd