A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM CRACKLE

Cynopsis Media Presents: Evaluating Online Video
08/29/12

Good morning. It’s still Wednesday, August 29, 2012, and this is a special Digital Content edition examining the state of original video programming on the web, as well as highlighting a selection of top shows and the people behind them.

Evaluating Online Video, Context Matters.

By Sahil Patel

The best way to determine the success of an online video series is to see how many views it has.

Well, that’s not exactly right, is it? After all, every show is different, governed by its own set of rules and goals.

What if the show is meant for a specific audience, rather than the entire web? What if it’s a live, daily series instead of a weekly one? How do you define success for a music show featuring a series of standalone performances versus a narrative that demands a commitment over a full season? Can a show on YouTube, the largest video site on the planet, be judged with the same critical eye as one that’s distributed on a smaller site? Moreover, does a video view mean the same thing for a five-minute show as it does for a 22-minute one?

Not to belabor the point, but when you survey the online video landscape, it’s clear that the space can be as amorphous as the internet itself.

So then what is the best way to determine the success of an online video series? Maybe there isn’t just one best way. Maybe what’s needed is a more nuanced approach to every show — where contextual information such as format, genre, and distribution platform matter as much as the viewership tally.

Short-form

Short-form is still king. This isn’t surprising to anyone who’s spent a minute on a computer. However, it reflects where the web currently is and how audiences consume content.

“One of the most important ingredients of successful digital entertainment is to create contagious content,” said David Beebe, VP & GM/Digital Studio, FishBowl Worldwide Media, which developed a reality program called Ultimate Surprises for Yahoo.

Hosted by daytime soap star Cameron Mathison (All My Children), Ultimate Surprises helps people spring big surprises on loved ones, such as giving your wife her dream wedding.

“Ultimate Surprises offers great stories that viewers can relate to from the start,” said Beebe. “From then it’s the emotional response that compels a viewer to comment on the episode and then share it on their social graph, further than the original platform.” The series has amassed over 140,000 comments on Yahoo to date, according to FishBowl and Yahoo.

This emphasis on “social shareability” is echoed across the board.

Damon Berger, CEO of What’s Trending, which produces online talk show What’s Trending with Shira Lazar, said, “As we’ve gone on, we’ve realized what works on the internet shorter form and quick-hitting pieces, versus long conversations and we’ve made it a point to focus in on them.”

“Social media and YouTube were never an accessory to what we do,” said Shira Lazar. “It empowered us and definitely made us stand out. It creates an authentic connection with people who are watching, who care about sharing and often do.”

“The trick is in knowing your audience,” said Neil Katz, Executive News Editor at the Huffington Post, when discussing a documentary series he created for AOL called Home of the Brave, which features war veterans from Korea through Afghanistan telling powerful stories about their experience on the front lines. The first six episodes pulled in over 4 million views. “Really thinking through the kinds of stories and characters that (the audience is) going to fall in love with, and be compelled to share them with friends. That’s how you get viral traffic and bring more people to your show,” said Katz.

The truth is, unless you are Invisible Children (the group behind the 30-minute viral hit Kony 2012), more often than not short-form videos are the ones that will spread like wildfire across the web.

“It can be so easy for short-form programming to go viral,” said Erin McPherson, Head of Video Programming and Originals at Yahoo, when discussing the company’s comedy and reality slate. “One of our comedy shows, Sketchy (produced by Principato-Young Entertainment), is meant to go viral. There is no through-line; it’s just a series of standalone three-to-five minute sketches starring people you recognize doing something silly, such as a parody of Downton Abbey called Downton Arby’s. We want to produce programming that is not just likeable, but also shareable.”

In addition to the potential “virality” of short-form, the format is also conducive to watching a lot of the episodes in one sitting. As a matter of fact, that’s how I watched Burning Love, a parody of reality shows like The Bachelor starring Ken Marino and Michael Ian Black, with cameos from the likes of Ben Stiller, Adam Scott, and Jennifer Aniston. And apparently, I wasn’t the only one. “Burning Love performed exceedingly well for us,” said McPherson. “We saw that audiences were binge-watching those episodes.” 

There’s also a certain accessibility to short-form programming. “People want to see these funny or emotionally compelling moments,” continued McPherson. “At Yahoo, our daytime users do that frequently. They’ll be in the middle of a daily task whether it’s checking email, reading the news, or anything else across our sites and then they’ll notice an interesting video. They’ll switch gears and just take this little moment out of the day to watch something fun and even share it before going back to whatever they were doing.”

