"After drawing millions of views online in the past two years, (“In the Motherhood”) was transformed into a traditional network sitcom, making it the first Web show to be remade for network television. But what made the Web series unique — an interactive style of storytelling — was quashed by the legal engine of Hollywood. On the MSN.com edition of “Motherhood” (since discontinued), short segments about funny, frazzled mothers were inspired by the real-life stories that viewers submitted via an Internet forum. ABC, similarly, asked for story submissions on its Web site (itm.abc.go.com) and said that they “might just become inspiration for a story by the writers.” But ABC’s call for ideas from moms drew the attention of the Writers Guild of America, which said this type of request for submissions was “not permissible” under its contract with the network. This week ABC abruptly removed the language about “inspiration” from its Web site, effectively saying that the writers may not be listening to viewers’ ideas, after all."
Brian Stelter @ Moms Find Move of ‘In the Motherhood’ From Web to TV on ABC a Hard Shift - NYTimes.com
this is just silly. couldn’t they just figure out the legalities? oh… or is that what the real innovation would have been?
"There’s a myth out there among some newspapers folks that “if only” the newspapers hadn’t committed the “original sin” of putting content online for free, the newspapers wouldn’t be facing difficulties these days. It’s the kind of story that sounds good if you don’t look too closely at the details. … However, it looks like Mark Cuban believes in that “original sin” concept, and is posting a series of blog posts to try to prevent TV networks from making the same “mistake.” It started with the claim that anyone who thinks TV is going a la carte online is crazy, because the “content companies” will never give up the fees they earn from the networks. … He (like NBC Universal execs) laughs off the “threat” of people switching to all online access to TV content, noting that very few people have done so. This surprises me, since you’d think that Cuban would be familiar enough with Clayton Christensen’s work to know that just because there are only a few early adopters (and the quality isn’t as good) that it doesn’t mean that it’s not a potential threat. In fact, those questions are basically the de facto list of questions that an “incumbent” player tends to ask when facing a Christensen-style “innovator’s dilemma” just before the upstart technology really begins to hurt the legacy business."
Mike Masnick @ Mark Cuban Declares War On Free TV Online… But Misses Out On The Economics | Techdirt
free online tv is pissing a lot of people off.
"For years, it has been assumed that home internet usage would cannibalize live television viewing, but there’s something interesting happening between social networking and live television. Could it be that what Pete Blackshaw termed “telecommunities”-people simultaneously watching live television programs and chatting in real time with an online network of like-minded fans—will gain scale and give consumers a reason to stick with live viewing? Let’s look at what happened during the Oscars. … More than 1 in 10 people (11%) watching the Oscars this year did so while logged onto the Internet. … While there was some expected surfing to places like IMDB for more information on movies, the true winner of the night was Facebook. People who used Facebook during the broadcast used it for an average of 76 minutes. … People who used Facebook while watching the Oscars watched about 50% more of the broadcast than the average Oscar viewer."
John Burbank, Nielsen Online @ Could Social Networking Bolster the :30 Spot? | MEDIAWEEK
people are finding their own added value. they want it.
"About twenty years ago people noticed computers and TV were on a collision course and started to speculate about what they’d produce when they converged. … It’s clear now that even by using the word “convergence” we were giving TV too much credit. This won’t be convergence so much as replacement. People may still watch things they call “TV shows,” but they’ll watch them mostly on computers. … Shows will change even more. On the Internet there’s no reason to keep their current format, or even the fact that they have a single format. Indeed, the more interesting sort of convergence that’s coming is between shows and games."
Paul Graham @ Why TV Lost
computer + internet (interactivity) kills tv (dumb box). content providers must adjust strategy. content will undoubtedly adjust as well.
"The engine that drove [serialized TV] was you had to be in front of the TV [when it aired]. Now you can watch it when you want, where you want, how you want to watch it, and almost all of those ways are superior to watching it on-air. So [watching it] on-air is related to the saps and the dipshits who can’t figure out how to watch it in a superior way."
Tim Kring - Creator of NBC’s “Heroes” @ The Future Is Cheese - The Atlantic
"Disney employs a lot of smart people. … They know that inexpensively-produced mobile content is going to be important. They know that user-gen is going to be important (and are just wrangling with the in-house attorneys to see how they can take advantage of this trend.) They know that audiences are fragmenting into millions of niches. They know that there is a new media format out there — the three minute Internet video, which is different from the 30-minute TV show and the 90-minute feature film. I suspect that the big debate inside Disney is, can we remain a Big Media company while also pursuing these smaller, cheaper, quicksilver opportunities? Can we get out of our own way enough to be nimble?"
