If you’ve reached your limit of watching cats play on YouTube, you may be ready for FORA.tv, a Web video platform with the tag line “Get Smart.” The site targets the intellectual couch potato with recordings and live streams of idea-oriented events held around the country, including dozens in New York. Programs at the Asia Society, the New York Public Library, the New School and the Graduate Center at CUNY are all represented in the current offerings. But New Yorkers can also expand their worldview by surfing into events held in San Francisco, Aspen and Washington, D.C. The high-minded ideals are even built into the name: fora is the plural of forum, referring to the Roman open public space for debate and discourse.
“By capturing provocative and insightful events on video, we extend their shelf-life and expose them to an audience perhaps thousandsfolds greater than were there in person,” Blaise Zerega, FORA.tv’s CEO, said. Zerega previously worked as an editor at Condé Nast Portfolio and Red Herring magazine.
Many past events are available to view for free, and the New York Public Library’s LIVE events can be streamed live for a fee of $4.95. A $59.95 pass buys access to all the events in this year’s New Yorker Festival, including SNL’s Seth Myers discussing his news rivals. Events that carry the “premium” label are offered on a pay-on-demand basis, and the site is currently averaging three million video views a month.
Although it’s no match for being at a live performance or event, the site’s content partners are, of course, happy to expand their audience. “It’s a tremendous opportunity to provide access to patrons who cannot attend our programs,” said Meg Stemmler, the producer of the LIVE from the NYPL series. “What is created is a culturally linked community that begins between the lions and grows outward with boundless potential to connect minds.”
Subject areas covered on the site include culture, the environment, technology, politics, science and the economy. But the most-watched content generally has a pop culture dimension: the Graduate Center’s evening with Patti Smith is one of the site’s top-ranked videos. The site is also currently promoting an Oct. 27 talk with director James Cameron and Google CEO Eric Schmidt, hosted by Silicon Valley’s Churchill Club. The price of such stimulating conversation: $9.95.
