SAI has a taken a look at the MySpaceTV series “Special Delivery,” a sort of hidden cam prank show. They took a look at the view counts for the show on MySpace and YouTube:
“Of the 12 episodes of “Special Delivery” added within the last month on YouTube, only one has more than 1,000 views. Meanwhile, episodes of “Special Delivery” found 254,778 viewers on last week and 155,011 the week before. That’s on par with “Quarterlife”’s performance on MySpace, and bodes well for MySpace’s next original series, “I Love Chieftown,” – as long as the financial model doesn’t assume big audiences elsewhere.”
Of course, they also note that MySpace promotes the show on its front page while there is no such love to be found over on YouTube.
This demonstrates a couple of things. First, that front page promotion is currently the quickest way to drive hits and the people who decide what goes on that front page have more power in the short-form video world right now than practically anyone else. Obviously, it benefits MySpace to promote the show on their front page but what would YouTube get out of doing the same for the show on their site.
Front page placement on YouTube has been known to drive anywhere from a few hundred thousand to over a million views to a once obscure video but since they have no stake in “Special Delivery” and MySpace is basically a competitor there is no reason for them to offer that kind of free traffice.
The second thing this demonstrates is that even though you might be widely syndicating your videos, if you don’t have a specific promotional plan for the video on every site it lives on you’re just screaming into the wind.
The latest news on the significant webseries front is that some folks are spinning off from the UK Bebo webseries Kate Modern to launch a new Brit-set webseries for MySpace.
“Big Balls Films and Pete Gibbons will make a pilot of the UK-set I Love Chieftown drama this month, with a full 60-”webisode” series launching in mid-September.
The drama will be based in east London and follow lead character Jamie, an aspiring filmmaker, as she follows an up-and-coming band and its journey to make it big.” (via)
Well, it sure does sound a bit like The All-For-Nots, Vuguru’s followup to Prom Queen from the makers of The Burg. It is also another example of trying to find an excuse for the camera – something I think we are ready to move beyond in terms of webseries. Everyone doesn’t have to either speak into a webcam or cameraphone.
Still, it sounds like a pretty big production with a 60-episode order. I’ll certainly be checking it out.
Tags: all-for-nots, bebo, burg, chieftown, kate modern, katemodern, lg15, lonelygirl15, myspace, myspacetv, prom queen, vuguru
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April 15, 2008 2:14 pm | 
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The Hollywood Reporter is, um, reporting that MySpaceTV is launching another original series (after “Roommates”, “Prom Queen” and “quaterlife”) called “Special Delivery.”
It’s a reality/hidden camera show that is being sponsored by Frito-Lay:
“The series initially will be sponsored by Frito-Lay/Cheetos, which will be featured in an episode around April 1 and will lend its branding to the show’s Web page at myspace.com/specialdelivery. The episode will feature a man with two broken arms asking a flower delivery person to feed him the snack food. ”
While I applaud all attempts to create original, sponsored content outside of the traditional TV markets, I do wish the content itself were a bit more, well, original.
You can check out a sample episode.
Some commentary from Mashable about NextNewNetworks deciding to syndicate to MySpaceTV. More and more content distributors are realizing the need to actually use the internet for what it is designed for – mass distribution and copying – instead of trying to force it into old models of media behavior.
The big question is, if all the current distributors begin to cross-pollinate and I can find the same things everywhere I look, what is the fate of sites designed around the idea of drawing traffic directly to them.
As tools for “curating” (see my earlier post) expand and I can self-design a “site” that collects everything I want to see and consume, thus saving me the trouble of surfing completely, i think there will be a major shift in the relationship between content creators and those in the role of distributor.
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