Busy boys Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried, the brains behind EQAL and the online web phenomenon lonelygirl15, have been blowing up lately. Having recently launched a community-sourced web series LG15: The Show Is Yours, creators of the LG15 Universe have announced a license agreement with a Polish media company for a new story in the LG15 canon: n1ckola—all this on the heels of another announcement for a multi-platform mystery web series in partnership with CBS Interactive Harper’s Globe, which will complement Jon Turtletaub’s new prime time television series Harper’s Island premiering on CBS in April.
Harper’s Globe will be launched on March 18 in anticipation of Harper’s Island with original web episodes that will support the on-air storyline with overlapping characters, locations, and plots. Beckett and Goodfried, who created hit online shows lonelygirl15, KateModern, and LG15: The Resistance were tapped by CBS in May 2008 to conceptualize, develop, and produce social shows related to CBS’ television series, and act as a consulting partner to CBS Interactvie and provide the network with a first look at new multi-platform show concepts.
“Harper’s Island sounded really cool to us from a creative standpoint, Beckett told us. “We thought that the mystery elements would go really well with an internet audience and the concept really fit our sensibilities—the show has a lot of lonelygirl elements from a narrative standpoint.”
“Jon [Turtletaub] and some of the other producers on the show came from doing Jericho and they saw with Jericho the power of an internet audience” added Goodfried, ” and they certainly wanted this time going forth to start from scratch making sure they were catering to that audience and getting them the right content.”
“Harper’s Island [see trailer above] is a really unique show, so I was thrilled when the network and the studio decided to break new ground and exploit all platforms of the show from the start,” said Turtletaub. “Putting CBS Interactive together with EQAL gives the show an innovative and entertaining online presence a full three weeks before they launch the on-air program. The multi-platform, interactive elements at Harpers Globe expand the whole experience of our show, which I feel is beyond necessary in the world of such rapidly changing media. We have to make our show an internet event, as well as a broadcast TV event.”
When EQAL came on board to develop Harper’s Globe, Harper’s Island was only a pilot script and a short presentation, according to Beckett. “In our very early meetings, they planned their series around what we were going to do with the web series—certain things that happen in the TV show and that happen in the web series are the result of our creative conversations together.”
Harper’s Island marks the first multi-platform series—unlike Heroes or The Office “webisodes”—for which both platforms are being developed in conjunction. Goodfried told us, “the one fundamental difference between this and what I think other people have done in the past is that in the past there would be shows where they would write all the TV episodes and shoot all the TV episodes with one team and then another team went and did a web series that kind of played into it and catered towards it. Here we have the opportunity from day one when they were breaking the story and we are able to be a part of that process. So while they were focused on writing a fantastic TV show they were also able to add certain hooks to the television show that would make the web series more integrated and more relevant.”
The star of the web series, Melanie Merkosky, who played Jennie on lonelygirl15, will also be featured in some of the episodes on-air, and there will be quite a bit of character crossover from TV to the web and vice versa. EQAL will be using other web talents in the show’s production, including company producer Matt Seigel and 2009: A True Story director Tony Valenzuela. “We really believe there are different talents at work for the production of web series. We want people that have experience doing that and that we think are really good at this medium,” Beckett said.
The show will have many of the same visual and narrative elements of LG15: The Resistance—primarily a hand-held ‘Cloverfield’ style first person camera technique with interactive elements that shape the story. “How to use interactivity in a way that doesn’t destroy story has been the hardest part on this journey of lonelygirl and KateModern,” said Beckett. “With all of the shows we have done there is always that tension between having lots and lots of participation but not destroying the foreshadowing and types of setup and dramatic tension you need for good narrative.”
Now Polish-based producers Agora and A2 Multimedia have signed on to produce a new series in the LG15 Universe, n1ckola, with sponsors Microsoft, Hasbro, Polkomtel and Samsung. Over 100 episodes will be produced and released in Europe, expanding the lonelygirl15 franchise’s global reach. Episodes air beginning January 26.
