Cash from Convergence: TV Shows on Second Life

A Second Life avatar can now pick up a television set to watch tv channels in a bizarre twist of ongoing mobius media convergence. One of these channels will be UK company 3DD Production’s music series, London Live, the first music show to appear on the cyberchannel: Virtual Life.TV. I thought the (estimated) 8 million worldwide Second Life players (sorry, I mean “residents”) didn’t watch tv, but maybe there they do, maybe together? If they’re “live music fans” they can watch London Live and see performances and interviews with the likes of Paul Weller, Pink, Franz Ferdinand and The Killers, all originally filmed in HD for a non-avatar audience at the real London venue, Koko.

How do these things happen? Same as in the real world, a deal is arranged – in this case, between UK’s 3DD Digital and the creative agency called Rivers Run Red, with virtual world clients like adidas, BBC, BBH, Calvin Klein, Carat International, Channel 4, Duran Duran, Heineken, ING, Penguin, Philips, Reebok, Talpa and Vodafone. The apocalyptically named Rivers Run Red site tells us they reach consumers and build brand experiences in virtual worlds, basically working with branded content development. They call themselves an immersive spaces company, and have been documented and mentioned everywhere from Business Week to boing boing since they were founded in 2003.

Like matrioska dolls nested one inside the other, this media content has life after “life” after “’life’”. First the album is recorded. Then it actually is performed live. Next it’s sold for broadcast in HD on Channel 4 and E4 as a document of a live performance (a program called The Album Chart Show in the UK). And then, in a miracle of convergence resale, it gets another digital life on Second Life. I don’t think this will be live performance viewed realtime and live in Second Life. Surely this won’t simply be a replay of the HD broadcast, but is planned to include community interaction and engagement among avatars. Will they be watching the performance as an event, or interacting with avatars of the performers? It is, after all, a tv program, previously recorded, promoting album releases. It’s a perfect example of McLuhan’s observation that the content of a new medium is the previous medium!