Quarterlife loses one
*Updated*
Silicon Valley Insider is reporting that quarterlife, the video series that jumped from MySpace to NBC, is heading to cable after one disastrous broadcast. The show's fate is a reminder of how tough it is to take programming from the Web to broadcast TV, and how illusory it is to view the Internet as the TV networks' D-league.
You might say the series creators -- Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz, the team behind "thirtysomething" and "My So-Called Life" -- hit for the cycle (to use a different sports cliche). The project started off with a successful pitch to ABC, which ordered a pilot episode but then declined to pick up the series. Then Zwick and Herskovitz decided to carve up the hour-long episodes into create a new pilot and follow-up episodes, which they posted as 8-minute chunks on MySpace and quarterlife.com, a social network built around the show. (Thanks, Kelly!) Less than a week after the segments began running there, Zwick and Herskovitz struck a deal with NBC to air the program there (back in its original, hour-long format). That brings us to today's development, which, now that I think about it, makes the show's path look more like a sine wave than a trip around a baseball diamond.
Clarifying the blunt comments he'd made to a reporter for NewTeeVee.com, Herskovitz issued a statement today saying the show has a future, and he's grateful for NBC's support.
I’ve always had concerns about whether quarterlife was the kind of show that could pull in the big numbers necessary to succeed on a major broadcast network. It is important to remember that quarterlife has already proved itself as a successful online series and social network with millions of enthusiastic fans.
I cling to the notion that the Internet is as different a medium for entertainment as TV was from radio. A new genre eventually will emerge that takes advantage of the Internet's inherent interactivity and connectivity, producing something that broadcasters can't replicate. In the meantime, though, producers will continue to view the Internet as a place to build audiences on the cheap for video programming that's essentially the same as what's on TV. And even if they succeed -- and quarterlife wasn't much of a phenomenon online, as skeptics pointed out -- that doesn't mean they're fit for prime time. After all, their fortunes online may have been buoyed by the Internet's unique promotional tools, including its ability to create instant communities around content. Take away those tools and, in quarterlife's case, you're left with the same thing ABC passed on, a motion now seconded by NBC.
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It's an interesting conundrum: A new show debuting the old-fashioned way has no built-in audience at all. So all things being equal, if you have 100,000 to 150,000 viewers online, are you ahead of the game or way behind it? Or do those viewers not count at all?
You could easily turn this into an object lesson: Nobody knows anything because nobody wants to know anything. They had clear evidence that there was no audience for this thing and they went ahead anyway.
But in fact, they had no clear evidence one way or the other. Maybe every one viewer who seeks your product out on the web translates into 100 who will decide not to turn it off when it's on TV. Or maybe it translates into fewer. Or (what I really suspect), maybe there's no discernible correlation. Given NBC's content-starved position, it's actually hard to blame them for taking the show (though I thought it was way lame). It's just that the web numbers didn't suggest it was going to be a hit or a failure. It was just another show they had to take a chance on.
We now have one data point about what to expect in web-tv transition.
Posted by: Tim Cavanaugh | February 28, 2008 at 05:00 PM
Re: one data point -- and an ambiguous one at that, as you make clear. Also muddying the waters: the TV episode consisted of material already seen on the Web. So the online audience -- the shows proven fans -- had no reason to tune in.
Posted by: Jon Healey | February 28, 2008 at 05:10 PM
After the ABC pilot, given a successful twenty-year relationship, ABC/Touchstone was gracious enough to give the material back so that Herskovitz and Zwick could develop it in their own way. It was during this period that they conceived of the idea of not only doing the quarterlife series for the Internet, but marrying it with a social network called quarterlife.com. They then completely reconfigured the show, including a different story, cast, etc. They shot a new pilot and then the five other hours of programming for the web series.
Posted by: Kelly Mullens | February 28, 2008 at 05:21 PM
Great commentary! I am a big fan of this line in particular:
"...now that I think about it, makes the show's path look more like a sine wave than a trip around a baseball diamond."
Kudos Jon! Keep up the good work.
Posted by: McLok | March 14, 2008 at 07:55 AM