"In five years the idea of broadcast will be gone" Tim Kring, creator of Heroes, said recently. He is refering to the fact that increasingly we will be watching content everywhere and anywhere. It is a view expressed by the wider rat pack of American television that includes Damon Linelof, JJ Abrams, Rob Letterman and more, in an interesting article by David Kushner called 'Rebel Alliance' .
In the article, the leaders of the US TV youth market go on to herald Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy, Firefly, Serentity and more, as their 'leader'. The interesting thing about Joss, is that he doesn't measure the success of his shows by the ratings and ad revenue they make. He measures the success of the shows by 'the aftermarket' (how deeply his fans get in to the story) and the back end sales he makes. In effect, he embraces the long tail of engagement, immersing fans in circular stories that go beyond the regular TV series, making money out of that as a result.
It's an approach that inspired the endless worm holes that appeared around Lost, be it Comics, books, Podcasts, songs, blogs, YouTube videos, chocolate, Lostpedia and more, that filled the gaps the series could not.
As it happens Joss wasn't twiddling his thumbs during the writers strike either. His latest offering is Dr. Horribles sing along blog. Yesterday, at drhorrible.com the first of a three part musical mini series blog was open to his fans. The next two are tomorrow and Saturday. Embracing his own philosophy, obviously you can find out more about it on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and YouTube.
So what can we learn from Dr Horrible? Well, clearly Joss is taking a different approach to mass market TV. Rather than spend huge sums on pilots, he is leveraging his advocates to seed in ideas at a low cost. In doing so, he gets to see which ones generate the excitement and aftermarket he is after. If Dr Horrible is a huge success online, I would not be surprised to see on a TV screen near you in the future.
So, for Joss, TV is relegated down the adoption proccess. In the Whedonverse, it is simply a means to pull people in to a deeper world he values. It is a distribution point that is getting less and less important. Rather than broadcast media, he is using his advocates to help pull more people in. It's an interesting approach we can learn from.
- Sam
It's also interesting that the 3 episodes will be free on the blog only until 20th July (hurry!). After that you'll be charged to download. After that comes the DVD release, which Whedon was quoted as saying will 'have the finest and bravest extras in all the land'. He plans this stuff out carefully....
Posted by: Toby | July 18, 2008 at 08:37 AM