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.

Veoh – That Site That Isn’t YouTube. Nope, not that one, the other one…

It’s not easy not being YouTube if you are in the online video distribution game.  Veoh, one of the many also-rans, is certainly showing signs of life and some of those signs are pretty interesting, indeed.

“The average viewer now consumes more than 1 hour, 37 minutes per month – the most time spent per month on any video site and twice as much as time spent on YouTube”

“– The average video view length on Veoh.com is now more than 10 minutes per video – up from six minutes the previous quarter - indicating an increasing viewer interest in episodic, long form content.”

While their total viewership is still lightyears behind YouTube these numbers bode well, if not for Veoh, than for online video viewership in general.

One grain of salt to take with this – these figures “are from the company’s internal systems and reflect the 3-month period from January 1, 2008 to March 31, 2008.”

(via)