The CIA, LSD, the Return of Urkel and Still No Viewers

A few years ago, the hot topic was web series being created by Hollywood outsiders.  This was going to be the big revolution where the little guys could finally show the big guys how it was done. After decades of sitting at home and screaming at the TV for being so dull and lifeless, fresh minds and cheap equipment combined with nearly free distrubtion was going to cause an entertainmain revolution.

Well, it didn’t quite happen that way. With a few exceptions such as LonelyGirl15, these series generally came out of the gates fast and fell off the cliff even faster.  Many failed simply because they were not entertaining.  While it is easy to criticize much of what is on TV, it is far harder to produce a superior product.  Others failed simply due to lack of exposure.  After pouring everything you’ve got into making your webseries, there is often little left over for marketing or PR.  Hoping to go viral was, and still remains, the way most webseries hope to find an audience.  This is not proving to be working.

The past year has seen a vast rise in the next wave of webseries: those being produced by professionals from the world of film and TV.  While still working with negligable budgets, experienced pros are getting together to make their own shows free from the contraints of major networks or unions or guilds.

Two examples of this are out right now.  “Road to the Alter” is a mockumentary starring Jaleel White, once the hottest kid on TV as Urkel on “Family Matters.”  The other is “Operation Midnight Climax,” a highly stylized fictionalization of the CIA’s early top secret LSD research.  Check out sample episodes of both below.

What’s more amazing than the amount of work and time that must have gone into these pieces, is just how few people are watching them.

“Road…” is only averaging 2000 views an episode on YouTube while “Operation…” has yet to crack 500 views.

Now, maybe it isn’t fair to judge the success of a webseries on its number of YouTube views but there is little else on which to judge popularity right now.

Either way, it is safe to say that neither is a runaway success.  This forces the question, what will it take to make a webseries into a popular success.

My money is on marketing.

Pre-Roll Ads Can Be An Effective Compromise

I just went to check out the weather for today and ended up, of course, at Weather.com.  There I decided to watch the actual video weathercast for NYC.  After clicking the link I was made to watch a 15-second ad for Pedigree dog food. And you know what, it wasn’t that big a deal.  In fact, it seemed like a perfectly fair trade-off since I was getting the video for free.

Now, had it been a longer ad, that would have been a different story.  I am always dismayed when a video provider tries to slap a 30-second spot in front of a 90-second video.  That is not a fair exchange.

Where people are eager to fast-forward through 2-minute TV ad breaks, it doesn’t seem worth the effort when it is just a 15-second spot.  There is a good lesson in here for all the advertisers out there.

MTV Plus Hot Girls in Underwear Plus Good Music Still Equals Squat

$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.?

Whorified Webseries Another Example of a Lost Opportunity

So, a week ago a new original webseries launched.  This one is called “Whorified” (warning: flash) and it is a spoof on “America’s Next Top Model” but this is a hunt for America’s next top whore.

While the idea isn’t exactly a breakthrough, the production value and casting are both excellent and the overall effect is strong.  Combined with a catchy concept you’d think this is one that could get some traction. Not so much…

After a stop at the homesite – a horrendously slow-loading flash disaster – it turns out that to see the episodes I actually have to go to either YouTube or FunnyOrDie.  Why they haven’t at least embedded the videos on their homepage beyond me.

Anyhow, after 7 episodes in release, the series looks to be averaging about 300 views/episode.  Considering there is a cast of at least 20 people, this means almost nobody outside of their own circle of friends has even checked this thing out.

So, why is it such a flop?  My guess is the simplest and most common reason out there – they spend all they had on production and never considered how they would actually market this thing.  My guess is that they figured between the title and subject matter they would go viral in no time.  Now, the series hasn’t been up for that long, so it might still catch on but I continue to be baffled by seemingly competent producers fail to give their work any help finding an audience.

While it might be hard to gain millions of viewers with just marketing, the marketing can help build the critical mass needed to make those sorts of exponential jumps in viewership.

Anyhow, check out episode 1 of Whorified:

Poke Fun But “Homeless Real World” Not a Joke

Thanks to now-defunct web video site ManiaTV, there are over 160 hours of footage featuring six homeless people living in Denver.  The show’s creators were never able to convince Mania to go to series and were able to get the footage back.

They have released a “sizzle reel” that gives a very good taste of what they were able to capture.  Since the produccers were independent and not bound by conventional TV approaches the result is quite unusual:

The approach that the producers took to shooting the series is unlike anything on TV. The producers bonded closely with the subjects, at times breaking the fourth wall in the footage. Interviews are more conversation than Q&A and feature nothing like the typical “confessionals” adopted by so many reality shows.

“The cast and crew became so close that they’re still very much in touch with each other,” Ayoub says. “So we can tell you what everyone is doing today.”

This is apparent in the video below.  This is the sort of unique programming that could only happen in the new world of independent web video producers.  Whether or not a major distributor will take on such controversial material is uncertain.  This would be a tough sell to advertisers.  At the same time, one has to wonder if a smart distributor would be able to use the controversy to build the level of attention that advertisers simply cannot ignore.

Homeless Real World (sizzle reel) from Broadcasting & Cable on Vimeo.

Check out the video:

Hulu vs. Paying for Cable TV

Just a quick thought:

I can watch last week’s episode of 30 ROCK on Hulu right now for free.

However, if all I had was $80+/month cable TV and I had forgotten to set my DVR to record the show for me I would now be completely screwed.

Seems to me that Hulu, on many levels, offers a superior set of features and benefits when compared to the offerings of basic cable.

Is “Angel of Death” a Hit or a Success?

