In mid-May 2010 I was contacted by a producer working on a programme for BS-TBS, in which they were looking at the recent rapid growth in popularity of the live video streaming service USTREAM.

As well as interview the president of TV-Bank (the subsidiary of Softbank responsible for running the service in Japan), they also wanted to  introduce a real-life user. When discussing the project in a meeting back in March, my name came up thanks to the publicity I’d received following the Tokyo Marathon – and so I was asked if I’d participate.

Filming took place at home a few days later, with the show going out on May 30th. It was subsequently rebroadcast on Nikkei CNBC and Sun TV.

What was  originally a 20 minute interview was cut down to about 2 minutes – partly  because it was only *after* filming that the producer got a call from the organisers of the Tokyo Marathon telling him he couldn’t talk about what I’d done, as I’d broken broadcast regulations!

What was left in was my talking about how the arrival of services such as USTREAM meant that (to a very limited extent) we could all become TV stations, in that we now had the power to broadcast our messages to the entire world – at almost no cost (getting people to watch is another matter!).

Here’s a few screenshots.

[I can’t upload the video due to copyright restrictions]

Introducing the Business Lab corner

「あるマラソン大会で。。。」The producer was forbidden from using the name ‘Tokyo Marathon’ so just had to refer to it as ‘a marathon’

I spent about 15 minutes running up and down the road for this sequence

They arrive at our door, I show them in…

..to my ‘studio’

The lightweight version of my broadcast gear – emobile wifi router, iPhone, Otosan

Talking about how with Ustream we can connect with our viewers,  something that TV stations haven’t really been able to do up to this point

‘We can now broadcast to the world’

I started broadcasting from my iPhone – cameraman then pans over to computer screen to see himself being broadcast on it

I didn’t actually see any of the broadcasts of the piece myself as I wasn’t told when it was on until after the event. I’m quite glad about that as I find watching myself on TV quite painful at the moment.

Ganbarou!