It’s Halloween!
Brian is Bunsen the Angry Bee; Jim is the Boy Scout; and Chris is Hellboy 2.
Peter dressed up as Garrett.
Dorm Life holding steady as #1 web show on Hulu’s all-time list
Dorm Life continues to top Hulu’s list of most popular web shows, staying just ahead of Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible. In addition to topping the all-time list, DL is also perched at the apex of the weekly and monthly most-popular lists as of this writing.
Lakeman!
From a Long Time Reader and First Time Writer, I would like to take this opportunity to share Lakeman with the world! Check this out if you are in the mood to giggle:
ASM’s Dorm Life Wins double W3 Gold, Silver
Pictures being worth an estimated 1,000 words, let’s forgo effusiveness for efficiency:
ASM collected gold awards from the W3 panel in both the “Comedy - Extended or Series” and “Entertainment” categories, and silver awards for web design and distinction in the broadcast/tv category.
Dorm Life is #1 web series on Hulu for day, week, all-time
I’m pretty sure Hulu displays show rankings left to right by row, starting in the top row and moving down. If so:
- In the daily rankings, Dorm Life is the most popular web series, at #48 overall, with Dr. Horrible at #98.
- For the week, Dorm Life is the most popular web series, at #75 with Dr. Horrible at #84
- In Hulu’s all-time rankings, Dorm Life is also the top web series, at #105, Dr. Horrible at #112.
Dr. Horrible retains the upper hand in the monthly listings, at #66, while Dorm Life is #70.
Dorm Life is #2 web series on Hulu
Have a look at Hulu. Dorm Life is #62 overall in popularity for the month of August 2008. That’s 62nd of the 525 shows Hulu carries, all genres, most of them relatively expensive TV shows (see screenshot below).
Even more impressive - there is only one web series ahead of Dorm Life, and that would be Joss Whedon’s “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” which is pretty awesome in its own right, but, as ASM adjunct provacateer JD Beebe points out on his blog intriguingly called The New Anti-Social, Whedon had quite a bit of free publicity preceding the launch of “Dr. Horrible.”
NYT looks out of touch re: web series
True, the swirl of activity on the online video front is frenzied enough to bewilder a competent air-traffic control crew, but Tilzy.tv’s Colin McDonald has it right in calling out the NYT’s Virginia Heffernan for the confusion evident in her muddle-headed Sunday Magazine piece on web video series. Essentially, McDonald shows that Heffernan doesn’t know how to distinguish between an episodic web series, an online extension of a broadcast network show, and a multipart documentary. She cites as examples a handful of series that are no longer running.
Chris Albrecht over at NewTeeVee finishes the job, though I’m not sure I agree with his take on 3-to-5 minute episodes not sticking because they’re too long for quick viral-style closure but too short for TV sitcom/drama-style schedule annexation. I’d argue that, as fully developed pieces of a larger entity that can be snacked on or devoured whole [shown by the way people are watching Dorm Life on Hulu] they’re the ultimate engagement weapon. Just wait till distributors, brands and producers figure out how to market these things. Right now they’re still being handled like “online TV-like shows,” as the NYT share-module headline awkwardly calls them.
And I have to tsk-tsk just a little in reaction to Albrecht’s headline. I’m guessing 20% of all rebuttals to Heffernan’s columns start with “Yes, Virginia…”
Good shows on the Web: worth 2.8x as much as prime-time TV
This Inside Online Video starts with the exciting nugget at the heart of a recent Forrester Research report: prime-time TV advertising time goes for $25 per thousand views (CPM), while the best-produced shows garner $70 CPM on the Web. That sounds about right to us. Also nice to hear that this year’s online video ad spending of $471 million will be increasing over the coming years to $7.2 billion in 2012.
The Daily Voice: Beeing Aware
“A new way to save the honeybees: music videos, web sites and more”
Looks like the CCD awareness effort is taking off in NYC (online) print:
….Another bee video from Attention Span Media uses humor, and a tad bit of bleeped out vulgar language, to make its point. The video – that doesn’t appear to be sanctioned by the official honeybee web site — features actors dressed as bees talking to the camera and urging humans to save them.
Naming Unconvention
The following internal email thread provides a peek into Attention Span Media’s rigorous and highly scientific project-naming process…
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[10am] GARRETT: We need to decide on the name for the show. Let’s get it done by the end of the day and register the domain.[3:14pm] JIM: After looking at our available name options, the favorite and therefore winner of the long, drawn-out Music Blogger naming process is “Every Good Name Is Already Taken”. Garrett, can you register everygoodnameisalreadytaken.com? Thanks. By the way, there is something poetic about the fact “Every Good Name is Taken” was already taken.
[3:30pm] GARRETT: As of 3:28PM PST, Every Good Name is Already Taken, officially, now that EveryGoodNameIsAlreadyTaken.com is taken.
Yours,
Garrett (A Good Name, Taken) Law[3:31pm] BRIAN: I was also thinking that “Every Good Name” could be the name of the Web Series. I like the idea of the Blog/magazine that the characters write for being called “Every Good Name is Already Taken,” but I think these characters (the writers of the blog/magazine) would refer to it as “Every Good Name” and so should/would the viewers of the show. So…. I think we should also get everygoodname.com (which appears to be available) and refer to the show as “Every Good Name” (which is an abbreviated version of what the blog/mag is called). Thoughts?
[3:34pm] GARRETT: So now, Every Good Name is taken by us, meaning apparently that my previous email stating that every good name is already taken wasn’t totally accurate. Hopefully now, it is.
[3:42pm] BRIAN: Haha. Thanks, Garrett. We will let you know when we change our mind again.
