DECEMBER 1 2008
AMERICANWAY 41
I N T E R N E T
big-bucks advertisers. “A lot of people love
online humor and content because it’s not
limited,” he says. “But advertisers are still
adjusting towhether that’s something they
canbeassociatedwith.”
Don’t expect to see precise clones of tele-
vision showsonoriginalwebcontent either.
Beckett says the medium doesn’t lend it-
self to TV’s half-hour format and common
storytelling perspective (which is different
from thefirst-person approachof theLG15
series). “If you take a third-person televi-
sion show and chop it up into pieces, I’m
not sure thatworks great online,” he says.
AT THIS POINT,
web shows have yet to
deliver much more than promise. Rich-
ard Rushfield, entertainment editor for
LATimes.com andone of thefirst reporters
on the
lonelygirl15
hoax, says that so far, no
other web show has come close to the suc-
cess of Beckett and his company’s pioneer-
ing effort. “When
lonelygirl15
burst forth,
everybody said, ‘This is the television show
of the future. This is how people are going
to be watching their shows,’” he says. “But
since that time, not a single showhas really
followedupon that in termsofbeingable to
developanaudience like
lonelygirl15
did.”
Part of the reason for the disappointing
lack of successors, Rushfield says, is that
muchof
lonelygirl15
’s appeal seems tohave
beenbasedon themystery that surrounded
its early episodes and the controversy that
erupted following the exposé, which pro-
vided a lot of visibility for the show. “That’s
a very difficult thing to replicate,” he says.
“And no one has.” In fact, the chances of
anybody believing another slick-looking
YouTube video is truly a homemade video
diaryareprobablynil.
Eqal, Beckett’s company, did however
raise$5million in venture last spring. And
this fall — after ending
lonelygirl15
, fol-
lowing its third season — Eqal premiered
LG15:
The Resistance
, another teen drama
set in the LG15 universe. Online-video
viewing has been growing at a blistering
pace among digital-video users: The per-
centage of all video entertainment watched
by digital-video users on personal comput-
ers nearly doubled from 2007 to 2008,
rising from 11 percent of all screen time to
19 percent, so television’s share of screen
time dropped to 70 percent, according to
Wright’s Ipsos research.
The networks are getting into the act,
too, producing short “webisodes” of popu-
lar series like
The Office
, which, alongwith
the chat rooms and message boards, offer
extra content available online only. NBC
premiered a new sci-fiweb show inAugust
called
GeminiDivision
,whichstarsRosario
Dawson. The technical and management
infrastructure needed to produce online
shows is growing at a rapid clip. But in the
end,more important than talent or tools is
the appearance of serious interest from the
moneyedworld of old-line television fund-
raisers. “They’re as interested inmoney as
thenextguy,” saysMyDamnChannel’sBar-
nett, “and themoney’s starting toflow.”
MARk HENRICks
writes about business, technology, and other
topics fromAustin, Texas.
Recipient of
four
consecutive
NYC’s
“GoldenApple
Awards”
for Food
Safety and
Cleanliness.
Wine
Spectator’s
“Best of Awardof
Excellence”
Since 2001
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