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And in this corner: new media...
AP News headline: Emmys acknowledge tough times for TV industry
That's the world calmly pointing out the tip of the iceberg bearing down to crash the established media, in my opinion.
You see, in a quiet little ceremony a week before the televised emmy award ceremonies, Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog won an Emmy. Don't worry if you hadn't heard about this. Practically no wide media outlet has even made mention of it. And the emmy was for a a new niche category for "Special Class - Short-format Live-Action Entertainment Programs," and so had practically no recognition.
Yet the fact remains that the little Joss Whedon project, made on a whim for peanuts-on-the-dollar and released for free on the internet, fired the opening volleys in a war that the Television infrastructure doesn't want to fight. You see when a truly creative and well made piece of art is put out on the open market, even without an initial profit model, it tends to do well on it's own merits. And Dr. Horrible spent time in the number 1 spot atop the iTunes video downloads and has had sucessful soundtrack and DVD sales as well.
Joss Whedon, in an NPR interview after the win, explained "[I wanted to show] we could do this without the giant corporations who are squashing us under their heel, and that everybody could get paid."
Real sales figures aren't publicly available, but from iTunes downloads, CD's, DVD's, and a fanatic audience base, it can be assumed that Dr. Horrible has made over $5 Million so far. And the production, without marketers and distributors taking a cut, is probably making $.70 on the dollar of that gross, as opposed to your average production being happy to make %20. Of a product that was shown free online.
Critical success, financial success, and popular success. It's a model that has a great deal of potential for future competition in the media marketplace, and Television knows it.
The coup de grace in this story? What makes it so wonderfully subversive as an opening volley in a silent war beyond the fact that the Television Academy of Arts and Sciences had to admit just how stymied they were by this web-based offering? Neil Patrick Harris (star of Dr. Horrible) hosted the awards show and in a bit meant to be... farcical I suppose... hijacked the show AS DR. HORRIBLE to do a musical number:
"Television is dead," sneered Dr. Horrible. "The future of home entertainment is the Internet. Why watch something like this (he spread his arms grandly) when you can see it like this," whereupon he snapped his fingers and the screen shrunk to postage-stamp size. (He also touted online entertainment's lack of interruptions — the screen then hiccuped into "buffering" mode — and panicked when his computer battery began fading, ending the bit.) from AP
O.k., so I keep talking about a war. After all, the record industry noticed this threat 5 or 6 years ago from digital competiton, and drew battle lines in the sand. And promptly began losing a war of attrition against the world of technology.
But Television may just be playing it smarter, trying to absorb and adapt to the new technologies before it is overwhelmed by them. They did give an Emmy to a show that never actually hit television airwaves, which baffled me at first. I checked the Emmy rules, and at some point they snuck in to the eligibility:
delivered by broadcast to at least 50% of the total potential U.S. television audience or, (ii) by pay/basic cable transmissions (including by way of example so-called basic cable, pay cable, pay television, pay-per-view, interactive cable and broadband)
So the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences at least are trying to claim the broadband data transmission (i.e. the internet) as broadcasting, and not to fight it. Given the proliferation of excellent online media (you know, what I've been doing with greater or lesser success for the past 4 years) this is a very exciting development. It only remains to be seen whether this emmy win, this astounding online distribution success, will prove to be a flash in the pan, or a herald of the triumph of internet media.
Let me add a (very) closely related second example of the internet model working... Dr. Horrible co-star Felcia Day has an internet only project, The Guild, which started on a shoestring budget, was supported through a second season by fan donations, and now is in it's third season with sponsorship from Microsoft, Sprint, has successful DVD self-distribution, and put out an original music video (must see) that is selling on the top of iTunes, and has a comic coming out.
It's not a fluke. Make smart, original media and you WILL make money online. Beats the hell out of the reality TV model.
