‘Quarterlife’ dead on arrival at NBC
“Quarterlife” is all done at NBC.
The webisode series from the creators of “thirtysomething” drew a measly 3.1 million viewers in its debut on the network Tuesday night. Those are the worst numbers in that primetime slot in decades, since anyone can remember. In trade talk, that’s a 1.3 rating/4 share. Yikes.
“It never should have been a network show,” co-creator Marshall Herskovitz told students at Harvard the morning after the bomb fell. (The “Quarterlife” segments did fit perfectly into a one-hour slot, however. Hmm)
Give NBC credit for looking to the Web for some experimental programming as the writers strike dragged on. Of course, Herskovitz and partner Ed Zwick know how to make hit shows, so it wasn’t like the peacock’s suits turned to “The Adventures of the Star Wars Kid” or “The Ysabella Brave Musical Hour.” (Both of which could be an improvement on some primetime shows.)
“Quarterlife” apparently will be back on television via Bravo, the cable arts channel owned by NBC Universal.
The web series is up to episode 30something now, with a solid and active fan base. Having 3 million people take a look is a good thing for the show, at least, when you consider episodes draw something like 100,000 people.
The show can be found on the “Quarterlife” web site and on MySpace. (Being professionally hip, the web show’s site is still in “beta” after five months.)
NBC chieftain Ben Silverman told the Hollywood Reporter: “The Web site traffic went up a huge amount and we continue to try new things and new models,” he said. “It’s very inexpensive but we hoped for higher ratings.”
As for Herskovitz and Zwick, they’re asking online viewers to upload their own shows for a chance to work with the old pros.
Stage6 high-def site is going dark
It’s curtains for DivX’s showcase site for high-definition video, Stage6. The last day is Thursday. DivX already has unplugged the popular site’s upload functionality, so this looks like it’s for real.
The site was basically a YouTube for people shooting in high-def. Which could be just about anyone, given the low cost of HD gear these days. It also included other typical YouTube-type fare, which as trailers, anime and music videos.
The latest traffic figures show something like 17 million users a month.
So why kill the site?
Tom (aka Spinner) of DivX wrote on the online video site: “The short answer is that the continued operation of Stage6 is a very expensive enterprise that requires an enormous amount of attention and resources that we are not in a position to continue to provide. There are a lot of other details involved, but at the end of the day it’s really as simple as that.”
The well-connected blog Tech Crunch talks about those details, saying the shutdown came after “a ridiculous battle of egos at the DivX board level” that caused the show-runners to quit. It’s a complicated story concerning a deal to sell the video service; you can read about the boardroom battles on that blog. DivX had no comment on the report.
Stage6 was launched after DivX went public in late October 2006, and went into beta the next summer. Since then, wanna-be filmmakers and real ones have packed the site with content.
Meanwhile, DivX stock took a pounding after Monday’s announcement.
The video content reportedly is being sent to other unspecified content sites.
I’d recomend taking a quick look at the site before tomorrow — this is what we’ll all expect to see from video-sharing services in the future. Right now, the shutdown is a real loss to the cause.
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Blu-ray vs. downloads: war that wasn’t
Media thrives on conflict. Hard to write a good story without the old push-pull. So when the video industry entered into its second civil war — HD DVD vs. Blu-ray — the consumer press and the trades had plenty of drama and metaphors to work with. Until last week, when Blu-ray accepted HD DVD’s surrender at Toshiba headquarters in Japan.
The media and tech bloggers wasted no time in bringing on the next threat to Blu-ray: downloading and streaming of movies and TV shows via the Internet. Perhaps the Blu-ray victory was hollow, some speculated.
Good story line, but way premature. Anyone with experience in watching movies and shows over the Net knows this remains early adopter territory.
A lot of progress in terms of consumer convenience has been made in the year since this blog launched, but we’re still (mostly) a forgiving core audience of teens, college students and tech hounds.
Two voices of reason popped up:
David Pogue, the talented home tech writer for the New York Times, tackled the subject of digital downloads on Thursday: “The Internet movie download era is more distant than pundits think, for four colossal reasons.” — limited broadband penetration; lack of extra features such as director’s commentaries, deleted scenes; audio and video quality; and the cluelessness of Hollywood.
