Post by lostmediahound on Aug 9, 2022 18:06:45 GMT
I think I may have found one of the most important webshows in history. It's extremely obscure but if an episode of it were found, it could prove to be a culturally significant historic document.
Kiki Stockhammer was a spokesperson for the Amiga video editor, the Video Toaster. She shows up in a few of their promotional tapes and guides, demonstrating how good the product is and getting green screened into various elements of the software. She's relatively well known among computer enthusiasts and the Amiga scene, but outside of that she's not in much.
One thing barely anyone seems to be aware of, and something I only found out while googling her, was that around 2000, she hosted one of the Internet's first live, interactive webshows. It was called "Kiki At Midnight" and emulated a late-night talk show, and was broadcast globally using her company Playtv's proprietary technology, which was somewhat different from the technology later companies such as Twitch would use. This is the only image for it on Google Images:
She seems to always be on the cutting edge, promoting what would have been extremely impressive tech for the time, so it comes as no surprise that she was also a boundary-pusher when it comes to live video streaming on the Internet. This sort of thing was almost unheard of when she was pulling it off. I found some articles which go in-depth about the show and kind of give an idea as to how it was. Reading them now is eerie:
www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/stories/2000/08/07/focus3.html
www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=63116
www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2000-03-05-0003050373-story.html
There's more evidence of this show's existence- namely, I found the website for Playtv on the Wayback Machine. From what I've read on the subject, it seems Kiki and a few other people who had worked for a company called NewTek (which created the Video Toaster) founded Playtv to serve as "Television for the next century" and envisioned "100,000 narrowcast channels delivering highly relevant programming to each viewer". This is the official page for Kiki At Midnight, but there are no thumbnails and the video files seem inaccessible. There are some synopses and the tagline, "She's beautiful, she's high tech, she's provocative, and now she is live on the web cause it is always midnight somewhere..."
web.archive.org/web/20000302071022/http://cf.play.com/ptv/showtimes.cfm?programid=1&modifier=0
The only other piece of evidence regarding this show is a short, 30-second promo which has been uploaded twice onto YouTube, both times apparently by people who worked on the show and remember it. This is notable as it's the only footage of the show available on the Internet, as far as I know. I've looked through both channels, but as far as I can tell there isn't a single episode of Kiki At Midnight anywhere on YouTube. So for now, all we have is this little 30-second promotional clip:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IEMYnvFnu4
I'm not familiar with the underlying mechanism of streaming video, so I don't know how exactly Kiki At Midnight could be preserved. I do think it is very possible that a backup copy was put onto VHS tape at some point, considering Playtv seems like a very professional company who took their programming seriously. At the same time, information of this show, and actual footage of it, is so scarce that it seems as if the entire Internet completely forgot about it, which is awful considering how cool it looks, and how significant it is in today's media landscape.
Anyway, I hope someone here can find it or dig up some more information. Hopefully together we can dredge up something, even a single episode, of a show this important to Internet culture.
Kiki Stockhammer was a spokesperson for the Amiga video editor, the Video Toaster. She shows up in a few of their promotional tapes and guides, demonstrating how good the product is and getting green screened into various elements of the software. She's relatively well known among computer enthusiasts and the Amiga scene, but outside of that she's not in much.
One thing barely anyone seems to be aware of, and something I only found out while googling her, was that around 2000, she hosted one of the Internet's first live, interactive webshows. It was called "Kiki At Midnight" and emulated a late-night talk show, and was broadcast globally using her company Playtv's proprietary technology, which was somewhat different from the technology later companies such as Twitch would use. This is the only image for it on Google Images:
She seems to always be on the cutting edge, promoting what would have been extremely impressive tech for the time, so it comes as no surprise that she was also a boundary-pusher when it comes to live video streaming on the Internet. This sort of thing was almost unheard of when she was pulling it off. I found some articles which go in-depth about the show and kind of give an idea as to how it was. Reading them now is eerie:
www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/stories/2000/08/07/focus3.html
www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=63116
www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2000-03-05-0003050373-story.html
There's more evidence of this show's existence- namely, I found the website for Playtv on the Wayback Machine. From what I've read on the subject, it seems Kiki and a few other people who had worked for a company called NewTek (which created the Video Toaster) founded Playtv to serve as "Television for the next century" and envisioned "100,000 narrowcast channels delivering highly relevant programming to each viewer". This is the official page for Kiki At Midnight, but there are no thumbnails and the video files seem inaccessible. There are some synopses and the tagline, "She's beautiful, she's high tech, she's provocative, and now she is live on the web cause it is always midnight somewhere..."
web.archive.org/web/20000302071022/http://cf.play.com/ptv/showtimes.cfm?programid=1&modifier=0
The only other piece of evidence regarding this show is a short, 30-second promo which has been uploaded twice onto YouTube, both times apparently by people who worked on the show and remember it. This is notable as it's the only footage of the show available on the Internet, as far as I know. I've looked through both channels, but as far as I can tell there isn't a single episode of Kiki At Midnight anywhere on YouTube. So for now, all we have is this little 30-second promotional clip:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IEMYnvFnu4
I'm not familiar with the underlying mechanism of streaming video, so I don't know how exactly Kiki At Midnight could be preserved. I do think it is very possible that a backup copy was put onto VHS tape at some point, considering Playtv seems like a very professional company who took their programming seriously. At the same time, information of this show, and actual footage of it, is so scarce that it seems as if the entire Internet completely forgot about it, which is awful considering how cool it looks, and how significant it is in today's media landscape.
Anyway, I hope someone here can find it or dig up some more information. Hopefully together we can dredge up something, even a single episode, of a show this important to Internet culture.
