The First Stirrings of My Golden Age
An article I wrote for The Cud which is due out on the thirteenth makes mention of a new Golden Age of Content. This is my hopeful dream/best case scenario for the future of webisodes.
One of the first indicators of this Golden Age is the rapid increase of network content available from iTunes, etc. And then I find that CBS is adding Survivor and its CSI shows, among others, to the site.
Of course, they still have their heads firmly stuck in the broadcast model. The above MediaPost article quotes Larry Kramer, the president of CBS Digital Media as saying "We like the idea of going up at the end of the season... The only really new shows up there are ours."
He is technically correct but clearly my hypothetical Golden Age is a long way off. Competition will ultimately be less important than viral popularity. If Desperate Housewives is better than Commander in Chief -and it is- then it will get more downloads. In my Golden Age the attempts to shovel repeats of B-Grade content onto the online audience when your competitors have come to the end of their program run won't work. The solution will not be to sneak inferior products onto iTunes in the middle of the night, the solution will be to provide better content than your competitors.
That is what I mean by a Golden Age. Hey... Why not be optimistic?
One of the first indicators of this Golden Age is the rapid increase of network content available from iTunes, etc. And then I find that CBS is adding Survivor and its CSI shows, among others, to the site.
Of course, they still have their heads firmly stuck in the broadcast model. The above MediaPost article quotes Larry Kramer, the president of CBS Digital Media as saying "We like the idea of going up at the end of the season... The only really new shows up there are ours."
He is technically correct but clearly my hypothetical Golden Age is a long way off. Competition will ultimately be less important than viral popularity. If Desperate Housewives is better than Commander in Chief -and it is- then it will get more downloads. In my Golden Age the attempts to shovel repeats of B-Grade content onto the online audience when your competitors have come to the end of their program run won't work. The solution will not be to sneak inferior products onto iTunes in the middle of the night, the solution will be to provide better content than your competitors.
That is what I mean by a Golden Age. Hey... Why not be optimistic?
posted by Gordon White at 10:07 am
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