WhitneyandWyatt.com
WhitneyandWyatt.com is a bi-monthly Internet television talk show for women. The online show launched on June 17, 2007. The shows or "webisodes" post every other Wednesday and are co-hosted and produced by Whitney Keyes and Wyatt Bardouille.
Shows
In 2007, WhitneyandWyatt.com posted over 25 different episodes. Shows continue to be produced and posted bi-weekly in 2008.
The show is produced by Whitney Keyes (host, writer, producer) and Wyatt Bardouille (host, writer, producer, director). The production team includes: Tim Demmon, Tyler Estes, Kurt Feldhun, Bryan Gordon, Andy Lo, Androu Morgan, Brett Renville, Matt Sheldon, and Tamika Vinson.
Each episode is specifically produced for viewing online, and the topics are designed for a female audience. Two Seattle women co-host the show, covering current issues and topics ranging from social and political matters to LifeStyle issues. Episodes are available on the show’s main website, as well as through YouTube, iTunes, and other sites worldwide. The show is also distributed as a podcast via an RSS feed.
Occasional guest experts round out topic discussions, some of whom have included Elisabeth Squires, a.k.a. The Boob Lady, author of bOObs: A Guide to Your Girls, and Huffington Post blogger Beth Kohl, author of Embryo Culture: Making Babies in the 21st Century.
Unlike traditional TV talk shows such as Oprah and The View, Keyes and Bardouille encouraged viewers to communicate with them online and submit show ideas. If the topic was a good fit, it would be produced as a new segment and the viewer would be credited in the show as a "virtual" producer.
History
WhitneyandWyatt.com launched a new weekly Internet television talk show on June 17th, 2007 with a debut episode and an archive of video shorts. New episodes were posted every Wednesday. The debut introduced the continuing and wide-ranging theme of a "mix of serious stuff and girly fluff," some episodes taking a light-hearted look at relationships between men and women and fashion accessorizing, while others focusing on hard news and information addressing important social issues including breast cancer and the war in Iraq.
Early origins
WhitneyandWyatt.com is the brainchild of founders Keyes and Bardouille. Keyes was a senior communications manager at Microsoft and Bardouille was a senior program manager for Expedia. Both decided to leave their corporate posts, Keyes to start her own consulting company and Bardouille to pursue acting and filmmaking. At the same time, they worked together to produce video shorts.
While on holiday in Europe in July 2006, Keyes and Bardouille developed the concept of WhitneyandWyatt.com, and in March 2007, they created a blog about the show on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer website called Web TV Producers, in which the two independent producers shared their experiences producing a TV show for the web and insights into the trends they were seeing in online broadcasting.
In preparation for the show’s creation, Keyes and Bardouille conducted an online survey to identify what women viewers felt was missing from traditional TV shows and other forms of media for women. According to Keyes, "most women wanted three things: a tie to social values, an understanding of their busy lives, and a need to be heard and have a voice in the media." Based on this, Keyes and Bardouille decided to create a new format for television programming for women. The guiding concept was to provide time-pressed women relevant, entertaining information as well as a voice in online broadcast media.
Media reception
WhitneyandWyatt.com received local and international media attention. Immediately after the site launched, several business journals were intrigued by the producers’ business model and ability to leverage changing trends in how people were watching visual content online. WebTVHub.com has described the shows as both "clever and hilarious," and "shockingly real and down-to-earth." Internet TV directory tVadio.com has called the shows "compulsive viewing."