“I think we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface, and on the technology side of things we are years behind things Greg and I have discussed and pictured,” said Beckett. “We now have the building block and that infrastructure in EQAL to begin accomplishing those dreams. We have a couple of original shows we’ve developed that are TV plus internet plus mobile and it’s all combined together from the get go. I’m really excited about that seamless interplay where you can have a show that is this amazing TV show and you can just watch the show if that’s what you wanted to do but that TV show is also piped directly to a website and videos from that website maybe even end up in the TV show because you have a rapid production cycle and it’s tied into an iPhone application and an RSS feed. And up until now nobody has been doing this because there weren’t companies that were able to manage all that and for EQAL that is the company that we are building and that is what we want to create.”
“TV is still an enormous place and I think the real home run here for Harper’s Globe would be audiences watching the TV show and loving it and then taking it to the next level online—we’re not trying to do something that replaces television, we’re trying to make something that makes the television experience even better.”
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Yeah. Taking two weeks after the finale of season 1 of the Resistance to tell us that they have no clue when or even *if* season 2 comes, with the forums and chat dying out, and the work for the next two months being outsourced to the community, EQAL clearly is “on fire”. *rolleyes*
They may do some fun stuff abroad or in different markets, but their core product is all but dead.
In addition, could you clarify your definition of “hit online show”?
“Call to Arms”, first video of the Resistance: 16,569 views
“We are the resistance”, last episode of the Resistance: 4,220 views
The Season Finale recap, the last *video*, has 109,066 views. (That sounds big, but that’s basically just all 12 previous finale episodes in one video – 109,066/12 comes out as an average of 9 088.83, which fits in with the rest of the finale videos. Basically, this video has so many views because people chose to view one video instead of 12.)
“She lost a lot of Blood”, the season 3 premiere of lg15, has 117,254 views.
“7:00PM” and “In my sights”, the last episode of lg15 and the post-finale teaser have 62,832 and 54,675 views, respectively.
The pre-finale season 3 recap has 63,888 views.
Sure, you gotta take the long tail into account for season 3 videos, but “In my sights” and “Call to arms” were posted only posted 6-7 weeks apart. Even if you substract a whopping 20,000 views for those 7 weeks, the viewership would still have *halved* by that time.
And if try to you attribute “Call to arms”’s failure to people not knowing HymnOfNone yet – the second video, “Last Words” is by Jonas, and has even *fewer* views (9,129) to date. Sarah’s video, “Fun Things To Do in Hiding – Volume One”, was posted only 25 days after the end of lg15. It has a known character, and the long tail makes basically no difference. It has 18,692 views.
“Chapter 1: A Call to Arms”, the first weekly recap video, was posted around 8 weeks after the lg15 finale, and has 86,073 views. Looks a little better, no?
“Chapter 12: Journey’s End”, the last recap before the finale, has 33,689 views. And again, you have to take a two-to-three month long tail into account for Chapter 1. Again, substracting 30,000 views for three months, you end up with roughly 56,000 views for Chapter one, compared to 33,000 for Chapter 12. That’s 20,000 views lost over the course of just one season.
The more I view The Resistance’s view counts, the less I understand how it could count as a “hit”. Seeing the steep decline of the community forums and chat next to that, I, personally, get the impression The Resistance was more of a highway to hell for EQAL than anything close to a “hit”.
I understand that several ten thousand views are still a lot compared to the average YouTube video, but with these numbers, especially in relation to other current corporate webseries, and the dramatic loss of interest visible from the forums and chat, again, would you mind explaining by what criteria you describe The Resistance as a hit?
here’s your answer renegade: lg15:theresistance was not a “hit” by any viewcount definition. its a minor sin in the context of the whole article.
@Renegade I define an online series as a “hit” if my mother has heard of it.
Hmm…on one hand, if your mother is anything like mine, that is a reasonable approach.
On the other hand, you’re a reporter for a news source covering this kind of series – your mother is likely to check what you’re writing every once in a while, and, as such, far more likely than the average mother to have heard of specific online series.
