The New York Times Has Deal for ‘Reality TV” Coverage of the Presidential Primaries

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The New York Times is expanding its online video offerings by creating
syndication deals with independent content producers.  Last month, it
brought the Bloggingheads to the paper’s
op-ed page. 

In the latest development, it has an agreement with Purple States
TV for a series of about a dozen segments on the  presidential primaries
leading up to Super Tuesday on February 5. 

The segments will appear
on the op-ed pages beginning on December 19, a spokesperson for The New York Times told Beet.TV

Purple States TV is the brainchild
of Cynthia Farrar, a
faculty member at Yale University where she is the
Director of Urban Academic Initiatives.  She has a background in
television, having consulted to MacNeill Lehrer Productions.  She is on
leave from Yale and is serving as CEO of the upstart content company.

The privately-funded business headquartered in New Haven, with editing facilities in Manhattan,
has selected five non-journalist "citizens" to interview candidates
in the key primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South
Carolina. 

They are from various political persuasions: a Republican, Democrat,
libertarian and independent. They travel together with a two-camera crew.
A total of 14 in the entourage for this new kind of "reality TV."

In addition to the deal with The Times, Purple videos will air in Iowa on WHO-TV, in South  Carolina on WIS TV and on KNBC TV in LA

Purple States has been pretty much under the radar, but a number of the videos
can be seen on Blip.TV  I’ve
posted an interview with Mike Huckabee above.

— Andy Plesser