Scott Kirsner @ CinemaTech: Disney Acknowledges the Obvious: Audience Behavior is Changing, and Competition is Increasing
big media needs to adapt. quick.
NewTeeVee Live - Bridging The Gap Between Television and Online (via gigaom)
more @ NewTeeVee Live Panel: Bridging the Gap Between TV and Web « NewTeeVee
transmedia storytelling in practice. a panel discussion with Jesse Alexander (Heroes), Bill Gannon (LucasFilm), Greg Goodfried (lonelygirl15) & Jeff Gomez (Starlight Runner Entertainment)
"The problem with the notion of branded content being a sort of “direction we should all go in” is that it will end up hurting content, which in the end is going to hurt the industry. … So what’s the answer? The biggest change needs to happen with how we treat content, particularly how online and television content interact. Television is a viable medium — it’s current, it’s passive. We all need to turn our brains off once in a while. And it’s still better than the Internet in terms of really absorbing someone else’s story. But storytelling also needs to have an element of participation or interaction for when we don’t want to turn off our brains. For that to exist on a grand scale, like it does on television, in our ad-supported capitalist society it needs to have a model where it can be “free” because of advertising. On top of that, in case you haven’t noticed, the Internet is hard. It’s difficult to create this stuff, far more so than linear content. … So the answer really is that we as an industry — and by “we” I mean big agencies and more specifically big agency/media companies — have to find a way to make and/or fund online content, utilities, games and platforms that can be owned or sponsored by many brands."
in search of a new platform.
"Everyone in Hollywood, it seems, is begging to know what the future holds. … “In five years,” (Tim) Kring is saying, “the idea of broadcast will be gone.” “Right,” says (Damon) Lindelof. “Instead of watching Heroes on NBC, you’ll go to nbc.com and download the show to your device, and the show will be deleted as soon as you finish watching it — unless you pay $1.99; then you get audio commentary. You enhance it. It’s like building your Transformer and putting little rocket ships on the side.” … Today’s audience, steeped in media and marketing, sees through crass ploys to cash in. So the Geek Elite are taking a different approach. Rather than just shill their products in various media, they are building on new and emerging platforms to expand their mythological worlds. Viewers watch an episode of Heroes, then follow one character’s adventure in a graphic novel. They tune in to Lost, then explore the island’s twisted history in an online game. It is this “transmedia storytelling,” as (Jesse) Alexander puts it, that ultimately lures the audience into buying more stuff — today, DVDs; tomorrow, who knows what."
David Kushner @ Rebel Alliance — NBC’s Heroes — SciFi TV Shows | Fast Company
cool tv is already transmedia.
Peter Hirshberg: The Web and TV, a sibling rivalry (via TEDtalksDirector)
the internet is coming and the TV is scared. a history.
J.J. Abrams: The mystery box (via TEDtalksDirector)
what makes us want to keep watching? the unkown.
"In Accidental Lovers viewers are asked to text their opinion on a love affair between a 61-year-old cabaret singer and a male pop star 30 years her junior. The text messages, analysed for keywords by computer but also guided by human moderators, are displayed along the bottom of the screen and the technology prompts different layers of voiceovers, captions and scenes to be displayed according to their content. The progress of the affair is also represented by a graphic in the corner of the screen. The way ShapeShifter TV is utilised is expected to become more sophisticated as more broadcasters experiment with the technology."
Owen Gibson @ Want to see a happy ending? Just text while you watch | Media | The Guardian
more @ ShapeShift.tv
choose your own love story with an interesting technology for tv interactivity.
"Until now, advertisers have underwritten mass media to reach mass audiences. Indeed, they’ve paid increasing premiums for the opportunity as audiences have shrunk, because even in a fragmented media world, the largest fragment – network TV – is the most valuable. But now they realize that they are losing not only mass but critical mass. They see the old model collapsing before them, and they have $67 billion to spend and no idea where to spend it. Because, at least until recently, the Internet has lacked both the riveting content and ad space inventory to absorb it. But what if there were a means to approximate the reach and mesmerizing power of television online? … And what if, as a bonus, the medium were able not merely to command eyeballs for marketers but to target content especially relevant to what the marketer is selling? … “They’ve got the audience,” says John Montgomery, CEO of MindShare Interaction, a digital media arm of the WPP Group communications conglomerate. “In order now to monetize what they’ve got, they need to figure out a revenue model. But it’s a very, very hard thing to do around user-generated media."
Bob Garfield @ Wired 14.12: YouTube vs. Boob Tube
the holy grail of online video: targeted advertisement.
