Yahoo news has the announcement that Edward Zwick and partner Marshall Herskovitz - the creators of the TV drama Thirtysomething - are moving to the web with a show titled Quarterlife.
Citing that they are "hoping to find the artistic freedom online that they say is lacking on broadcast networks," Zwick and Herskovitz will premiere the show on Myspace.com as well as link it to their own social networking forum.
"The TV veterans were also attracted by the chance to have full creative control of the project and retain ownership, which could produce greater profit for them if the show becomes popular.
"It's a gamble," Herskovitz said. "We want to prove there is another way to independently create and distribute content."
The show's 36 episodes will air exclusively on MySpace, which has more than 110 million users worldwide. Additional content, including character profiles, will also appear on MySpace, which is owned by News Corp.
Each episode will be about 8 minutes long with two episodes debuting each week. The producers and MySpace will share revenue from ads that will run in the video. Additional revenue will come from product placement deals, Herskovitz said."
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These are the kinds of things that are going to open up the opportunities for folks like you or me to create content with the backing of both an audience and advertisers. Further down the article a researcher says we are "decades" away from the net overtaking television in terms of numbers and dollars.
I take exception to that because there are more revenue streams that go directly into the producers' pocket with the internet rather than with television. Besides ads we have product placement, merchandising, marketing info, other media and the ability to quickly add more websites that also have these above capabilities. Producers with a following will develop their own "networks."
Networks are now "middlemen" between the audience and the creators. Just like the fact that many people in the music industry - retailers, rack jobbers, distributors - are losing ground to the internet, so too will people in the television industry and...
I think it's all happening sooner than everyone thinks.
The (r)evolution won't be televised, it will be streamed.
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