We're excited to share something new with you today -- Boing Boing tv. The idea is simple. Explore the same kind of stuff we've been obsessing about since Boing Boing began nearly 20 years ago, only explore it now in daily video. Five days a week, and short: under 5 minutes each.

Here is episode 1: Video Link.

For the first few weeks, much of what you'll see will be produced in-studio, but we also plan to do stuff out in the world, and all over the world.

Boing Boing co-founder Mark Frauenfelder and I are co-hosting the first few weeks of Boing Boing tv, but expect to see the other Boing Boing and Boing Boing Gadgets editors, too -- Pesco, Cory, Joel -- along with familiar characters whose work and eccentricities have been chronicled here before.

And: you. We also welcome video produced by you, our community, our audience, our internet-friends, and we're working out exactly that might fit in the mix (we'd love to hear your thoughts on that).

We're exploring different ways of producing this, and plan to publish a mix of faster-moving "internet zeitgeist" stories with material that remains of interest for a long time. Some lighthearted, other stories less so. In other words, a variety of material pretty much like you find on the blog.

This is not the result of a business plan, or a corporate focus group. We promise no huffy manifestos about Taking Down The Networks with A New Television Paradigm, no breathless hyperbole about Reinventing Citizen Journalism With the Disintermediation of Long Tail Postmodernist Blogonomics -- gah!

We just want to have fun and explore interesting things with you. But, y'know, now with video, because video allows you to explore stuff that text, photos, and audio -- all the things we've experimented with so far -- do not.

We don't intend to take ourselves too seriously. And we're not trying to be TV. Same old Boing Boing, but with talkies.

We hope you like it and find it worth your time to watch and participate, as you, our community, do with Boing Boing the blog. We hope you'll talk with us in the comments (or through your own video, if you wish) about what you'd like us to explore, though Boing Boing tv, next.

Link Discuss FTW!

TECH NOTE: RSS feed and the ability to subscribe via iTunes will be live ASAP.

THANKS: heartfelt gratitude to colleagues and friends without whom this would have remained vapor: Michel Wayne, Chris Kimbell, Jacob Riskin, and all of our production partners at the newly-launched Santa Monica-based studio DECA; all of our sponsorship, marketing, and tech partners at Federated Media (John Battelle, Jason Weisberger, Neil Chase, Ken Snider, Jonathan Schreiber, Ivan Kanevski, Chas Edwards, Bernie Albers, Andre Torrez, and Samantha Kahn, among others); George Ruiz and Nick Khan at International Creative Management (ICM reps BBtv); Brian Walsh at Castfire; the unfairly talented writer and producer Nihar Patel (he was once Xeni's producer at NPR, before that he worked at ABC Nightline, now he's part of the BBtv team), Scott Crawford of Scenic Route Pictures (shoot and post production), Tom Kendall and team at oftheworld.tv (BBtv title animation), and Kai Vermehr and all the folks at eboy who created the BBtv cowboy monster critter.

And thank you, dear viewer, for stopping by.

NEWS: Link to story in the LA Times. Link to Valleywag item. Link to Wired News blog post. Link to Laughing Squid. Link to Warren Ellis' blog. Link to Digg.