TJ Walker compares making TV shows decades ago, which required massive investment and studio gatekeepers, to today where anyone can launch on YouTube or Facebook for free. He warns that while distribution is now easy, actually making money from it remains hard.
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I apologize because I'm about to sound like your grandpa talking about why in my day I had to walk 10 miles to school in the snow barefoot. It's gonna sound like that. I do apologize. But a lot of times these days, I do think people take for granted how easy it is to speak to the whole world on video. Essentially have your own TV show, your own video production company that can have instant distribution all over the world. This is a relatively recent phenomenon. Now, I've had a lifelong fascination with media, tv, radio, print, ever since I was a boy growing up in North Carolina in the 60s and 70s. Never forget my first crystal radio that I got. That's one where you don't need a battery. I listen to late night talk radio when I was 12 years old in 1974. So things have come a long way since then. In the 1980s, I had this brilliant idea that I wanted to be a famous talk show host. Now these days, you want to do it, you just start shooting, put it up on YouTube and you promote, promote. Little different back then. I had to talk someone into giving me money, a bunch of money. Had to hire a TV production crew, I had to shoot the pilot, then I had to make all these dubs. And then I physically got in my car and I drove to every TV station in Florida, knocked on doors, begged general managers and program directors to see me, then begged them to, to put my show on the air. Somehow I was able to do this. And I got on 10 different stations throughout Florida, every single media market. And it was a weekly show. So I would then have to make the show again. Begging, borrowing, pleading, raising money to hire a production crew, create the show, produce the show. Then we had to make copies on sometimes a half, three, four of an inch, sometimes a full inch videotape. We then had to FedEx this video to stations all over the state. It was an extraordinarily difficult, time consuming, expensive process. And that happened for a couple of years. And when it was all done, I had some great stories, some great experiences, and a mountain of debt. These days, if you want to fail like me, you can fail without having debt. You can just create your show, distribute on YouTube, Facebook, elsewhere, and if you don't have a huge audience, you don't end up with a lot of debt. So I do want you to realize that we're in a golden opportunity, a golden era for creators. If you've got a great idea, create it, put it out there. You don't have nearly as much to lose as I did, or most people throughout history. Okay, so why do I tell that story? Part of it is I just want people to realize it's so much easier now to create video. Whether you call it a TV show, a documentary, a short video, whatever you want to call it, something where you're speaking on video. It's never been easier to create that. And to distribute it doesn't mean it's easy to make money. That's a separate issue. But at least you can do it and not have to spend a lot of money, raise a lot of investment dollars. That changes things completely. So I do want to encourage people, don't just wait to have someone hand you a talk show or to invite you on a show you can initiate now without having to be like me and going into a bunch of debt and driving around to TV stations. You don't have to deal with all the gatekeepers anymore. You can go right to an audience.