So, while I thank you for your reply, I respectfully disagree with your method. :)
In all seriousness I was treating the three shows in the LG15 canon collectively as the “hit” both metrically and critically, though I noted and Miles and Greg actually mentioned this in the interview that feedback was hot and cold on LG15: TSIY (http://news.tubefilter.tv/2009.....-for-lg15/) and many thought this was a desperate attempt to scrounge up viewership on the LG15 portal—though I honestly think the crowdsourced model is as much a genuine response to community demand for more user-contributed storytelling as it is a way to tide the audience’s interest with new content while they focus on other project development (like n1ckola and Harper’s Globe) until they decide what to do with the old franchise.
Miles told us “the fan community has been given us a hard time for almost two years now from a vague promise we made about being able to feature their storylines and their shows which we genuinely wanted to do but just had been unable to…we finally have a development team in house and we’re able to build a social network on lg15 and we are able to be able to offer on that promise. We decided that we wanted to feature fan series and community series more prominently and that’s the premise behind The Show Is Yours.”
And Greg added “we are getting members from the community who have found each other and are collaborating together so some of them live in the same area and are able to shoot together some of them don’t so they are able to decide ‘I’ll upload a video today you upload a video tomorrow’ and that’s part of the treatment which is amazing for us to see the power of the internet bringing these people who live across the country together to tell a story.”
The EQAL gang is to its neck in new projects and ideas and the definition of success is changing—it’s clearly not viewership numbers alone though I really can’t tell you what it is exactly. We met with several studio execs who aren’t concerned so much with figures but with finding a breakout hit so we can hope for some more risk taking in 2009 which should lead to better shows on the web.
I just wanted to point out that though the Resistance did not get the views of the other series (KM, LG15), it still did better than a lot of series out there. I don’t know that you can call it either a failure or a success. I thought it was quite good, especially the final 12 in 12. It just took awhile to wrap everything up, and then all the things that we were confused or puzzled about (with a few exceptions) were explained in that one big finale, which did quite well in view counts itself. Maybe it just shouldn’t have taken that long to climax. The only problem is that the finale got everyone excited for something that is only distantly potentially coming.
What the fans wanted was a hook in the main series that they could leverage their own creations off. We never got that. Instead we got TSIY which might work out to be a great show but it is certainly not the type of engagement with the central story that we had envisioned. If you look at a show like Maddison Atkins it could have linked up perfectly with lonelygirl15 but the c decided to ignore it and that led directly to the death of poor Maddison. It seems like Eqal, Inc only wants to do things their way which they are perfectly free to do. However that has directly contributed to many series creators leaving the universe and a substantial decline in the fan base. You reap what you sew.
I love Miles and Greg but I would much rather see them creating their own multi-platform series that they own. I hate to see them doing other people’s dirty laundry.
Taking into account n1ckola and Harper’s Globe, EQAL is thriving. LG15 itself might not be, but that’s not really the same issue.
Personally, I thought LG15: the resistance was a terrible series, but I’d be very hesitant to call it a “highway to hell”. ALthough being a huge fan of KateModern, an excellent series with good writing and believable characters, I’d rather journalists didn’t conflate it with LG15:TR, which I’d frankly rather hadn’t been made.
It really would not be accurate to say that technology was ever the problem. What fans wanted was a “hook” in the main series that they could play off with their own stories. Instead the c said they would not make any fan character canon (after Tachyon et al) and that was the problem despite the fact they had encouraged fans to engage with the main series early on and even told them they would be able to profit from their own stories.
The site already was built on a Wordpress comment board, a Media Wiki pedia and a full featured bulletin board. The new site while it may be scalable for the future does not even come close to the functionality of the old site.
If you are talking about the CBS deal, the N1 deal and the 5m in VC then perhaps Eqal is on fire but in comparison with the early days of lonelygirl15 the fire looks more like fans running for the exit door. It is critical that Eqal reverse that trend and now they have decided to be more open to the fan created characters and stories we have ALWAYS requested perhaps the exit trend will stop.
But, is it too little too late since many of the series creators are now producing stories in a different universe and also their is no running central story to provide an active hook. Stay tuned.
This should serve as a lesson to any new media producer about the consequences of getting very close to your fan base. Yes, it feels good but it comes with certain expectations and perhaps even certain responsibilities to the same fans who have helped you build your brand.
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