38 AMERICANWAY
DECEMBER 1 2008
I N T E R N E T
endless meetings with higher-ups. For in-
stance, he says theywereable toput togeth-
er a sports interview show for one of their
sponsors, shoemaker Puma, practically
overnight by television standards, posting
the premier episode online just days after
the initialmeeting.
The lowcostofwebshowshas tobemen-
tionedaswell.Beckett saysanentire season
of anLG15web series costs less to produce
than a single episode of many television
shows. In a testament to both the speed
and the economy of the medium, Barnett
says, “In our first 365days, wewere able to
create 325 original short-form videos, and
the average cost for those videoswas under
$7,000.” That’s something, compared with
the $50,000 tomore than $200,000 that
manynetworkTV shows cost per episode.
From the viewer’s standpoint, one of the
biggest attractions of web shows is time
control. As long as you have an Internet
connection, episodes of web shows are
available any time and any place from the
moment they are posted until, well, indefi-
nitely, saysAdamWright, director for Ipsos
MediaCT, a division of Ipsos, one of the
largest survey-based research companies.
“It’s not like your only chance towatch that
great
The Office
episode is on Thursday at
eight p.m. Central,”Wright says.
Web interactivity bolsters viewer ap-
peal too. Rather than just watching, many
viewers engage in simultaneous online chat
sessions to discuss characters and stories.
The LG15 website has thousands of pages
of message postings and user comments;
it even has aWiki-style album of informa-
tion on the LG15 universe, calledLGPedia.
Beckett’swriters chat directlywith viewers,
taking ideas for plot twists and then often
working those into the script.
For all their interestingwrinkles, though,
web shows also have some toughproblems.
To begin with, despite the million-view
numbers cited by Beckett, their actual au-
diences are small. The LG15 series’ base of
viewers is likely 150,000 to200,000.That’s
comparable to some cable television shows
but is no challenge to broadcast networks,
whichboastaudiences in the tensofmillions
formonsterhits suchas
American Idol
.
Even more importantly, the medium
has yet to find a reliable way tomake seri-
ous money. Beckett’s approach has been
to place sponsor products in the show. In
exchange for a payment from Neutroge-
na, writers gave one character a job at the
beauty-products company, completewith a
fake employee website and e-mail address,
which Beckett says received thousands of
e-mails and spurred great interest among
fans. “Because it’sso interactive, they justgo
crazy,”he says. “Therewere literallyongoing
discussions aboutNeutrogenaproducts.”
Other shows splice conventional com-
mercials before, after, and sometimes dur-
ing episodes. But David-Michel Davies,
executive director of the Webby Awards,
says thenatureof thewebstillputsoffmany
MilesBeckett
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