$5 Cover is an extremely well-made, well-cast and relatively entertaining webseries currently running on MTV.com.
In the first episode we get two very pretty young women in their underwear, some above-average acting, a decent plot and an appealing musical performance. All-in-all, it is easily one of the better examples of original web content currently available and is easily as entertaining as any number of TV programs.
What’s amazing to me is that, even with all of this going for it, $5 Cover appears to be a flop in terms of viewership.
All six of the current episodes appear to have launched simultaneously on May 8th. The strategy of releasing multiple episodes is one I believe can be helpful. Now, five days later, episode one has been viewed just over 10,000 times and episode 6 has just barely cracked 1,000 views.
It might be too soon to count out $5 Cover and it is very possible that MTV is syndicating this content to other sites and platforms where it is getting far more attention, but this begs the question, what is it going to take to get a serious audience to an original webseries.?
New Balance is behind an extremly well-made doc-reality series called SEASON IN THE BALANCE, that follows around a high school lacrosse team. As AdRants says, “Think Friday Night Lights with lacrosse sticks.” Also reminds me of MTV’s “Two-a-Days” series.
It appears that a great of deal of thought and at least some financial resources were dedicated to this project but it looks like it is being nearly completely ignored. This is based mostly on the viewcount on YouTube, where the five episodes posted so far are averages something like 200 views. Now, to be fair, there could be huge traffic to the home site or maybe on some other platform but YouTube tends to be a solid indicator of popularity and 200 views is miserably low.
Even if these numbers are lower than the actual viewership, it can’t be much lower. So, what went wrong here?
For starters, the only way I even found out about the series was via a posting in the industry-centric AdRants. I’ve seen no promotions or press releases or ads that would create even a whiff of awareness. Since the nature of the content is not sensationalistic or star-filled or just plain crazy, there is little chance of the videos gaining traction in the world of Facebook updates and Twitter ReTweets.
Oh, and it is about lacrosse, a sport this country has shown an extreme reluctance to embrace outside of high school and college.
What can we learn here? First, just making a great series and putting online is not nearly enough to guarantee viewership. TV networks spend millions to promote their shows so that they can boast of huge viewerships and raise their ad-rates. If a brand goes it alone and creates and releases their content outside of the traditional TV network marketplace it is now up to them to do that marketing. Otherwise, the show will go unseen as will any embedded marketing.
Second, you need to target your key audiences. Maybe New Balance did this and I am just not part of that target (fair enough) but if they did it was clearly unsuccessful. I wonder how many high school and college lacrosse teams have been directly contacted and made aware of a series that speaks directly to their life experiences? Not only could these players become viewers but they could also become brand evangelists for New Balance.
As it stands, this is a great looking webseries that deserves some attention but this won’t happen all by itself.
First came word that NBC would inflict Jay Leno on the nation a full 90-minutes earlier, pre-empting any chance of compelling shows to watch from 10-11PM on that network – not to mention that the vast majority of their remaining schedule features non-scripted fare.
Now comes MTV’s list of new shows that I am reprinting below from Radar:
College Life, about freshman at the University of Wisconsin. Can you say beer parties?Nitro Circus, with freestyle motocross star Travis Pastrana and his posse.
The CollegeHumor Show, set in the offices of the twentysomething-run website CollegeHumor.com.
How’s Your News? which was first seen ten years ago as a series of short films directed by Arthur Bradford. This one’s about news reporters who have disabilities.
Rob Dyrdek’s Fantasy Factory, with the co-star of MTV’s Rob & Big, who is trying to grow his skateboarding business via the Fantasy Factory, a 25,000-square-foot warehouse that is transformed into a play house.
Daddy’s Girls, with Rev Run’s daughters Vanessa and Angela Simmons of Run’s House. In this outing, they move to Los Angeles and open a store to sell their apparel line while Vanessa tries to make it as an actor.
The Girls of Hedsor Hall, inspired by the British Ladette to Lady, about a dozen foul-mouthed party girls who go to finishing school. Former Miss USA Tara Conner will be the “visiting instructor” and the winner gets $100,000.
An untitled reality show which follows students of Cincinnati’s School for the Creative and Performing Arts.
It’s one thing to abandon music entirely but at least for a little while the new programming at MTV felt, well, new. Everything on this list is a rehash, spin-off or rip-off of an existing show. There is not one single original concept in the bunch. I guess time will tell if the youth of America are really this hungry for generic entertainment or if they will begin to look elsewhere in greater numbers for entertainment that doesn’t treat them like a bunch of idiots.
Accordingto TechDirt, MTV’s new video site has decided it’s viewers are too prone to subliminal suggestion of lyrics and have BLEEPED out part of a Weird Al song!
The line “Like Morpheus or Grokster or Limewire or KaZa” from his tune “Download This Song”has all four website names BLEEPED! Check it out…
There is a commercial that, even with great use of the DVR, I have been unable to avoid and it is driving me nuts.
The ad is for the LG Shine cell phone and stars Brody Jenner and Lauren Conrad of MTV’s “The Hills,” a show shockingly popular with otherwise intelligent women in their late-20’s and early-30’s. While the idea of using them in a cell phone ad makes perfect sense, this particular ad leaves me baffled…
Here’s what happens in the ad: Lauren is staring at her own reflection in her LG Shine and talking about her hair and makeup. Brody, meanwhile, spots a couple of “hotties” coming his way so he makes eyes at one of them and after they pass, uses the reflection of his own LG shine to check ‘em out walking away. Lauren catches him and let’s him know via a text message, “OMG, UR A PIG!” Brody looks up and asks, with a boyish grin, “What?” Lauren rolls her eyes.
