Ashton, Snoop and Other Stars Hot on Live Webcasting. Why?

This has been a big year for live webcasts and especially for UStream, a site that seems to have a dominant position at the moment.

Live webcast’s big moment came late last year with the sensation that was the Shiba Inu Puppy Cam.  Tens of thousands of people were tuned in at any given moment to the six little puppies and it is thought that the total number of viewers was over 20 million.  Not bad for some puppies.

Now, it seems, live webcasting is moving beyond puppies and live camgirls to include a growing number of celebrities.  I’ve already discussed Snoop Dogg’s “Wake-n-Bake” show and Kevin Pollack’s chatter and now comes word that web-happy celeb Ashton “1 Million Followers” Kutcher has plans to do a live version of his chestnut “Punk’d” for UStream.

The question is, why this new interest in live webcasting?  It is hard enough to drum up an audience for an original webseries without the added pressure of forcing people to tune in at a specific time.  Even network TV is finding a drop in appointment viewing.

My minimal research (checking out each show a couple of times) indicates that only a few hundred people are interested in either Snoop or Pollack when they are live.  It will be interesting to see if Ashton has the kind of pull needed to make a live show a true hit on UStream or if the only thing we really want is more puppies.

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