ABC’s Diane Sawyer did a relaxed maybe after-hours web interview with New York Times technology writer and former Times R&D lab researcher Nick Bilton at the end of January. Bilton is brimming with interesting information and opinions on the rise of the internet-TV era. Sawyer is flirty and casual and… maybe a couple of glasses of chardonnay into her afternoon. It makes for OK broadcast journalism and pretty good internet TV, too.
Click on the photo to watch the clip at ABC.
Sawyer asks Bilton about YouTube’s plan to start streaming movies.
“How can YouTube hope to make an incursion into NetFlix?” she says all playful devil’s advocate.
They’ve got five movies up now, all Sundance films, says Bilton.
Sawyer giggles at the number.
Then she switches topics with minimal transition, exactly the way you should do for web-streaming media, enjoying herself: “Uh… the Boxee Box. Do it for me.”
Bilton plays the straight-man smart-guy at the party and explains to his pretty interlocutor all about Boxee Box. She finds it all very entertaining.
“Are the cable companies trembling?” she ribs.
Then she ruminates on a piece she recently did on the inverse relationship between time kids spend in front of info-entertainment screens and their grades in school. The more time spent, the worse the grades.
“Is this a threat to the basic fabric of As in school?” she punctuates the question with a comic-theatric sweep of her fist.
Ever wonder what Diane Sawyer looks like flirting at a well-stocked cocktail party? Wonder no more.
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