The Wire; Webisodes
by Will
I was exhausted last night. But I was dying to finish season 4 of The Wire, and so Tabitha watched three episodes in a row, not an easy task as it’s an hour each of densely-packed crime drama. It feels very dude to have someone watch a show you love. “I’m a guy! Come absorb this media with me! You HAVE to absorb this media! This media is so good!” But you know what? It really IS a good show, and the ending to season 4 was heartbreaking and good.
Separate point: lots of my friends are making smallish amounts of money acting or creating videos for the web. Good that my friends are getting some cash for their talents. The bad side: no one really watches videos on the web, unless it’s a video of birds attacking people at weddings. Especially “webisodes.” Unless it’s on Channel 101 or Channel 102 — I automatically skip anything with “Episode Whatever” in the title. Except for Nailed It, because that shit is genius.
The other thing I hate about big companies paying my friends to make stuff is that these big companies are overly-concerned about controlling the exposure. They want to own my friends stuff — which means if my friends have free versions of their stuff up, it has to come down. Take them down from YouTube! From Channel 102! From your site! Which means: take them down from the places that people are actually watching them. Hello money, goodbye audience. I’d recommend: eyeballs first, advertising later. Like Rocketboom. Like Google. Like everything that has actually worked on the internet.
Comments
I’m confused. Is your counsel “eyeballs first, advertising later” directed at people making videos, or at the big companies who are paying people to produce content? If the former, it seems to make sense: build up interest, and hopefully demand, for your product/brand by making it as widely available as possible, and THEN distribute subsequently-produced content through a channel by which advertising revenue can be realized.
If the latter, though, I’m not sure: why should a company pay for content if viewers can and will simultaneously get it free elsewhere? Its advertising value derives largely from the company’s exclusive rights to display, or “occupy”, the produced content. Think of it this way: what if your landlord (who owns your apartment, or, analogously, is the talent who has produced the content) to whom you (the big company, like that one with its headquarters over at Columbus Circle) pay rent, decided to offer other people (like youtube or funnyordie) the opportunity to stay in your apartment for free during times when you’re not in it? You’d be pissed! Part of what you’re paying for is the exclusive right to enjoy the property, and whatever benefits you gain from it, which are naturally diminished by others having access to it.
My heart is not with the companies, and I’m not throwing my stake in the ground on any of the above (there are counterarguments and alternative assumptions that I can think of, obviously); I’m just trying to take account of the logic of their nonbreathing profit incentive in this context.
I guess my alternative is: keep the existing free versions up, and make MORE of the creators’ work available on a site with advertising. Even though it makes sense for the corporations to want, even need, to have exclusive rights to show the property —- what good does it do if NO ONE sees it?
How many episodes total has anyone seen on a) Comedy Central’s Motherload or b) Superdeluxe.
For me, the answer is: 2 videos on Superdeluxe, because I was in them.
I made you wander a used book store while I conversed passionately with a stranger about the perils of urban youth teaching. It felt tied in to the wire oddly enough and I had to cry myself to sleep.
i’m going through the wire a third time with one of my friends who has never seen it. i will sit through those episodes again and again to get my friends to watch it. i still have not seen any of season five, but hopefully in a couple of weeks, my friends who have cable will have caught up.
I’m with Will. Although Billy P’s analogy is hilarious.
I’d be fine with anyone staying in my apartment, provided that they paid half the rent and everything was always untouched and in perfect condition and I never saw or heard them, ever, at any time. That’s a more appropriate analogy to what Will’s suggesting.
If someone hired DerrickComedy to make videos — they’d be dumb to make them take all of their videos down off of YouTube. That’s what I mean. Hire them to make more videos, and with THAT content — do what you like — make it exclusive, never show it — whatever.
But the free stuff that’s up — that’s what is making DerrickComedy a valuable marketable commodity. It’s making them known.
I’m not speaking well.