Here’s Pogue:
“Today’s movie-download services bear the greasy policy fingerprints of the movie studio executives — and when it comes to the new age of digital movies, these people are not, ahem, known for their vision.
“For example, no matter which movie-download service you choose, you’ll find yourself facing the same confusing, ridiculous time limits for viewing. You have to start watching the movie you’ve rented within 30 days, and once you start, you have to finish it within 24 hours.
“Where’s the logic? They’ve got your money, so why should they care if you start watching on the 30th day or the 31st?”
He goes on to review the leading download/streaming services, such as Apple TV and Vudu.
The conclusion: “When competing with the humble DVD, Internet movie boxes do poorly on price, selection and viewing flexibility (that is, how much time you have to watch). Their sole DVD-smashing feature is the convenience; you get the movie right now.”
Duncan Riley of TechCrunch listed his reasons online video downloads are not about to kill Blu-ray:
- “Substantial generations have grown up with physical media, and this isn’t about to change tomorrow. … Like music, that is going to take at least 5-10 years.”
- “There are still people who prefer consuming video on their TV sets. … Until such time that Net or network-enabled devices become mainstream, TV and physical media will retain the upper hand.”
- “The days of cheap unlimited internet access in the United States may well be coming to an end as more and more download video and use P2P services. The low cost of bandwidth itself was a historical quirk that came about due to the first dot com bubble.”
I think Blu-rays should have a good decade of life left in them, with increasing consumer acceptance — unless the various compatibility issues between player makers and disc makers don’t get sorted out. (HD DVD had its issues, but it was clearly more “market ready” than Blu-ray.)
Watching movies on computers will always be a secondary pastime, so the providers of online video content had best use that decade to figure out how to get the Internet directly plugged into those TVs — with minimal hassle and maximum A/V quality.
Yeah, that’s one reason I own Apple stock.
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‘American Idol’ bakes iTunes a coconut cake
I always dug “The Gong Show,” but never had much use for the excitable Fox franchise “American Idol.”
Man, one Whitney Houston in this world is enough. And why are the hipster contestants always dorks when you get to know them?
So the news that the iTunes Store has opened an “American Idol” wing could find a better publicity outlet than this online video blog, it would seem.
But that was before I checked out the free video offering on the iTunes “Idol” page.
Squeezed in with the 24 semifinalists’ audio performances (99 cents a pop) is a free download of Renaldo Lapuz, the latest goofball to go nationwide.
The Filipino-American guy dressed like a coconut layer cake is all over the Internet by now, singing his “We’re Brothers Forever.” But here on iTunes you get a beautifully presented version of the white wonder’s from Wednesday’s “Idol.” Fab.
Moving forward to the post-Lapuz era: When fans want video downloads of the “Idol” finalist performances — from the usual hunks and babes — they’ll run $1.99 on iTunes. Those videos will be available come March 11.
Fans can check out the videos for free on the “American Idol” site and then get their pristine archive downloads for iPods and iPhones.
“We think ‘American Idol’ viewers are going to love the ability to purchase and download ‘Idol’ performances from iTunes,” said Apple’s Eddy Cue. Perhaps. They certainly have loved downloading the free videos all this time …
Meanwhile, the wonderfully awful Lapuz is being hailed as the best thing on “Idol” in years. The three judges actually got off their duffs and partied with the singer. Great TV, but let’s see: A horrid but earnest performance — the judges getting into the act before issuing the big rejection — hmmm.
What a concept. Didn’t Chuck Barris and Co. do that 10 times a day?
Toshiba kills HD DVD format
Toshiba surrendered in the costly high-definition format war Tuesday, officially killing off the HD DVD platform.
Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida cited Warner Bros.’ decision to go Blu-ray exclusive: “That had tremendous impact,” he said. “If we had continued, that would have created problems for consumers, and we simply had no chance to win.”
Toshiba vowed to support current HD DVD players.
Nishida indicated the situation with U.S. film studios backing the format was unresolved, the AP reported early today.