Hey, have you heard about the redhot webseries “Angel of Death” over on Crackle.com?  Well, if you have, you are in a minority.  Still, it sure looks, at first glance, like “Angel of Death” is a hit:

During a recent interview with comic book podcast iFanboy, Brubaker said Angel of Death had been seen by “7 million people.” This was kind of vague, so we contacted the folks at Crackle who said Brubaker misspoke, and provided the more specific, yet completely different metric of 4.7 million total views.

That is certainly a lot of views in the world of webisodes, especially when it comes to dramas.  Of course, one has to take into account that the viewcount is a tally of all views over a ten-episode season.  NewTeeVee dug deeper to find these numbers:

Episode 1: 950,000 Episode 2: 675,000 Episode 3: 625,000 Episode 4: 525,000 Episode 5: 275,000 Episode 6: 350,000 Episode 7: 800,000 Episode 8: 100,000 Episode 9: 300,000 Episode 10: 200,000

Granted, there are some cable shows that struggle to pull these numbers, but the fact is that only around 20% of the audience for episode one stuck around until episode ten.

Then there is the question of that pesky ROI (Return on Investment) that just won’t leave us alone.  Well, the series cost a reported $1,000,000 to produce.  The simple math says they paid $4.70/view.  I guess, depending on how their advertising and sponsorship deals work, this could be a profitable price-point but I don’t think so…

LINK

Atlantic Claims TV to Become AM Radio to Drooling Masses

Michael Hirschorn, writing for The Atlantic (it’s a magazine…ask your parents), has created a baffling collection of arguments leading up to the conclusion that TV is going to become a lowest-common-denominator entertainer on par with the blowhards of AM radio.

Aside from the fact that TV has long courted the broadest, and therefore sometimes not the brightest, audience, I find myself needing to respond to some of the more absurd points Hirschorn puts out there:

The only thing network television can uniquely offer us non-digitally-optimized saps and dipshits is the promise of immediacy. Leno’s content—like that of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, the breakout stars of the past few years—is news-driven, hypertimely, and ultimately disposable, insofar as it loses almost all its value within 24 hours.

Somehow, Hirschorn has missed the explosion of live-streaming programming on the internet.  From Obama’s last press conference to much of Sunday football, TV is far from exclusive in its ability to offer “of-the-moment” content.  In many ways, as technology continues to facilitate fast, low-cost streaming we can all provide live coverage (Qik, anyone?).

But niche networks like HBO and Showtime may loom even larger than they do now: they’re supported by cable subscription fees, and they’ve smartly anticipated the move away from real-time viewing and made video-on-demand part of their broader scheme. This has allowed those networks not only to continue to produce top-flight scripted shows, but also to promote them with a fervor redolent of the old days of Must-See TV.

The truth is that subscription-supported TV is never going to be able to make up for what advertisers currently shell out and HBO et. al. are seeing their business models collapse as the struggle to come up with enough truly great original programming to replace the hundreds of hours of movies nobody needs them anymore to see. 

The exceptions (Twilight, Pixar movies, American Idol, Britney, 24,
anything Oprah likes) are huge and will remain so, since people clearly
will always like to congregate around shared cultural experiences.

Actually, I agree with this but it seems to directly contradict Hischorn’s idea that scripted shows are failing and being replaced because nobody wants to watch them.  People watch what compels them and a good story well told will always compel an audience, with or without a script.

“Heroes” is the show Hirchorn (and many others) hold up as proof that serial content just can’t sustain an audience on TV.  Of course, these same people like to ignore “Lost” the “CSI” franchise and other shows that dominate their time-slots.  Sure, reality TV is cheaper to produce so the failures hurt less but don’t think that reality fails less often than scripted fare.

Instead of TV devolving, as Hirschorn seems to fear (and, oddly, hopes for), it is far more likely what we think of as TV will be consumed by the “web” and content itself will change its manner of distribution and as long as artists have great stories to tell, audiences will come and advertisers will follow.

ABCFamily.com Comes Up with an “Alibi”

Sometime I wonder if I post things just to come up with a Variety-speak headline.

Anyhow, just watched episode one of “My Alibi” on ABCFamily.com (see below).  This was a pick-up for ABC of an existing show from Take180 which tries to elicit audience participation in the form of cliffhangers with resolutions that can be voted on.

The production value is decent and the casting of a 90210-alum can’t hurt but I am not convinced that this sort of simplistic interaction is going to be the hook for a webseries aimed at teens and tweens (or anyone else, really).  Primarily, these interactions tend to hurt the actual story since so many alternatives must be conceived and, at times, produced, even if they aren’t the most satisfying or dramatic direction, due to fan interferance.

Instead, webseries need to find more innovative and immersive ways to get audiences involved OR create a passive story that is good enough to stand on its own.  “MyAlibi” falls into a bit of an unfortunate gap between these two solutions.

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.781261&w=425&h=350&fv=]

Free Anti-Piracy Advice to NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX et. al.

According to a post on NewTeeVee:

Regardless of how many ads were shown, 90 percent of ABC.com viewers continued to say they’d rather get the show for free than pay to get it without ads.

Why aren’t the TV networks releasing copies of their shows to pirate sites complete with the ads built in?  While I do love my ad-free TV torrents, I tend to watch on Boxee even with the ads since there is simply no wait.  However, I miss being able to download and watch the show on other devices or outside of a wifi hotspot.

I think most people would be perfectly ok with downloading a show with the ads built in.  Sure, one could fast-forward past them but most people don’t bother, especially if the ads are short and varied.

Not only would the networks actually get to show advertisers an ever larger pool of eyeballs but they would be putting the pirates right out of business.

Just thinking aloud…

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