Denied! Joss Whedon’s “Dr. Horrible.” Score one for conventional TV…
I was a Buffy/Angel fan (although, y’know, not crazy or anything) and so I read with interest that Buffy-creator Joss Whedon was planning to launch a new 3 act online video musical called “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog” over the course of three days starting today (July 15, 2008) followed by a forced taking down of the video and a subsequent DVD release.
Dutifully this morning, I attempted to log into the official website… only to find that it doesn’t work (tried it on Firefox and IE, cleared the cache, disabled Norton… it ain’t me, folks).
I know, I know, by the time you read this, dear Mediavorous reader, it may well be up and running (I doubt it, but stranger things have happened), but the simple fact that a fairly technical, net sophisticated guy like me can’t find it bodes poorly for the video.
A little searching led me to the already-robust fan site for an online video that hasn’t successfully launched, and after following the site’s sundry tech supporty questions I STILL can’t see the video.
A few observations:
- Buffy and Angel were successful shows but they were niche successful shows– if the bandwidth backbone of the internet cannot support even niche-mass-viewing of video then we have problems and the much ballyhooed IPTV future make take a while longer to materialize than expected.
- Given the technical problems that I’ve already discussed, the fact that the fan site has a lot of viral-pass-along lingo and various pleas to spread the word is a clear missfire.
- While it’s exciting that a talented TV writer-director like Whedon (who also has done movies) is venturing into original content distribution online, this is not a test case for original online content finding a mass audience– THAT test case will be when somebody who isn’t already a famous known entity in the ever-slimming (movies and TV) mass culture business manages to distribute something online that gets real cultural traction.
- Whedon’s monetization plan with Dr. Horrible is directed at the retail home video channel, so the online test case doesn’t work here either.
- If I wanted to, and I might, I could spend $1.99 to buy a season pass for all three episodes on iTunes– another monetization plan and a good one given Whedon’s tech-savvy fan base. I find it frankly weird that the fan site does not mention that fans can bypass the “Problem loading page” hurly burly currently facing anybody who clicks to Dr. Horrible’s home page for less than two bucks. Do they not know? Are they presuming that — movie-like — the traffic to the home page on the first day will determine the overall economic success of the video?
- How do Whedon et. al. plan to take down all the copies of the video? That was a prominent feature in the NewTeeVee story (first link in this post), but surely some enterprising fan will put it up on YouTube or the like? Everything online is indelible: we all know that. Is this merely a somewhat vague euphemism for “taking down the home page and hoping that people buy the DVD rather than get it free elsewhere”?
I just checked the Dr. Horrible site again and it’s still down.
Time to walk the dog.
One Response to “Denied! Joss Whedon’s “Dr. Horrible.” Score one for conventional TV…”
1 Blaise 15 July 2008 @ 1:40 pm
It works, Brad! It seems to be loading through Hulu, but it works… I’m using Firefox 3 and Flash 9.
The monetization is an interesting subject: when will, say, Google or Yahoo decide to sink $10 million into original creative content (with someone marketable like Whedon or a real TV star), sell advertising, and see if they can make a few bucks? They’ve got the portal presence to get more eyeballs, one would think. Imagine everybody with gmail getting ads on their sidebar about a new show, only on Google video? Could it work?
Hulu’s making some money off of ad-supported online video, even if they’ve reduced the ad time to about 90 seconds for a 20 minute show. But it’s the same company doing the ads for 90 seconds so it does stick.