by Joshua Cohen on June 30th, 2011
One of the best things about the internet is it can be different things for different people.
If you’re an established Hollywood writer/director with time on his or hands because a key cog in the entertainment machine is on strike, you can go online and make a web series with your Hollywood pals. If you’re an individual with spikey hair and a penchant for viral videos who wants no part of the Hollywood system, you can go to the web and make your own way in entertainment. And if you’re a controversial, conservative television host of your own eponymous show on Fox news that was recently cancelled due to its sliding ratings, you can go to the internet to start your very own program outside the uncomfortable confines of the lamestream media.
That last example is about Glenn Beck. Today, the political pundit and media personality aired the final taping of his Fox News show. That show wrapped at 6PM EST. By 6:30PM EST, Beck was live at GBTV.com for a kind of Glenn Beck After the Show alongside Glenn Beck TV correspondent Raj Nair.
Thursday’s special taping was just a precursor of what’s to come. Beck will officially begin his stint behind the camera at GBTV with a live, daily, two-hour Glenn Beck Show starting September 12. If you like watching Beck because you find you agree with his whining, or you like watching Beck because you like to watch him whine (Editor’s Aside: I’d like to point out that I totally call out whiners on both sides of the aisle. Bill Maher can get super annoying when he tries to mock with a high pitch, too.), you can watch him do it on GBTV for the low monthly price of $4.95 per month for regular membership or $9.95 per month for premium membership. The packages include access to the live streaming and HD quality Glenn Beck Show, 30-day on-demand access to the show’s archives, live video footage of Beck’s radio program, plus live coverage from Beck’s worldwide public appearances and a sampling of other conservative programming.
by Joshua Cohen on June 30th, 2011
Channels are currently a bit of a buzzword in the online video world. YouTube is supposedly investing $100 million in creating and populating them with professionally produced content. Huffington Post co-founder Ken Lerer’s new venture Bedrocket will reportedly be based around slates of programming (aka channels) that can then be sold to distributors.
Channels are intriguing to online video and entertainment entrepreneurs because they mimic the traditional, lean-back, television viewing experience with which the majority of Americans find comfortable. They’re also a cure for paralysis of choice. There are a billion online videos to watch in millions of places and a channel ideally acts as a filter so you can be entertained without thinking too hard about where to click.
The problem with channels is they generally follow a particularly staid taxonomy. There are channels for Food, Entertainment, Cars, Classics, How To, and So On, and So Forth. But why are there no channels for years? Why is online video discovery and consumption generally broken down into groups defined by a common genre? Why can’t they be grouped by a common place in time?
Justin Johnson asked himself the same question. YouTube Time Machine is his answer.
The former Next New Network-er, current YouTuber, and perennial online video creator and connoisseur created YouTube Time Machine with Matt Capucilli as way to quell viewer’s pangs of nostalgia for entertainment and advertising from yesteryear, as well as give those viewers a novel way to be entertained by online video. You simply select a year, toggle which kinds of videos you’d like to see (Television, Commercials, Current Events, Sports, Movies, and Music are the current categories), and you’re delivered hand-selected video after hand-selected video meeting those criteria. There’s everything from clips of Billy Nye in 1993 to old school Looney Tuneslogos from 1969, and everything before, after, and in between.
by Marc Hustvedt on June 30th, 2011
On one hand this is a travel web series, showing us glimpses of daily life in a pristine little part of Spain we may never wander into. But on the other hand, Pueblo is something different, straddling the line between scripted comedy and travel doc with a backdrop in reality. Through it we’re given a comical peek into the very real world of rural Andalucia, Spain. That, while teaching us Statesiders a little much-needed Spanish.
Eve Richer and Ben Raznick are world travelers, with stints living and travelling in Nicaragua, Argentina, Brazil, and Spain, far from their cozy hometown of Boulder, Colorado. When the pair were accepted into a grant program to teach English backed by Spain’s Ministry of Education, the two friends (and writers) decided to import a the American web series format into sleepy La Puerta de Segura where olive picking is the town’s main occupation.
by Joshua Cohen on June 30th, 2011
It’s a popular question among online video reporters and enthusiasts. In the age of web video, what time is prime time?
The answer’s changed in the past four three or four years. First, it was lunchtime. Web series and viral videos offered America’s white collar workforce snack-sized bites of entertainment to go along with the meal they ate at their desks. Sure, a lot of people still watch web shows while they’re on the clock at work, but when more producers of premium content started distributing their work online, and sites like Hulu became go-to destinations for consuming that premium content, more and more online entertainment consumers began tuning in at home at the end of the day.
The shift was first cited by Jessica Vascellaro at the Wall Street Journal in June of 2010. At that time, blip.tv showed a shift in its peak viewing hours to 8PM to 11PM across US time zones. New media studio Revision3′s prime-time views topped its lunchtime views by 20%. And Break.com’s evening viewing was up 18% in the past eight months, while its daytime viewing increase only 5% during the same period. Nielsen provided the big “A-ha!” numbers for story, stating online video viewing was up 14% in the past year, to 62.4 million viewers between the hours of 8PM and 11PM, while 12PM to 2PM viewership stayed relatively steady at 45.4 million.
