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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?"
your post has a lot of insight. i'm on a working vacation in Seattle right now, and i'm amazed that even though i have probably 10x as much free time to watch television, without a DVR here i'm watching basically none, because nothing I enjoy is available at the right time.
it will be interesting to see if this show does well on NBC (certainly the PR from the situation under which it was purchased by NBC will help its ratings), but I would imagine your assesment is at least partly correct. Certainly a chunk of its audience will be youtube viewers, who are probably very likely to have DVRs, so they may be able to watch it in much the same fashion as on youtube (i.e. on-demand).. but I wouldn't imagine this chunk would amount to more than a minority of the show's viewers.
what's really interesting are the business models that Mark Cuban and others are developing.. in the case of the linked press release above, basically Steven Soderbergh shooting a number of films for simultaneous theatrical / dvd / hdtv / download release, so that all marketing dollars are used effectively, and the audience ultimately decides which form of content delivery works best for them. I don't know that the model initially includes download release (i.e. itunes style), but I can imagine that's something Cuban is working on now (probably the DRM issues are a bit of a snag).
So even if NBC blows their opportunity at transferring to primetime tv the collective attention of viewers from the internet, there are other (potentially better) business models in the works that will better appeal to viewers who want to watch on their own terms.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Same thing happened with firefly. They cancelled it, it caught internet buzz, they revived it then killed it again.
I'd like to think I'm "too smart for ads", but in truth, I'm not.
True story: I had a psychology teacher who challenged me to compare my consumer habits to those of my siblings, even though we all live in different states these days. The results were very werid. My brother, sister and I all used the same brand of toothpaste, and preferred the same brand of soda, but were completely unique in fashion, electronics, etc, purchases. My prof.'s theory was that, as children, we all shared these basic consumer goods, and so, we all associated them with positive feelings. This intrigued me, so I checked and sure enough, both of my granparents (both sides!) enjoyed many of these same staples.
Apparently, I've been enslaved to Pepsi, Colgate and Chef-Boy-R-Dee for generations now. Ok, ok, I admit it! Take my money! Take every last cent I have if you must, but please, please can I have some new Futurama?
And suddenly, the $30 cost for a DVD set doesn't seem so expensive to me.
barack to the future?
I'd say that's less about ads and more about imprinted brand loyalty, which has little to do with the ads on TV.
Granted thats a different bag entirely.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I'd like to think I'm "too smart for ads", but in truth, I'm not.
Ads, despite what advertisers themselves may believe, aren't about tricking you into things. They're about increasing brand or product recognition. You've seen Brand X on TV, you've never heard of Brand Y, you're going to buy Brand X. It's not about smart or stupid, it's about risk and comfort levels. You don't want to buy something shady, so you'll buy the thing you know. Without commercials, we'd have to rely on which box had the prettiest pictures, or, heaven forbid, product research. So commercials aren't that bad in themselves, they're just often done really badly.
Arrested Development is probably the poster-boy for this. Every time the Fox Network asked the show's creators to do something or threatened to cancel the show, the show would get really snarky about that request. For example, during the first season, they asked the creators to make an episode where the main character teaches his son "a lesson" (apparently, a quote from the memo). They did do this, but in the process, "the lesson" got warped into an elaborate thing involving a drug deal gone bad, fake cop strippers, and a one-armed man getting his fake arm shot off. In the end, it was the main character's father teaching him the lesson. What was that lesson? Don't teach lessons to your son, of course.
Getting back to the advertisement thing, apparently the show's creators were asked to heavily feature Burger King in a second-season episode of the show (as product placement). They did so while turning the whole thing into one big joke. The episode was originally called the "Tendercrisp Chicken Comedy Half-Hour," and features such quotes as, "It really is a wonderful restaurant." Carl Weathers, the actor turned cheapskate in his role on the show, also went on a long diatribe about how BK would underwrite the cost of filming a scene from a show if it took place in a Burger King. (Ironically, that very scene took place in a BK.)
What ended up happening to the show? Well, it survived into the second season by winning five Emmys and being loved by pretty much every critic, but by this point, the only advertisements for the show would appear ten seconds before its airing (as opposed to American Idol, which has an ad every commercial break). In the second season, its episode order was cut by four episodes so that Fox could show more reruns of Family Guy. *ugh* In its third season, it only had 13 episodes ordered, was moved to Monday nights, and was finally cancelled. Its last four episodes, including its series finale, were dumped on February 10th, during the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics. Note that this is the same network which also cancelled the Bernie Mac Show and Malcolm in the Middle this year without having any good sitcoms to replace them with. Instead, they're airing The War at Home, the Loop, and Free Ride, FOX's equivalent of Yes, Dear and According to Jim.