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YouTube Revives Failed Sitcom Pilot
Vary Krishna writes ""Nobody's Watching", a pilot made for last year's upfronts that was never picked up, is being put back into development by NBC after gaining attention on YouTube. From the ZapTV article:
"I love the spirit of the experimentation," NBC Entertainment president Kevin Reilly says. "And I think if we can actually have something find an audience on the web, gravitate over to the network, continue with a web presence and have them feed each other, that could end up being a really cool thing."
Where was this guy last year?"
When YouTube revives Firefly maybe then I'll have some respect for it. You hear me YoutTube? Sitcoms don't cut it, we need our Firefly!
Philosophy.
I think what this dude is forgetting is that I can watch YouTube at 4:30 am Friday or 12:23pm Monday, it doesn't matter to the internet.
NBC wants to revive the show, put it on some usual primetime weeknight time slot, move it around a few times so everyone is completely confused, and expect it to make ratings as good as Friends or My Name is Earl. Then they sue the crap out of people that distribute it over the internet, which is how it got revived in the first place.
Then when it fails they will use that as an excuse as to why they shouldn't be distributing episodes on the internet. Sheesh...
I have held a grudge against the Nielson ratings for quite some time. Why? Because every time I find a show I like, it gets cancelled a few weeks later. I'm not sure if I have bad taste, unique taste, or if the sample space of Nielson is composed mainly of dangerously stupid shaved apes. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I tend to assume the latter.
I think this a wonderful turn of events. If they are smart, the other networks will be paying very close attention to this. I know this sounds radical, but why not ask the people who watch your show directly? If I ran a network, I would make sure to post an episode of every "failing" show on YouTube, Google Video, et all a.s.a.p. Not only would this put me in direct contact with my audiance, it might also help boost ratings for a still unknown show.
barack to the future?
Paul Campbell left Battlestar Galactica for this?!? I had my hopes set high, particularly when I read that the show was written by Scrubs and Family Guy writers, but it was just as painful to watch as most other sitcoms on TV (the same shows that the show lampoons).
Finally, someone in the broadcasting business is catching on.. There ARE a lot of people viewing video online, they WILL continue, and if you can figure out a legitimate advertising and revenue model, you can capitalise on online video content in a big way.
:)
Ever since watching "PiracyIsGood.mov", a recording of a presentation given at (I assume) a University campus, I have been very keen to have either a broadcasting company or even the advertising department of a major company latch on to the concepts presented in this movie, and release a TV series in online form with watermark advertising (as outlined in the video).
The basic concept is.. Coke/Walmart/GM or whoever currently pays thousands of dollars for a 5-10 second advert during a TV episode, which a lot of viewers simply ignore. With this new method, the company would purchase an entire series of episodes, place their watermark in the corner of the video and distribute it online. It would be impossible to remove the (admittedly fairly unobtrusive) water from the video, and certainly not worth the effort, so the company would have, perhaps, 24 episodes, 22 mins each = 528 minutes of you watching a video with their advertising in the corner.
You win (free episodes), they win (this could work out cheaper than paying for 30 seconds of advertising during the airing of these 24 episodes, plus you get 528 minutes of advertising, not 12, and it's unobstrusive so no-one is going to get frustrated at your annoying gimmick advert), and the only people who lose are the broadcasting company who was too stupid to capitalise on this idea in the first place.
Maybe this is all too idealistic, and I'm sure there are other things that need to come into consideration, but I am VERY keen to see this happen sometime. Season 5 of Futurama with a coca-cola symbol in the corner works for me.. In fact, I'll drink a bottle of coke each time I watch an episode
P.S. you can get the video at http://ausgamers.com/files/details/html/17504
Will program for karma.
I watched this on YouTube and I get the premise of it, but it's just really kind of confusing and random. There is no plot line to it really, there are a few one liners here and there, but they really aren't that funny. They are actors acting like it's reality TV, but it isn't. As such there is nothing genuine about it. With a regular sitcom, the actors characters kind of make sense and have some kind of growth, with realty TV I guess you empathize with real people, but this... I mean, what are they, what are you supposed to expect?
I mean, how many jokes can you make about other sitcoms before it just gets boring?
To be be fair, I haven't owned a TV for 6 years because nothing was worth watching.
Of course, your favourite shows are cancelled because you're too intelligent, not because they just suck. Keep telling yourself that and it'll become true.
Slashdot is full of ads, so obviously you yourself are not above that 'certain level of intelligence'.
"I love the spirit of the experimentation," NBC Entertainment president Kevin Reilly says. "And I think if we can actually have something find an audience on the web, gravitate over to the network, continue with a web presence and have them feed each other, that could end up being a really cool thing."
He went on to add, "That spirit of experimentation is awesome especially because we had worked so hard to stamp it out before, with our over reliance on market research and focus groups. Now that there's a forum to showcase originality without an actual need for us to support it ourselves, we plan on taking full advantage of it. Who doesn't like a free lunch?"
Only people below a certain level of intelligence believe that they are not influenced by onscreen advertising. I'm intelligent enough to know that I am.
Not all of them, but some of them.