And if all these reasons weren’t enough, short-form can be another creative outlet for filmmakers.

“I love short-form,” said Rodrigo Garcia (In Treatment, Albert Nobbs), Co-Creator of WIGS, a women-centric channel on YouTube. He wrote and directed Blue, a dramatic series starring Julia Stiles that follows a mother’s encounters with several individuals as she struggles to keep her life as a prostitute a secret from her son. The first season, which consists of 12 episodes, has reached close to 3 million views on the site. “I think there is a world where I can, personally as a writer and director, take a character like Blue and do it forever. It’s almost like comic strips. You have that discipline of a short thing several times a week. It’s a way stories can be told that are certainly not for TV or film, but they can be for the web.”

Long-form

This isn’t to say that short-form is the be-all and end-all of original online video. “Back in the day, the conventional wisdom was that shorter content plays better online. I don’t think that’s necessarily going to be true forever,” said Rodrigo Garcia.

“I do think long-form content is performing better and better every month online. When you look at the success of long-form providers like Hulu and HBO Go, it’s clear that audiences are increasingly watching videos of all lengths on the web,” said McPherson.

It might be online TV and movie streaming services that lead the way. By and large, most long-form original online programming is housed on sites like Netflix, Hulu, and Sony’s Crackle, on which longer content already plays.

“We view ourselves like a programmed network, so for us, long-form makes sense because it complements the other premium movies and TV shows on our service,” said Eric Berger, EVP/Digital Networks, Sony Pictures Television. This isn’t entirely unlike what Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said about his company, how he views it as a “digital” pay-TV channel, like HBO.

This year Crackle released a sci-fi series called The Unknown. Created by Chris Collins (Sons of Anarchy), the show runs for six 30-minute episodes, following an anonymous blogger played by Dominic Monaghan (Lost) as he tries to unravel conspiracy theories and supernatural events. It can be very engrossing, but requires a stronger commitment from the viewer.

“Of course we’re looking to see the overall size of the audience as a measure of success, but we’re also looking to see how much of the audience views through all the episodes, and completion rates of each episode. For The Unknown, we’ve had very high percentages for each of these metrics,” Berger told me. This is made all the more interesting when considering that The Unknown is Crackle’s first long-form original title.

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

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Based on sheer volume, which is probably a good indicator of what audiences flock to on the web, three genres stand tall above the rest.

Comedy

On the web, comedies span pretty much every content provider and come in many shapes and sizes. For example:

Sketchy , as described above by Erin McPherson, is a series of sketches featuring a revolving door of stars, including Alison Brie, Tony Hawk, Richard Kind, and Matt Walsh.

Burning Love (from Ben Stiller’s Red Hour, Abominable Pictures, and Paramount’s Insurge Pictures) is an episodic series that skewers The Bachelor.

There’s Fodder, which is another sketch comedy series, but unlike Sketchy, is episodic. Each one features multiple sketches, some which recur throughout the season. It’s also notable for being an original online series brought to life by a television network, Scripps Networks’ Cooking Channel.

Do’s and Don’ts: A Children’s Guide to Social Survival is a member of Alloy Digital‘s robust roster of animated fare on its premium YouTube channel, Shut Up! Cartoons. It’s presented in the style of 1950s PSAs.

Dating Rules From My Future Self , an entry from Alloy Entertainment (Gossip Girl) and Alloy Digital, is a narrative romantic comedy starring Candice Accola (Vampire Diaries) and Reid Ewing (Modern Family), among others.

The Front Desk , from Above Average Productions, a division of Lorne Michaels’ Broadway Video, stars comedian John Lutz (30 Rock) as the a front desk clerk of a hotel in New York. Each episode consists of a funny encounter with an absurd crew of characters, played by the likes of Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, J.B. Smoove, and more. Each episode is self-contained, with the only link being the main character.

The Tweekly News is a talk show produced by Principato-Young Entertainment, Kids at Play, and My Damn Channel. Hosted by the Sklar brothers, the show focuses in on all things Twitter.

Comedy and short-form programming can easily go hand in hand.

“What makes Burning Love perfect for the web is that it has a high laugh-per-minute count. If you’re watching a 90-minute comedy, you don’t need to be constantly laughing,” said Jonathan Stern of Abominable Pictures and Executive Producer of Burning Love. “However, in the shorter format, the audience has to be entertained right away. It’s also important for the audience to get what the show is immediately. You don’t need to be educated on it; you can skip to any episode and pick it right up. That kind of random efficiency is really important.”

