Fewer, Better

On the year-in-review podcast of NPR's "The Business," I heard Cynthia Littleton of Variety make some pronouncements about the state of the TV industry that sounded similar to a few predictions I made in a paper last spring, specifically that the internet would take on the speculative role of nurturing lots of new talent while TV would move towards the "fewer/better" model of production that film studios adopted in the 60's when TV came on the scene. Her long term prediction that "all the execs are talking about" involves a ratcheting down of the budgets committed that is, ultimately, a correction of an extremely wasteful practice. "I think what you're really going to see is people going more to a cable model of developing fewer pilots, putting more time and energy and sweat into casting them, honing them, perfecting them...In the long term, if it helps cut a lot of the fat out of the TV business, it could be a good thing."

There are two forces at work: the inertia of the well established entertainment industry and the opportunities for dramatically increased efficiency in terms of getting the desired entertainment to the appropriate audiences (whether or not that entertainment is deemed "high quality") that new production and distribution technology permits. Institutional inertia can keep obsolete impractical, inefficient systems in place for awhile. But there's something about the openness and immateriality of online video creation and distribution that makes me believe that its revolutionary momentum won't be slowed by stick-in-the-mud institutions.

Let's compare two ways of making money by buying visibility for your product on an entertainment program.

The Upfronts: representatives of products show up to a yearly convention and look at pilots produced by established production companies, auteurs, and studios. They make a speculative decision based on the track records of those involved and the perceived appeal of the show as wehther or not to buy time on that show.

Online: Joe Nobody and 5 of his friends create a compelling, hip, humorous web series, build an audience on YouTube, then take their show off of YouTube and show it exclusively on their own site with advertising. In this model, the advertisers buy space/time on the creators' site based on established (not speculative) audience figures. What would be even better is if the next online auteurs wouldn't stretch serial narratives way beyond their breaking point (lonelygirl15 is still going. Enough already), but rather they created finite, stand alone serial narratives more like the extended-film or novel-esque stories of each season of The Wire. Then, based on their successful reputation of garnering an audience for that first low-budget series, they get more ad $ upfront for their next project. So yes, that reintroduces speculation to the equation, but its based on a reputation that can be established at a far lower overhead than on TV. Millions of $s go into developing pilots that don't hit. Could this really last?

Its just a tightening of the feedback loop that's always been integral to all forms of communication.