Network
television in under 10 minutes
In her
book, The Television Will Be Revolutionized, author Amanda
Lotz speculates on a future where some TV series are shown exclusively
on the Internet and the Networks serve as a promotional device for those
shows. According to an AP article
in today’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, CBS has (at least
for now) reversed that scenario by innovatively using the Internet to
promote its Network shows by slicing-and-dicing episodes into both unique
and entertaining web video. This is not your typical two-minute promo,
however, as they include “a compendium of slaps doled out on How
I Met Your Mother; the various times David Caruso dramatically
removes his sunglasses on CSI: Miami; and ‘Smut Whisperer,’
a clip of dialogue from Ghost Whisperer with words bleeped
out to pretend the characters were talking dirty.” Conventional
wisdom dictates that although people watch entire episodes of a television
show online, most Internet video viewing is of the “ten-minutes
or less” variety that YouTube has perfected and that even the
best webseries (Chad Vader, Break a Leg, The Guild,
Something to Be Desired) utilize.
Back in
March, 2007, two Los Angeles college graduates posted a self-edited
“Seven Minutes Sopranos” on YouTube—a seven
minutes and thirty-six seconds recap of the HBO drama—to great
success. ABC then hired Minneapolis-based Met Hodder to produce an “Everything
You Need to Know About Lost In Eight Minutes and Fifteen Seconds”
video for promotion of that shows Season Four. According to EW’s
PopWatch,
Battlestar Galactica co-executive producer Ron Moore liked
it so much he hired the same company to produce a similar video (“What
the Frak Is Going On?”) for his show. And Eyelab—the name
of the CBS division that manufactures the promos cited above—produced
the amusing “100 Reasons to Watch Jericho” in advance
of its Season Two debut. Give the television suits credit for embracing
this new medium instead of fighting it. To quote today’s Post-Gazette:
“Their work illustrates how television networks are trying to
adapt to the Internet instead of viewing it with hostility as a competitor
for time.” And that can only be a good thing for everybody.
—Anthony
Letizia (April 16, 2008)
