TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

So what is the easiest way to start a low cost TV channel?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

So this question comes from one of my regular YouTube viewers, imk. Thanks for writing in the question is TJ, I'm interested to start a low cost TV channel. Can you give me advice where I can start? What's the easiest, cheapest way? Thanks in advance. Well, I am. I would always try to. When talking to someone like you, and unfortunately we can't talk live, I would always take a step back for a moment and ask a simple question. What is your ultimate goal? A TV station or a TV channel might be a means to an end. It may be a process, it may be a particular strategy or tactic. But what is it you are actually trying to do? Are you trying to create traditional TV channel where you spend $50 million creating it, building it, developing it so you can then sell it to a larger TV network or a conglomerate for $200 million? There was a day when a lot of people did that, especially if you bought a TV station or bought a license in 1940s or 1950s and a lot of towns in the United States, those, those days are gone. So my first challenge to you is what is it you are trying to do? If and there's no one particular right or wrong reason, sometimes it's because people have a message. You may have a certain political message you want to communicate. You may want to create a whole TV channel that's just about negotiation tips. Because you're a negotiation expert. You may have a particular religion you want to promote. You may want to start a home shopping network. So I would really try to figure out what is your ultimate goal. Now if you had asked me this question 30 years ago, I would say, okay, round up a group of wealthy businessmen and women in your community, put together a pool of three, $4 million and then go to the Federal Communication Commission or apply for a license, perhaps a low power license for a station, perhaps strike a deal with a local nonprofit or church and get a license for a low power station. If you could put together 50 or 60 million dollars, then buy a struggling station, or if you are in a fast growing market, if you go back to Phoenix 30 years ago, maybe you just buy a license to start a channel from scratch, or maybe you'd have to go back 40 years ago. Going to assume that's not the case. For the sake of this discussion, I'm going to assume you have a lot of ideas you want to communicate and I would ask you to at the moment not think about a TV station or a network. It's fine to think in terms of a channel and think of your content. What I have done right here, for those of you who are watching this on YouTube, I have a YouTube channel channel and it does have advertising on it. Am I getting rich from the advertising? No. Do I broadcast 24 hours a day with new content live? No. I mean, I do occasionally do something live, but most of this is recorded in advance. Now what I do that most people don't do is I have new content every single day. I create seven, eight shows, typically on a Thursday, and then I upload them to YouTube and on iTunes and have it scheduled so it comes out each day. If you're looking for low cost, I'm going to fixate on the part of your question that's about low cost. The first thing you need to do is figure out what sort of TV or video content can you create based on your expertise and based on your passion. Now I can do a new TV show and a new radio show and a new podcast every day on public speaking and media training. Because that's my world. That's what I think about all the time. I've read a thousand books on the subject. I've trained 10,000 people. I've done workshops and seminars all over the world on this and have for 30 years. So you could wake me up in the middle of the night and just put a camera on me and I would start talking for 20 minutes about a subject related to speaking. What is that subject for you? Now you don't have to be simple talking head. Perhaps you are a comedian or you are a 23 year old who is an aspiring actor, then put together shows and maybe you only do it once a month, but whatever it is, you do, try to showcase it in video. And don't spend a lot of time on the special effects and the high tech graphics and the film quality until you're certain you have some good content that somebody other than your immediate family wants to watch. That's my first consideration. My videos do not have the same ratings and the same number of views of TED talks. But I also don't have thousands and thousands of speakers all over the world and a huge, huge organization to cultivate and recruit and refine speakers. So I'm doing what works best for me given my goals and my organization. Now, do you call what I have a TV network? No. Is it a TV station? No. Is it a TV Channel. Well, it's a channel that is video and we can get into a huge philosophical debate. Is something TV if it's just on the Internet. I can tell you most of the video I watch on My large screen TV in my living room comes from YouTube and Netflix. It doesn't come from the CBS affiliate and the channel two and the so called broadcast and cable channels. So the first thing you've really got to figure out is what is the content you want to create. The big mistake a lot of people make is they think oh, I'm going to have a channel and I'm going to be just like USA Today or I'll be just like this and I'll let other people put their shows on my. And I've made this mistake before. I tried to do this earlier in the Internet days trying to be a whole channel had a studio, was doing things low cost, giving people an opportunity to host their own shows. The problem is in the modern media world it's really hard to get an audience. If you don't have millions of dollars for production or stars or a massive publicity campaign or have something that is just wildly funny, entertaining, it's very difficult to get an audience. There certainly was a time when I was growing up there were only three TV channels. So anything you put on had millions of viewers because there were only three options, plus maybe pbs. So anything you put on TV was by definition seen by millions. These days you can put something a YouTube channel on your own website and you come back a week later and you can have literally zero views. Literally zero views. Now my other tips for creating your own low cost channel. Start small. Come up with your idea, come up with your editorial focus. Create a show. And for starters you may want to just use your cell phone. Let's make sure you have something interesting to say first. You can always add on more lights, more video cameras. When I started doing these YouTube videos, I was using a $30, maybe a $50 webcam. I now have a couple thousand dollar canon I guess semi professional camera, but you don't necessarily need that. I have a few hundred dollars worth of studio lights, but this is just a TV screen behind me. This is just a video loop that was made for me. I'm in a closet right now. I did spend a little money carpeting the walls to absorb the sound, a dedicated computer. But my whole studio setup only cost $5,000. And you don't have to spend that much. You can spend less than 100 bucks if you want. But focus on what really matters. First, what do you have to say? Why does the world need another TV channel from you? Because a very strong case could be made that the world already has too much tv. We actually need people to watch less tv.

