Millennialise The Way We Televise!

There's one great thing about all of this talk about the much-desired Millennial workforce and that is, that I am one!

theodysseyonline.com

Born in 1992, I am supposedly among the 30% of millennials who declare themselves to have no religion. We have on average, the highest number of Facebook friends and send a median of 50 texts a day. We are selfie-taking, sexting, self-promoting and self-sufficient bright young things - we are human version 2.0... and everybody wants us - or so they say.

I LOVE working in Television, as it means that all of my Millennialist skills are called upon every day in a fast-moving and content-hungry industry that stimulates and satisfies me.

The bad thing, is that TV can't help but wrap itself into a hedgehog shaped ball when someone mentions Netflix or the word 'multi-platform'. For most production companies, that just means 'Dorothy throw in a twitter hashtag and be done with it', but it's wayyyy more than that! We Millennials are not only hungry to absorb information, we're hungry to create it. And we do both of those things, tens, sometimes hundreds of times a day. We text, we snapchat, we blog, we vlog, we gram and regram, we Facebook, we tweet and we retweet. Youtube, news updates, TV in the form of video, image, text and live events...the list goes on! I thrive on being thrown into a new job every few months, exploring new places and busying my evenings with a variety of activities to stimulate my body and mind. To some it sounds exhausting, but to me - I live for it. And this seemingly chaotic and exhausting under-web lifestyle informs every aspect of a Millennial's daily existence!

salesforce.com

We are home-grown content-creators and although this might scare longer-serving TV professionals, who schedule boardroom meetings to brainstorm Bake-Off, the synapses of ultra-social Millennials are firing on all cannons as they build their brand and their content, wherever, whenever, and 10 times at once. Millennials and their closest genetic descendants Centennials, no longer enjoy television in the traditional way. TV to us is a World Wide Web of giving and receiving, of content-absorbing and content-creating. It exists in the moments between our chaotic social engagements, during the glimpses at the Metro news in between our tube stops, and the breaths in between the sips of my caramel frapp.

divx.com

We're heading in the right direction, but is it fast enough? On Demand services should now be the norm. We want everything we've ever seen before, and every bit of new content available in a central location - and we want it at a time that suits us, not the schedulers. So digitising archives needs to happen NOW, the development of storage solutions for HUGE amounts of content needs to happen NOW. The hiring of Millennials - needs to happen NOW.

We ourselves are a diverse brand, and we push that brand every single day on social media. We champion individuality, don't like to be defined by traditional terms or binary social systems and naturally immerse ourselves in the world around us both physically and mentally. We absorb, we ideate, we create. It's in our nature. We're adaptable, tolerant of change and welcoming of difference, and we want TV to be too. We're ready and waiting to be asked!

unikaz.asia

Netflix has proven that new and exciting platforms CAN still be 'thunk-up' and we don't need the confidence of a grammatically correct blurb to make it successful (no seriously, Netflix blurbs are awful) - but it's about originality and adaptability - it's about Millennialism. Netflix might be ahead of the game, but there's plenty more to come. We need platforms, we need infrastructure, we need ideas. We need a new auto-updating World Wide Web of Television, with machine learning capabilities and an inter-disciplinary collaborative remit. The multi-talented and multi-tasking Millennials are waiting to immerse themselves in rich cultural experiences and the time has come to work WITH them and deliver the best they've ever had.

So whether you are media professionals, mathematicians, retail reps or stay-at-home parents - the time has come to Millennialise the way we televise!


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Inside Harley Street

Inside Harley Street - in short, a total parody of high society. Where mums pop round to do the washing for their 30yr olds, where school girls are given designer watches for having braces fitted, where doctors buff their fingernails, where nip and tucks cost £30,000 and growing old gracefully is not an option. It is, perhaps, the most ridiculous three-part series I've seen on the BBC in a long time. Albeit that it lost its impact as the episodes continued and we were confronted with the same kinds of people, under similar circumstances.

bbc.co.uk - shoemaker's patient

The Harley Street estate is owned by the Howard DeWalden family and has been in the family for over 300yrs. It is valued at approximately £2.7billion - which goes far enough in explaining the clientele it attracts. On the most part, the documentary delivers exactly what we expect; rich aristocrats who couldn't tell you how much anything costs, stressed businessmen who are looking to find the key to rejuvenation, snobby old ladies who tell us they 'don't sacrifice anything for anyone' - the usual. However, there were moments that touched us too, like the story of a young Russian boy who had undergone numerous back passage operations and just wanted to live a normal life, a sponsored young middle Eastern patient with a brain tumour, or the story of an orthopaedic shoemaker who helps a charming elderly lady and a smiley young woman with cerebral palsy.

radiotimes.com

Part 1 was laughable. Vanessa Engle's frank and antagonistic questions were a dream to watch, the contributors even more so for squirming under her thumb. A particular favourite made it to the opening credits, as one of our doctors reveals, 'I have nothing to hide. If someone asks me what I earn, I earn x'. Vanessa's unique style delivers just what we'd expect in conversation with a lady about to undergo surgery to rid her of her ageing upper arms, as she poses the question, 'Do you ever think: actually, this is not important and I should go and find an orphanage in Romania or fight for world peace instead?' - met with just the kind of shifting eye contact and awkward body shifts that we'd expect. Yet not one of our contributors crumble.

I also enjoyed the fact that the music - including many the Eminem instrumental - was completely juxtaposed with the characters we meet. Although they go some way towards trying to seem approachable and humble, they just come across awkward and false. It's a tough game when you're set out against Engle.

dailymail.co.uk

In part 2, it wasn't just the interviews that spiced up the content, although one person's reasoning behind cosmetic surgery did seem a little over the top - 'People want to look good to keep their jobs'. I guess that means all of our politicians are out of luck for the general election then!

We even met one man who paid £7000 for a hair transplant - the price of holidays for seven years according to his mum.

I was particularly shocked by the visit to the Anti-ageing congress, where it felt more like a trip to the house of horrors than a place where people go to look good and feel young. In fact, I think the Guardian's Michael Hogan pretty much sums it up:

With a sad lack of self-awareness, one woman insisted she’d know when to stop having work done. At least, I think it was a woman. She looked more like a cartoon cat.

ebookee.net

Part 3, strayed towards the more weird and wonderful practices on Harley Street as we meet a therapist who cries because she loves her leeches and a Chinese doctor who prescribes herbs to help women to conceive. There were intravenous drips infusing vitamins directly to the bloodstream and just far too much weird, for far too much money, for my liking.

It was like a high-end cocktail of pompous hypochondriacs and over-paid private medical professionals but not for one minute do we find the contributors painful to watch. The scarce appearance of genuine patients seeking the best care and Engle's authored challenges, are enough to keep us engaged and entertained. It was a good insight into the workings of Harley Street, though I would have liked to have seen more of a focus on the patients journeys through treatment to see what private healthcare is all about.

One thing's for sure, I don't think I'd like to sit opposite Engle, if she's the one asking questions!

tvguide.co.uk