If you’re looking for another reason why comedy might be successful online, look no further than who is behind these shows big media brands and producers, featuring actors and comedians who are, as Erin McPherson said when describing the success of Burning Love, “plugged in” to the current zeitgeist.

Music

Music-based programming, by which I mean concert and/or performance series, has also carved out a significant slice of the online video pie.

VEVO is one of the heaviest producers of such programming. Its VEVO Go Shows does the format in a unique way by filming an impromptu performance from an artist in a public location that’s important to them.

There’s also The Warner Sound, a YouTube original channel that consistently sits atop the site’s rankings. It’s lineup includes a show called The Live Room, which takes popular artists and lets them perform in some of the most iconic recording studios in America, such as The Hit Factory in Miami and Electric Lady Studios in NY.

And looking beyond content providers that are directly involved in the music industry, there are shows such as CBS Interactive’s Live on Letterman series and Crackle’s From the Basement, which also spotlight musical performances from a variety of artists.

When I asked Scott Reich, VP/Original Content & Programming for VEVO, why he thinks this type of programming is so successful on the web, he said, “I think it’s all about access for fans. If someone is not able to go out and see an artist, they can now go online and see them do a real performance. The technology has finally caught up to provide an access that fans would not have gotten a few years ago.”

News/Talk Shows

When it comes to news/talk shows, there seem to be a couple of things at play. On one hand, there’s a freedom to the format; a news/talk show can cover a wide array of topics, interests, and audiences.

What’s Trending focuses on keeping viewers abreast of the latest trends on the web ranging from a viral video to discussing more “adult material like the Egyptian Revolution,” according to Lazar.

Daily Shot with Ali Wentworth , from Disney Interactive and distributed on Yahoo, consists of 3-5 minute quick episodes in which the actress gives her take on the day’s news and gossip; specifically targeting busy parents who want a quick news fix before continuing on with their day.

On the political front, ABC News’ content partnership with Yahoo includes Power Players. Featuring the likes of George Stephanopoulos and Jake Tapper, the show shines a light on the big political stories of the day.

For men, there is Break Media’s Speakeasy, in which host Paul F. Tompkins interviews celebrities over their favorite cocktails. Guests have included Ty Burrell, Sam Trammell, and Zach Galifianakis.

For gamers, there’s Up at Noon with Greg Miller from IGN Entertainment, featuring comedy sketches and interviews.

On the Table with Eric Ripert , which airs on The Reserve Channel, a YouTube premium offering from Uncommon Content Partners, features Ripert chatting with guests, such as Anthony Bourdain, Mario Batali, and Stanle Tucci, while cooking and eating their favorite dish. (The Reserve Channel is one of the few long-form content offerings available on a non-subscription video service.)

On the other hand, the format enables this type of show to create a natural link with the viewer what Shira Lazar described to me as the ability to implement some interactivity and build an honest connection with the viewer. If viewers trust the show to deliver the news and content they’re interested in and would want to share, they’re going to come back, she said.

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

This is the year when big online media companies like YouTube, Yahoo, and AOL have made a serious push into producing and/or distributing original online video, joining the likes of Alloy Digital, My Damn Channel, and Digital Broadcasting Group, to name just a few. Each of these companies has an established presence on the web, an active audience (of varying sizes) that they can market this new, professionally produced, original content to.

The problem is, even if they convince a user to click on a video to watch it, it doesn’t necessarily mean success. This is where other metrics like time-spent viewing and completion rates come into play. They’re designed to provide the producer (and advertiser) with a better understanding of what is being watched.

However, even they don’t tell the whole story (and the conversation on effective digital video measurement is obviously another topic for another day). Let’s say a user completes a 22-minute episode of an original online series on an ad-supported service like Hulu or Crackle. Now let’s say that same user watches a 5-minute video on YouTube or Yahoo, but elects to share it with his friends across his social networks. Which one should be valued more?

Everyone may have an opinion, but there isn’t one clear-cut answer. A lot still needs to happen on the distribution and measurement side before advertisers and agency buyers and planers fully embrace the unique value and effectiveness of online video content, and start shifting significant media budgets away from traditional television. But reminiscent of the old debate over broadcast versus cable, the change in media consumption and valuation is accelerating. Until then, when evaluating online video, context matters.

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For seven great shows, each categorized under a different genre, which I can’t recommend highly enough click here.

Later – Sahil
Sahil Patel, Associate Editor for Cynopsis Digital
08.29.12

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