What’s on Web TV? | csmonitor.com.
What’s on Web TV? In just five years the genre has already begun to transform the way we tell stories. By Gloria Goodale | Staff Writer for The Christian Science Monitor/ April 20, 2009
Hollywood, Calif. The scene outside the first Streamys – a new awards show for the best in original, episodic Web TV – a few weeks ago was a muddle, with a clogged red carpet and confusing entrances. Inside was little better, with overamplified and indistinct sound. But these ragtag production values belie a message being heard around this company town: serialized, high-quality video – longer than five minutes – is exploding across the “digisphere.” More important, perhaps, the movement is ushering in new story forms and techniques – shorter and more collaborative.
“It’s a paradigm shift,” says Chad Cooper, vice president of marketing, sales, and content at OVGuide, the online video search engine. Television network executives underestimated this market, he adds. “It’s still early but it’s happening faster than anyone expected.” An Internet analyst, the Diffusion Group, predicts the serialized, longer form will account for nearly 70 percent of ad sales by 2013.
Of course, network TV is now streaming on sites such as hulu.com, TV.com and Joost.com. But the original, direct-to-the-Internet creations – beyond laughing babies and pet tricks – are, if not exactly coming of age, then reaching an important plateau of early adolescence. In slightly more than a year, websites with original “webisodic” material have grown from under two dozen to more than 100, according to OVGuide.
A market that didn’t exist five years ago is becoming a serious Hollywood player. “It’s what’s next,” says Richard Shore, head of content acquisition and production at digital studio RedLever. A film and TV veteran, Mr. Shore says he jumped into the new business because the new story techniques with faster character development and real-time fan feedback “excited” him.
The distinction between old and new storytelling modes will begin to fade as early as year’s end, he adds, when the first wave of Internet-enabled TV sets begins to roll out. This convergence, he says, will produce a single, much-expanded entertainment environment – all fueled by technology – better broadband connections, high-powered cellphones, and cheaper cameras and editing tools. But also in no small part by a bevy of professional writers who got a taste of the possibilities for episodic Web storytelling during the bitter 2007-08 writers’ strike.