Prime time online video viewing has only grown more popular since Vascellaro published her story. A new study from Yahoo shows in the past two years online video viewing between the hours of 6PM and 9PM is up 30%, while daytime online video viewing is down a few percentage points. Sharing of online videos has also decreased (from 35% to 26% of online video viewers engaging in the practice). Hulu and Netflix and premium content are the reasons why.
More people are watching more premium TV shows and movies from online destinations and distributors. They’re watching that premium content online during the times of the day when they’re most comfortable and familiar with watching premium content – 6PM to 9PM. And as online video viewing becomes more mainstream, so does the online video consumer. College kids and the country’s post-collegiate office workforce aren’t the only ones consuming video on the internet anymore. Their parents are watching, too, but they’re not as internet savvy as their kids and therefore less likely to share what they’re watching through social media.
by Joshua Cohen on June 29th, 2011
Web Therapy is having a good run. The original web series from Lexus’ LStudio is scheduled to make its television debut on Showtime July 19. Its star, Lusa Kudrow recently hosted the Webby Awards and received a digital media award at the Banff World Media Festival. And FremantleMedia Enterprises just picked up its international distribution rights.
The home of such productions as American Idol and rights holder of quality programming like Price is Right announced today it acquired the privilege to distribute Web Therapy worldwide outside of North America.
The original three-or-so-minute installments of the series featuring Kudrow as a self-conscious virtual therapist who could herself use a few hours on the couch have been reformatted into a traditional 10-episode half-hour series with new footage shot especially for Showtime. You can still expect to see guest stars from the online series make the transition with the show to TV, including Victor Garber, Jane Lynch, Rashida Jones, Alan Cumming and Courteney Cox, along with a few new faces.
by Joshua Cohen on June 29th, 2011
The first season of MTV’s dramafied Teen Wolf reboot has so far scored a 61 on the Metacritic scale. That and an average weekly viewership fluctuating between 1.675 million and 2.167 million pairs of eyeballs may or may not be enough to guarantee the program a second season, but it did guarantee an original web series.
James Hibberd at EW reports MTV is launching six online exclusive shorts starring every middle school girl’s second favorite young man with a gym membership who turns into a wolf (Team Jacob 4 EVA!), Tyler Posey.
The online mini-series is dubbed Search for the Cure, is written and directed by creator Jeff Davis (who also created Criminal Minds), stars Posey alongside Dylan O’Brien and his real-life father John Posey, is produced by MEC and Generate Studios (a company that is very familiar with the web series world), and is pretty good.
Yes, Posey and O’Brien’s characters watch online videos on their new AT&T hotness by Samsung from awkward angles because AT&T is the series’ lead sponsor, but that kind of product placement is a small price to pay for two to three-minutes of quality entertainment about mythological creatures, especially since True Blood jumped whatever is Charlaine Harris’ ridiculous Bon Temps equivalent of a shark a long time ago.
by Joshua Cohen on June 29th, 2011
Yuri Baranovsky recently asked a silly question on Facebook. The creator of one of the original original web series Break a Leg and principal at Happy Little Guillotine Productions wondered to his friends “Would you be more inclined to watch a high-quality, extremely well-shot, -scripted, and -acted web series if it was longer (22 mins)? Or shorter (7 mins)?”
The answer’s obvious. No one watches Modern Family, Breaking Bad, or There Will Be Blood and says, “I wish there was less of that!” If the entertainment property is high-quality and engaging, we want to see more minutes of it, regardless of the medium.
The people at Funny or Die agree with me. The new media studio and online comedy destination’s CEO Dick Glover recently told Jessica Vascellaro at the Wall Street Journal he’s on the lookout for longer, feature-length comedies “that could live online.” Glover isn’t searching for big budget homeruns, but low-budget “singles and doubles that are all profitable” and could be distributed through a partner like Amazon, Netflix, Google, or Apple.
If any new media entity can make long-form content created for online distribution a success, it’s Funny or Die. Since Will Ferrell and Adam McKay founded the the company in early 2007, its mastered the art of viral video and sold television shows to HBO and Comedy Central.
by Drew Baldwin on June 29th, 2011
YouTube’s newest video advertising product, TrueView, promises its viewers will give advertisers their undivided attention—and YouTube won’t charge those advertisers unless they do.
The new family of ad formats allows viewers to choose and control which advertisers’ messages they want to see, and when.
The InStream format plays as a pre- or mid-roll against short or long-form videos, and allows the viewer to opt out after 5 seconds. The InSlate format plays against long form content and gives the viewer the option to choose an ad to watch before the program, or during regular commercial breaks.
YouTube only charges advertisers whose ads viewers choose to watch, and only after they’ve watched the ad for at least 30 seconds (or to completion if it’s shorter than 30 seconds). Otherwise the partial ad is served free; advertisers are paying for engaged audiences, not just served impressions.
Scripps Networks is taking advantage of TrueView’s ability to target and track a younger and newer viewer base for HGTV’s Design Star. The show traditionally attracted 45-year-olds and up, according to Laurie Sullivan at MediaPost, but the TrueView YouTube campaign is successfully pulling in a younger demo. The network is using the relatively new YouTube ad format to promote 30 second pre-roll promos for Design Star, Cash & Carl, and Selling New York.
