Another year, another reflection (here’s 2022) for us at Digital Void TV! Coming in for 2024, we’ll stick with initials for the brand and logo as just DVTV. Why? Well, for simplicity and to avoid conflicts of other similarly named groups. For this post we’ll be talking about our website, content, socials and more.
Website
For this year, we’ve managed to stick to two website themes, Twenty Twenty-Three and Manticore. For the latter, unfortunately requires manual maintenance in comparison to WordPress’s stock theme. The upside is regular maintenance means less security vulnerabilities! However, things are up in the air for 2024 with the recurring theme switches and design changes. For the stock theme, it runs with a block editor to position the different website elements. While Manticore uses its own framework and needs a hand to make it operate plus looks pretty. What we want for our website is to be usable, flashy and mobile-friendly. We’d also like to integrate Twitch, Kick, YouTube and other live-streaming forms as well as forums themselves without having to rely to services such as Discord. These are all low-priority for now.
Content
TLDR:
- Reviews in movies and television, were brought back for a time but fizzled out. These will return in 2024 including other categories such as games, music and so forth.
- Let’s Play entertainment was attempted with Doom 3 BFG Edition as a television formatted episode. Will return, be completed and more games will be played. Possibly tweaked for reasonable purposes.
- Daily I/O was supposed to return in a different and lengthy format, didn’t pan out. 2024 will see that isn’t the case again and either span across weekly or monthly news summaries.
- Haunted locations in very short formatted video summaries appeared but became very daunting. 2024 will have them return and not be so daunting, expect at least one episode!
- Conventions and events will return to DVTV, we will attend and cover them. Expect written summaries as well as video ones, plus interviews and the like from people or groups of interest.
- The long-awaited internet TV channel that is basically cable TV, but free will arrive in 2024. Just need content to make it be worthwhile. Heavily inspired by old G4TV.
Now for our content, which unfortunately was quite stagnant in 2023. Oh, a nice big word but does concisely state we didn’t achieve our goals. We did bring back reviews for television and movies but that soon fizzled out. Not to worry, these WILL be coming back. To avoid burnout, expect at least one review every quarter, that’s every three months.
DVTV is run by a single individual as a hobby with a desire to see this positively explode into something great.
Reviews in other categories such as games, music, hardware, and so on are in mind. Easy does it, hopefully one of each of these appears in 2024. We want to pressure for quality over quantity for our mindset. Another content, we’ve attempted which fizzled out was creating some form of entertainment. Let’s Play, a staple in today’s internet entertainment ran for a couple episodes but got shelved for the time being. Its aim was to format it as a television episode, that goal was achieved but was quite time-consuming. Having to record for a set period then cut, cut, cut, all for the format under a presumed deadline was quite demanding. Also one of our recording devices, an Atomos Shogun Connect became a recurring issue that mid-recording required troubleshooting to outright having us give up for another time. This series will also return but isn’t a high priority. We had wanted to bring back Daily I/O in some form, it did work during the whole lockdown in 2020. That is also time-consuming even if it’s a little 1-minute video. Having to gather news, create a script to summarize into a bite-size sentence, record in silence and so forth.
Note the recurring word, time-consuming.
We brought up the idea of transforming Daily I/O into a monthly or weekly format summarizing that period’s news. It’ll hopefully return in 2024! Another short format that was made for the year was seeking the ghastly ghouls of the supernatural by visiting local places and putting a spotlight onto them. Only one short was made and posted on our Instagram page, however the amount of work required to make it seemed a bit too much. Finding factual information and not heresay was sporadic in searching the web. Another thing that’ll return in some way and be less demanding on our individual owner. Speaking of ghastly spooks, we’ve got plenty of ideas in that field that we’re going to bring in as a programming block. Locked in Fear is the name, we’ve got a page on the website set up for it already but has been unlisted for now. Oh, not to forget! We’ve got a developing map of spooky locations in our local area, wanting to create a sort of wiki-like experience.
Our target goal for 2024 is to begin creating consistent entertaining but also informative content. After all our slogan is ‘Gamers destination for news and content.’ We plan on attending one local event/convention every month in DVTV’s home base of Los Angeles, California. Covering them in the mindset of a journalist giving you, the viewer an opportunity to find out what you missed out from these events. Looking forward to writing an article summarizing the event itself with videos and photos taken there. We also plan on interviewing people/groups of interest there and give them a platform on DVTV. Other forms of content planned for the year is going to local relevant business/organization establishments and giving them a spotlight on DVTV. Whether that’s about games, electronics, comics, music, etc. We’re also considering food establishments! Not to review any of them but highlight them as a member of the local community.
We have mentioned in our 2022 report that we had evaluated the possibility of creating an internet TV channel. Bringing up DVTV’s conception as having been inspired by the old G4TV, a gaming-centered TV channel as well as other companies that run as magazines/websites. No we’re not talking about creating a YouTube channel (that already exists) but an actual one that can be played on OTT (Over-The-Top) TVs and run as a linear format (think 24-hours with commercials, you’d watch before and after a programming). Viloud was one such tool considered but we’ve encountered Amazon’s Elemental MediaTailor as another possible tool. Both require a storage server which could be our own or third-party such as Amazon or Bunny.Net’s service. Of course, these need CONTENT to be usable and we’ve got those in the works. Just a little bit of organization and time-management then these will be worthwhile to invest in. The whole legalities, clearances and rights are also kept in mind. We truly are heavily-inspired by G4TV’s original run in the Aughts (here’s a YouTube playlist to give an idea.) Keeping in mind of course of today’s audience’s interest and tolerances. Quite exciting for the coming storm.
Nonetheless, we got plenty of ideas and inspirational ones to put forth. For 2024, our mantra is easy does it. We don’t want to get burnt out and discouraged. DVTV will get reviews, interviews, news, entertainment and more. With additional help, aiming to get freelance humans and not AI-generated ones.
Socials
With the whole controversy of Twitter now X, and our reliance of WordPress’s Jetpack auto-sharing feature. We’re sticking with Instagram, Tumblr, Threads, and still looking towards Mastodon. Wanting to resurrect Patreon and use Bonfire for our merchandise or lack there of. Quite a bit of things are on the low-priority list and aside from the stated mantra of 2024. We want to focus on quality over quantity. Things will start up and be regularly maintained at a reasonable pace. We don’t want to put ads on this website nor trackers that’ll become an annoyance. So self-reliance with realistic expectations will be where we stand. What a tangent in this paragraph, but yes socials are there and forms of monetization that don’t impede your viewership in any way.
Summary
Website is going to continue to evolve towards a positive and usable direction. Content has been tested, reiterated and also will evolve to be something worthwhile for your viewership. Socials are established but require a hand in content. So everything is a circle to be of some use. 2024 is the big year, and no 2023 was not a horrible year. It just wasn’t what we wanted. Quality over quantity and easy does it.
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