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My other big tips for you when starting your own low cost CV channel is you've got to give it time. With very few exceptions, maybe Funny or Die. If you've got all sorts of wildly talented Hollywood celebrity comedians willing to create talent for you, yeah, that channel took off fairly quickly. But for most people in any subject matter niche, whatever they're doing, whether it's a YouTube channel or any other kind, it takes time to find an audience that these days, because everyone has a billion options for their eyeballs. So whatever you do, don't just shoot a pilot. Now I remember back in the day, you wanted to be a TV star. You rounded up 10, 20, 30, maybe $100,000. You shot a TV pilot and then you shopped it around to different TV networks. I've done that before. I've had a political talk show back in the late 80s syndicated throughout 10 Florida markets. And that was the way to do it. You spend a little money on a pilot. And I physically drove to every TV station in Florida and got on a different, a different station in each market. That's not the way to do it anymore, folks. That's frankly a horrible model for most people and it wasn't a particularly good model for me. So the question is, where do you start? Start with your idea. Start creating video. Spend less on the production side in your studio and the station, in the infrastructure. Spend more time on creating great content, building an audience. Better to do one good show that's five minutes long once a month than to do an awful lot of rambling garbage for 20 minutes a day or an hour a day. You need ideally, quantity and quality. But if you could only have one, go for quality. And in this era where so many people, I mean, look at young kids these days, they're glued to their cell phones. I was at a birthday party with other, other 2 and 3 year olds the other night. Every kid had to be staring at a cell phone the whole time during dinner. Frankly annoying, but it is reality. And because of that, having the fanciest of equipment and the fanciest of film and all that doesn't really matter when you're watching it on a little cell phone. So keep that in Mind, you want it to look good everywhere, but as long as it looks good when someone's watching on a cell phone, you may have enough for a studio. And then finally, if you're going to spend money on it, make sure you have enough money to do this for a long time. Give yourself a year, or certainly at least six months. I can tell you my own research given to me by Lipson, the syndicator and the host for my own podcast shows that most people just give up on their podcast after seven episodes. Very few people make it after about 21 episodes now as of this moment. This is my 84th podcast, but I've done more than 10,000 how to videos on YouTube and in other places. So really have a plan before you start. Figure out what you want. Plan on doing it for a good six months or a year. Don't just give up because you're not instantly famous and advertisers don't flock to you. You've got to figure out a revenue model. Advertising for a new channel isn't going to work anymore unless you've got so many gigantic Hollywood celebrities. And then if you have that, how are you paying for them? So you've got to figure out a revenue model that actually works. Do that and you could have a TV channel, a YouTube channel. First and foremost, I think you need to view yourself as a content creator. I don't view myself as a TV channel. I'm an expert on public speaking and speaking to the media. I create content and I try to create content in ways that are useful to people in every format. Video, audio, books, you name it. I think that's the long term mentality. Figure out what your niche is and create content and then go wherever your audience tells you to. I love video and I love doing video, but my audience is telling me it's frankly easier for them to listen to me on podcast and and on itunes and on their cell phone while going for a walk or driving than it is to watch videos. So I've had to adapt. So go into this with a little bit of an open mind experiment. Don't expect overnight success and ultimately you can be a content creation company, whether it's a TV channel or something completely different. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for sending the question. If you have questions about media presentation skills, media skills, go ahead and send them to me on Twitter JWalker or you can email me anytime. Infoediatrainingworldwide.com May all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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