Gawker (and Nick Denton) Finally Notice Quarterlife

Gawker, which used to make fun of the NYT for being so late on “breaking” culture news, is finally taking a swing at quarterlife.  In fact, it is Gawker’s own top dog, Nick Denton, telling us how it is:

“Marshall’s not stupid; it took a lot of skill to market his show and convince NBC to give him full creative control. And that’s great news for creators. But in doing so, he’s changed the Great American Internet Dream. It was just about to evolve from “make a good web show, get famous on TV” to “make a good web show, get famous without TV.” Now many indie creators will water down their work to make it palatable for NBC and other buyers. Hollywood exiles will spend their budgets not on promising fresh creators but on Quarterlife clones”

Not to disagree with one of the kings of the blogosphere, but he’s wrong.  Quarterlife will not spawn clones since, as he does notice, the show sucks.  Just because it was picked up by NBC and MTV does not make it a hit.  People will actually have to watch the show.  Considering there have been less than 5M viewers total to the online series, this does not bode well.

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