MyDamnChannel Presents Agency of Record and I Have Some Questions

From the guys who brought us the best screencast webshow ever, “You Suck At Photoshop,” comes “Agency of Record,” a slick-looking new webseries over on MyDamnChannel and sponsored by Adobe.

Here’s episode one (it’s the only one so far…)

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.751712&w=425&h=350&fv=]

A few questions:

1) Why is the first episode so long?  Over 9 minutes seems like a lot to ask for a webseries pilot.

2) Why so industry-insider? Unless you happen to have a lot of exposure to the world of ad agencies (sadly, I do) you might not even know what these guys do until well into the first episode and then you will be left wondering why you are supposed to care.  It reminds me of the great and short-lived Fox show “Action” with Jay Mohr – incredibly funny skewering of the Hollywood producers and agents but completely over the head of most Americans.

3) Why is there a 40-second opening credits?  Even real TV noticed people no longer have patience for things like that.  Get to the show. Fast.  Porn is just one click away.

The show has really nice production value and a positive attitude but I can’t see how the setting or the characters will help build the kind of audience needed to sustain an episodic webseries.

Adobe Video – Department of Redundancy Department?

Although there is nothing surprising about the release of the Adobe’s video player I’m still not sure why it’s meaningful.

It is basically the same thing as Joost and that hasn’t exactly been a grand prize winner.  Sure, it’s Adobe so they have great market recognition but you still have to offer something really special today if you want to stand out.

Really, what is Adobe Video other than a stepping-stone to the eventuality of it all being, well, TV?  Like cable but with a lot more options.  Nobody cares what the software is that delivers the cable to their DTV and I don’t think the fact that it’s web-based makes a difference.

Were the people crying out for another way to watch video?  If so, they were crying softly.  In truth, people want better content.  How it gets their doesn’t really matter…

Podcast Alternative in the Air

BeetTV has a look at the new Adobe Air video player.  I haven’t really had a chance to play around with this yet but it sounds like it could be another viable option in the growing world of distribution possibilities.

“Unlike podcasts, which are downloaded and saved as files along with some enclosed metadata, the new AMP environment will appear as a sort of rich, Web-like environment.  It is on the desktop, but connected to the Web and updated via RSS.”