On television, hits were choreographed, promoted and crammed down viewers’ throats. Eventually, some of those efforts stuck and a hit was born.
I don’t think that works online. Be it text content or in video format, it’s very hard to plan and forecast when something will become a hit. This is why traditional media companies and their hits creation approach to web video content strikes me as odd. A couple things that ensure that many of these efforts are doomed:
- “We won’t greenlight until we have brands lined up who want to be in the show,” said Cameron Death, VP of NBC Universal Digital Studio.
Problem with this: advertisers have wildly different objectives than creators of content, so just because an advertiser will sign off on a show does not mean the show will be successful. At the extreme of this spectrum, I doubt South Park would have been created if the makers had adopted that philosophy.
- Landing a celebrity is becoming de rigeur, too, because a star brings in a ready-made audience. Look for more Web shows to do this. The creators behind The Writers Room on Crackle told me recently that in order for Crackle to pick up a second season the show will need a heavy celebrity cameo quotient.
Problem with this: most celebrities still view the Web as a step back (not wrong, technically) so waiting for a big name to sign off might mean waiting quite a while.
The bottom line is this: traditional media companies just don’t want to risk a single thing when it comes to online video, and the underlying reason is simple: it threatens their traditional, offline business. This works fine by me, while many of these companies sit on the sidelines, it allows made-for-web content creators like us to build large libraries, at a lower cost mind you, and gain relevance to advertisers who don’t always want to sign off on things beforehand (ie. take on risk) either.
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