Media Moments by Lowing Media

Media Moments

What does “Media” mean anyway?

Definition: The main means of mass communication (broadcasting, publishing, and the Internet) regarded collectively.  - Thank you dictionary.com

Media is something we’re surrounded by from the moment we get out of bed to when we return to our pillows at the days end. It’s incredible to think that the world we all have today I was told about when I was my sons age. I can remember years ago my teacher telling me that one day we would be able to watch TV on our wrist watches. And growing up in a house where I was privy to technology and much of the tooling it took to keep it in good repair, I found this message particularly curious. Especially today as I operate a boutique media company here in the Calgary Alberta area.

My father had a side business in the basement of our house on Wales Ave in Winnipeg; the TV repair shop as it was known, is where I spent a lot of Saturday’s in my early years helping, well, mostly observing. We we’re not the most computer savvy family however my first experience with coding did come from my dad buying us kids a Timex Sinclair 1000. This little computer came slightly before the Vic 20 and Commodore 64, which my friends up the street had both. It was also at that time when Apple showed up to the party with their Mac Classic, oh how I wanted that computer. It was everything I envisioned the future of computing to be. I had to wait almost 20 years before I bought my first iMac, a DV+450 which I still have to this day. Back to that Timex for a moment: It was a soft key unit (which I hated) and had a small desktop footprint. Everything we did with this computer was coded. Games of any sort someone in the house had to “write” which were then recorded to cassette tape. Often that someone was me. It really proved to be a foreshadow for what more my life would become. The unconventional career path I took into show business out of high school led me back to my roots in the late 90’s when the need for my first website arose.

When 1998 rolled around I had done very well in my first handful of years performing live comedy in Canada. In the summer of ‘98 I was touring eastern Canada and my first official headline work was at the Comedy Nest in Montreal. I am proud to say that like so many before me, The Nest took a chance on a skinny kid from the prairies. Ernie Butler (God rest him) booked me sight unseen on the recommendation of Derek Edwards. As we all know, the best jobs are often referrals through others and stand up is no different. It was during this time that I really started to recognize the power that the internet could have for the unknown performer. I spent the next few years stewing on ideas. I experimented with the production of a CDRom. My thinking was simple, everyone was using VHS to showcase their talents to industry. Why not take this simple format, digitalize my recording from analogue and “burn” it in a multi (Quicktime and Real Player) format capacity? So, I did just that. Tim Lowing on stage…was produced and interestingly, it’s what earned my first invite to the Just for Laughs in 1999. It worked. In an industry chalked full of producers in offices with stacks of VHS tapes, my little envelope with a CDRom arrived and what’s more? Got watched!

The wonderful thing about media is it truly does level the playing field if we have production skills. Ultimately, we still need to be good, or enjoyable in some capacity in our failure. Regardless, modern media has opened the door wide for many but interestingly, so many more have stood back and watched this opportunity pass them by. I simply look back to my time in and around when I was producing my own albums and earning invites to festivals and I especially think about the vision I had for an online theatre capable of showcasing arts and anything else one could imagine, on the internet. I saw a clear and decisive pathway to “anyone” having the courage to launch their own television network online. I was so convinced I had found “something” that I immediately invited everyone I knew in the Vancouver Comedy scene to get me their “tapes” so I could digitalize them (for free!) and post them to my newly created sites, webtube.tv and nettube.tv! To my surprise, not ONE comic or musician believed in the idea. In fact, I remember one comic flat out ripping the idea to shreds. Telling me (at least to my face), “this is the shittiest idea I’ve ever heard. No one will watch entertainers on the internet, it will never happen”.

Two years later, YouTube arrived.

It goes without saying that I love what technology has brought us all. Today we can at any moment admire another creator online. We can find inspiration in a split second or share ours with the world in the next. Media is all of ours now and the theatre of your life is yours to explore!

Tim Lowing is the sole proprietor of Lowing Media a freelance production company. Visit today for samples and rates.