Online impact is a factor in series planning
Posted on Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Two series’ success stories in the online world last season may dictate what shows networks decide to put on their schedules in the future.
NBC’s Heroes, bolstered by elaborate online content such as an Internet comic book charting the adventures of the show’s characters, became one of the season’s most popular hits.
And CBS’ post-apocalyptic saga Jericho, initially canceled due to low ratings late in the season, was resurrected thanks not only to an online campaign to bring the show back, but by network executives’ astonishment at the depth of the passion of fans in online message boards.
Kevin Reilly — then entertainment president at NBC, now Fox’s president of entertainment — recalls, “We knew last year that Heroes was going to be a big Web play for us. And [series creator ] Tim Kring was completely embracing it. That’s one of the reasons there was so much success there.” CBS Entertainment president Nina Tassler says that with Jericho, “You really had a chance to see the way fans talked to each other, the way they communicated about characters, the way they talked about story lines. That gives you a very unique opportunity right now. So I think we are looking at a shift and a change.” “The ability to maintain a strong online presence is now critical to getting a series picked up as well as its long-term viability,” says Jeffrey Stepakoff, author of TV memoir Billion Dollar Kiss: The Kiss That Saved Dawson’s Creek And Other Adventures in TV Writing and a former writer on Dawson’s, one of the first series to interact with fans online.
“TV shows were picked up this season specifically for how well they could be repurposed and expanded on the Internet,” he says.
“Many of these shows have entire narrative worlds which exist between episodes on television. Look at Jericho. And these shows drive huge amounts of traffic to the parent sites.” When asked whether potential online content for aspiring series would influence what makes it on the air, Reilly says, “Yes. I mean, you can’t have the cart pull the horse, you know. If you’re doing something because you think it’s a good Web show and not a good television show, that’s going to be a problem.
“ But our Web folks have a seat at the adults’ table. They’re not locked away in the back room.” Reilly adds, “It is a daily conversation about how can we exploit, how can we push the tentacles of exposure out in the public ? How can we change our distribution methods to best benefit the shows ?
“ It’s an exciting but trying time. You’re going to see all sorts of experimentation. The second we pick something up, we’re talking to our Web people — what are the Web extensions of this ? What’s the opportunity ? — and identifying the ones that can really be the leaders, like Heroes was last year.” Shows like Heroes, Jericho and Lost even provide story lines not seen on the air to keep viewers engaged.
“The studios are very savvy to continue the storytelling and the narrative progression between episodes,” Stepakoff says. “Let’s face it, in today’s media environment, a week is a very long time to wait to move a story forward.” This season, several networks are tying their hopes for successful series to promotions and additional show-related content available online. NBC is following its success with Heroes by introducing three series with sciencefiction or paranormal themes (always popular with the online crowd ), Bionic Woman, Chuck and Journeyman.
CBS has scheduled three ostensibly provocative series — Viva Laughlin, Kid Nation and midseason replacement Swingtown — that it hopes will inspire the same sort of impassioned online discussion that Jericho has enjoyed. And The CW has Gossip Girl, about a blogger, which too will have a lot of online components, and the magazine series Online Nation, which will invite viewers to explore the Internet.
Of CBS’ programming decisions, Tassler says, “Maybe it comes out of Jericho. What I think is so amazing is being able to listen and watch our audience really connect with a show and really talk to each other, and what I’m hoping from Kid Nation, from Swingtown, you’re finding that audiences are personalizing, they’ve got very strong opinions, and we at the network are listening. That public discussion is positive, and it allows us to gain greater insight into who is watching our shows and what they have to say about them. I’m finding that very rewarding.” Dawn Ostroff, The CW’s president of entertainment, says that in order to appeal to her network’s youthful viewer base, “We have to immerse ourselves in their lifestyles and their cultures. And first and foremost, that means expanding our presence in areas like digital, creating multiplatform experiences.” Gossip Girl will be unique in that online, Ostroff says, fans will “find the clothes that the characters are wearing, be able to tap into the music that they hear on the show, and be able to watch the show while you’re talking to your friends, you know, on our network, the social-networking part of our site.” “A show like Gossip Girl can benefit enormously from a properly conceived and executed online effort,” Stepakoff says. “In fact, I predict we’ll see an impassioned online fan base that supersedes even what we saw with Jericho. To the Gossip Girl audience, the computer and the television are all part of the same device. They have already converged.” But an online promotion must be germane and ingrained into the texture of the show, Stepakoff warns.
“If done poorly, if you shove college interns in there to create this world, it can be a bad thing, but an online presence can be a great benefit to a show if done properly,” he says. “On one hand, you can reach out to your fans. And in a world where you cherish your [ratings ], that’s a damn good idea. I truly believe one of the reason’s Dawson’s was so successful was because we made strong and conscious efforts to interact with our fan base. We had a fully rendered online world and we hired assistants to interact with audience members who would write e-mails.” And those who want to work in TV in the future will no longer be able simply to cook up a good idea for a traditional series.
“Show-runners are wise not to resist what’s going on but rather to embrace it,” Stepakoff says. “Because at the end of the day, it works, it’s happening, and this is the only way we’re going to get control of it, both creatively and fiscally. In fact, we should think about the online component of a series when we initially conceive it.
“ We should bring it with us into the pitch meeting.”
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