And the tagline? Ready… “Reflect your style”
While there is plenty about this ad that could drive one nuts, the thing that kills me is that these two people demonstrate the polar opposite of anything approaching style! What style is LG hoping their potential customers want to reflect by carrying this phone?
My guess is that the agency spent a long time coming up with that tagline (read: 15 minutes) and they would be damned if they’d let a little thing like it not matching the commercial stop them from using it.
Oh, here, you can watch the commercial for yourself:
This morning a watched about 20 minutes of MTV’s new morning music video block “FN MTV,” during which MTV brings back the music video but not without a few strings attached.
The videos are NEVER simply played on their own. There is always some sort of wrap-around, usually involving MTV viewers in small windows making soul-crushingly inane comments while the video is playing.
Oh, and you will not see the whole video, either. Most of the videos fade out after about 90 seconds.
Perhaps most annoying is the karaoke portion, where viewers record themselves singing over the video.
The point is, according to MTV, that music videos are simply too dull and the music too lame to keep the interest of their 12-24 demo. While that might be true, I find it hard to believe that obliterating the videos behind a constant flow of viewer commentary is the solution.
“[Caron] Daly and Madison Road will launch in July “The Really Big Internet Show,” a daily five-minute webcast that will feature the day’s most talked-about original online videos. Justine Ezarik, an Internet vid star who goes by the name iJustine, will host.”
So, here are my 10 Reasons Why Carson Daly’s “The Really Big Internet Show” Will FAIL (and one of them isn’t “Carson Daly”).
10. Why would I watch clips of viral videos instead of just watching the clips themselves?
9. Why would I bother waiting a whole 5 minutes to find out which videos they’re going to show when we all know the list will be hotlinked on the same page?
8. The target audience for a show like this will have already seen every video they mention. If they haven’t seen it, it probably isn’t a legitimate “hit.”
7. You know this is going to be ad supported in some way while the videos it talks about will likely not be. Which would you rather watch?
6. Even though everyone likes funny little clips they can pass around to friends and mention at parties nobody cares about them enough to watch a show ABOUT them.
5. iJustine is totally cute and has a great presence but what she has to say about silly videos isn’t going to be “must-see TV”.
4. Sure, it’s only going to be 5 minutes long but 5 minutes can be forever online.
3. This show brings absolutely nothing new to the table.
2. G4’s Attack of the Show already has a relatively successful podcast/site called Around the Net that covers this ground and has the faithful following that Daly’s show wants.
1. Daily shows are brutal to produce and anything short of massive early success will lead to a quick burnout from all parties concerned.
Gawker, the once-mighty snark-blog of NYC that has been steadily losing its identity over the past few years, has post about MTV’s ad pitch at the upfronts:
“The network is also trying to sell sponsors on its “podbusting” techniques—i.e., making commercials that are like mini-shows in themselves. The theory, of course, is that making ads more like regular programs will defeat the almighty Tivo, with content so compelling that you cannot help but watch, slack-jawed, as the hypnotic 60-second Mountain Dew Bourne Ultimatum spinoff flickers before your eyes.”
We’ve been seeing more and more of this on TV with everything from mini-animated extras on USA’s “Psych” to a weird mini-soap opera with Alicia Keyes. These efforts have been less than compelling and the trend worries Gawker:
“Please keep our television commercials in neat little blocks, so that we can get up and go to the bathroom while they are on, or, if we have the proper technology, skip them altogether. This whole “great ads that you want to watch just cause they’re so great” is a huge backlash waiting to happen.”
The problem is that it is only recently that us viewers could easily avoid standard advertising. As our ability to avoid the ads grow, their impact will decrease and the brands will not be so interested in the model any longer. Then who’s gonna pay for the TV you watch?
The nice folks over at Wired asked the guys behind MTV sketch show (and one-time web-wonders) Human Giant to pick out the next great web sensations.
Their list was pretty much a mix of fairly well-established comedy folk who have gone to the web as a way to put out work that nobody in the film or TV world was willing to touch.
Some of their picks, like the David Wain, Michael Showalter and Bob Odenkirk are definitely funny but not exactly new to the scene. Others, like Jake & Amir are already on to other projects.
There’s nothing wrong with this list of web funnies – I just wish they’d pointed out a few more missed gems.
Well, they’re not actually going back to embracing their original short-form bedrock, the music video, but MTV has announced a small slate of short-form programming that will be distributed across a variety of platforms.
“Brian Graden, president of entertainment at MTV Networks Music Group, said the slate is part of the network’s overall strategy to reach viewers across multiple platforms as the way they consume content continues to evolve.
“The past couple of years have been about experimentation for us on various platforms,” he said. “Slowly but surely we’ll be making more of these (nontraditional programs) as new distribution platforms emerge. It also liberates us to pursue projects consistent with our historical DNA since MTV started as a short-form channel.”
The shows include a couple of web-sketch groups that feature well-made YouTube-esque vids, a hiphop trivia game and some extensions of one-air personalities takin’ it to the web. Although none of it sounds especially revolutionary, it’s cool to see new talent getting some bigtime exposure and support.
The web certainly allows the big fish to play around and experiment without a lot of risk. The question is whether or not they use these experiments to push the boundaries or just follow trends as they appear.
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May 13, 2009 4:45 pm | 
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