Geeks, Sundry, and Nerdists: The Beginning of an Era / by Jared

The new captains of intelligent digital media
The announcements have been made, alliances have been formed, schedules have been set, and the future fruit has been devoured by these two.  Chris Hardwick and Felicia Day are successful media and digital culture mavens with an onslaught of content up their sleeves.  The Nerdist Podcast, The Guild, The Talking Dead, Dragon Age : Redemption, [listing the rest of their projects is where "etc..." stretches its upper limits].
Now they are each launching a YouTube channel with their respective collaborators and innovators.  Felicia Day's creation is Geek and Sundry, and Chris Hardwick's is The Nerdist Channel.  My first reaction was "wow, great timing".  It seemed apropos that both these trail blazers would have the same idea.  The second thought was something along the lines of "oh great, NBC and CBS for geeks".  While the evolution of the media might not make that a perfect metaphor it certainly speaks to the building up of a very individualized art form.  We are seeing the tipping point of individual thematic content creators organizing their efforts into larger cohorts.  These two may not end up dominating the public space, but as Malcolm Gladwell paraphrases "we're not looking for the perfect Pepsi, we're looking for the perfect Pepsis!", or in this case the perfect nerdly experiences.  This is the space these two channels will inhabit.

I am more optimistic about the outlook of Nerdist and G&S because of the ease in which people can use new technology to access them.  As it stands YouTube navigation is pretty horrible on both the XBox 360 and PS3, but interfaces such as Google TV,  Apple TV, and additional hiring at Google are starting to make it just as easy to access this content as TV allows you to turn to NBC or IFC.  The ease of access is key for any content to gain traction, especially if it doesn't have major corporate forces behind pushing it.  Hopefully more of these will form, allowing content creators to throw off the old style of distribution and thrive using the free and open nature of the Internet (I know that is debatable).