Nets to Critics: Watch This on the Web
In Bid for Notice, Internet Efforts Join TCA Tour
By R. Thomas Umstead -- Multichannel News, 7/16/2006 8:00:00 PM
Pasadena, Calif. — Pasadena, Calif.— The Television Critics Association Tour is becoming about more than just content made for the boob tube. Comedy Central, E! Entertainment Television and other cable networks made that clear last week with a number of multiplatform content-development and distribution announcements that could soon force critics to have a high-speed Internet connection and a video-ready wireless phone in their rooms, just to preview new programming.
While the majority of announcements revolved around traditional television shows, cable’s TCA week was chock full of new-media news:
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E! said it will unveil a slate of original series later this summer for its Vine broadband player, which is generating more than 1 million streams a month, according to CEO Ted Harbert.
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TV Land next month will launch a new broadband-video player featuring full-length episodes of classic television shows such as Star Trek and original TV Land content, TV Land and Nick at Nite president Larry Jones said.
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The Weather Channel in October will launch a broadband-video Web site dubbed “One Degree,” featuring a mix of exclusive video programming pertaining to global warming, according to interactive vice president of broadband and consumer applications Matthew De Gannon.
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Comedy Central broke TCA tradition and offered a panel session featuring several original programs created exclusively for its Motherload broadband-video service.
Officials such as Comedy Central executive vice president of original programming and development Lauren Corrao said they will continue to put content exclusively made for broadband video and cell phones in front of television writers in an effort to build greater awareness and credibility for new-media content.
“It’s become that important to us, so we thought that we should show it to [TV critics] with the hopes that [they] would write about it,” Corrao said. “That’s how the viewers will get to know about it and watch it.”
Broadband fervor has gripped many content providers over the past year through the launch of network-specific video-rich sites like Sci Fi Channel’s The Pulse and Black Entertainment Television’s BET Blast. And viewers are responding.
STREAMING TO DISNEY
Disney Channel says it has drawn 74.1 million streams of full-length broadband video episodes of such shows as That’s So Raven and The Suite Life of Zack and Cody since the broadband service launched June 2.
Disney Media Networks co-chair/Disney-ABC Television Group President Anne Sweeney said those broadband views did not come at the expense of the network’s overall ratings: Disney Channel’s 2.1 second quarter primetime household rating was up 21% over the same period last year.
“It really gets to what the kids want and expect, and they expect to have a broadband product where they can watch episodes on television on their computers,” she said during the Disney presentation. “It’s about us super-serving our audience.”
While consumers are using the Web to watch missed episodes of Kim Possible on Disneychannel.com or Lost or Desperate Housewives at ABC.com, content created exclusively for broadband is just beginning to catch the viewer’s attention.
Arguably the most aggressive and prolific network in developing original content for the Web, Comedy Central says its Motherload broadband site has generated 50 million streams since launching last November. Episodes from popular titles like the stand-up series Live From Gotham and Odd Todd, about an unemployed slacker adult, generate 50,000 to 100,000 streams per episode, according to Lou Wallach, senior vice president of original programming for Comedy Central.
Is that enough of an audience to merit coverage in the TV section of The New York Times, alongside Comedy’s popular sketch skein Mind Of Mencia? How does a TV critic even begin to ascertain what criteria makes a broadband series a hit that’s worth writing about?
Corrao said that in the early stages of the technology, it’s difficult to gauge with raw numbers or streams what constitutes a hit. For now, the best measurement may be the amount of viral buzz a show gets on the Web.
“I think you know it when all of the sudden everyone is sharing it and it’s flying over the Internet,” Corrao said, acknowledging that none of Motherload’s shows have yet achieved such lofty status.
One popular Comedy Central show has. The evolution of South Park, the decade-old animated hit, goes back to a mid-1990s short film that introduced the four often rude, foul-mouthed elementary school kids that star in the show and also featured a knock-down brawl between Jesus and Santa Claus. The five-minute “Spirit Of Christmas” was an early viral hit, passed around on the Internet and via videocassette copies.
“That’s how it got around — a lot of people saw it on the Internet,” Parker said. The Internet “certainly made South Park what it is.”
Comedy Central is hoping at least one of the 20 original series it will launch on Motherload by November will hit broadband paydirt among users.
BROADBAND PITCHES UP
The creative well from which to choose the next South Park is expanding: Wallach says he hears just as many pitches in a day for broadband video short form programming as he does for half-hour programs for the channel. “It’s a reflection of the appetite of our audience to include hilarious shorts in their diet as well as longer formed programs on the channel.”
The pitches are not coming only from wannabe Trey Parkers or Matt Stones. Established producers such as King of Queens creator Michael Weithorn are developing projects for Motherload. Weithorn’s series Baxter & McGuire, about a pair of friendly testicles, will debut on the site later this year.
It’s a good bet Comedy Central will be here in January at the next TCA Tour gathering pitching that and other broadband shows to critics. “We look at this programming just like any other programming we do, and we’ll continue to talk about it to critics,” Corrao said.
But the question remains, will TV critics be listening?
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