Sing along with Dr Horrible (aka Dr Adorable)
So the Brothers Whedon have hit the smallest screen of all with their new venture, Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. An experiment in mashing television and internet video, despite some teething problems mainly to do with the limitations of the existing infrastructure, it seems to be a hit.
But then again, this is Joss ‘Midas Touch’ Whedon we’re talking about. A writer with a pre-existing base of loyal, nay, rabid fans has a certain license to experiment.
But I am wondering if this makes it a valid experiment. Given that it was another Whedon baby, Firefly, which had enough motivated fans to give serious consideration to a subscription model of funding for production, I can’t help but ponder what would have happened to a project like Dr Horrible if it didn’t have this pre-existing fan network to tap into.
I think I have a good comparison. Sanctuary is a web-based serial working on a hybrid TV/internet model that is analogous (but not parallel, it must be said) to Dr Horrible. Like Dr Horrible, Sanctuary started as a web-broadcast with the intention of then slotting into more mainstream distribution models (TV for Sanctuary, DVD for Dr Horrible). Sanctuary has managed to achieve its goal - it was recently picked up by SciFi, familiar territory for its star and creative talent Amanda Tapping. Tapping was probably Sanctuary’s biggest initial draw when the project was nascent — she had a fairly strong fan base from her prior work, most notably as Dr Sam Carter in Stargate:SG1 and Atlantis.
But, to be frank, Tapping’s fanbase is a blip compared to the Whedon behometh.
The first two episodes of Sanctuary were free, globally, on YouTube, after which it switched to a subscription model. I watched and really enjoyed the first two eps: then I switched off and pretty much totally forgot about it. Even though I don’t have subscription stats, I suspect I wasn’t the only one.
So the immediate test for TV/Net hybrid broadcasting is two-fold. One, will people follow a series as it hops formats. Will Sanctuary find an audience on SciFi? Will people buy the Dr Horrible DVD? Two, what will happen when someone tries to launch a similar project without the pre-existing loyal audience?
Star power is not a strange concept - it’s the reason Will Smith and Matt Damon make bank. But Dr Horrible and Sanctuary are the long tail of broadcasting. There is room for lots of different programs, and given the shifting dynamics allowed by desktop production, a lot of new voices may go down this road. Internet broadcasting comes ready equipped to tap into, and even create, fannish social dynamics around their own shows: Sanctuary made it a core activity with Sanctuaryforall, and the Whedon’s are making good use of places like Facebook and Twitter. By inviting audiences to feel part of the show, they become invested in it - ownership begats interest, maintaining audience attention (and indeed participation) even when your audience might be overrun by a plethora of texts and signals all vying for attention. Or, if you get it wrong, your new YouTube epic gets lost in the noise.
In addition, internet broadcasting unlocks viewers from the broadcast schedule and the broadcast footprint. The audience model maps more closely to the network than the mass. This leads to a third, more long-term question: how will mainstream media deal with this new puppy?
If we take their reaction to file-sharing as a preliminary benchmark, traditional mass media industries don’t always react well to change. I can already picture executives at Viacom scratching their heads as they try to figure out a way to pitch Dr Horrible to advertisers. The first thing SciFi did when they acquired Sanctuary was to order a complete reshoot of the (rather good) pilot episode to better fit the television broadcast model. Mainstream TV might hack and chop to make internet broadcasting fit the status quo, if it acknowledges its presence at all.
This is why I think questions #1 and #2 are so important. If people do follow these Net shows as they hop formats, then mainstream media will see that there is money in them thar virtual hills and take notice (quite possibly continuing the oil industry metaphor there with a few slash and burn tactics and the decimation of the local population). But if people only follow the ‘big’ names (Whedon, Tapping, favourite writer/director/actor here) then the pool of high-profile net/TV projects will quickly be exhausted, leaving mainstream media to smile with teeth as they throw up their hands and say ‘we tried, but it just wasn’t viable as a long-term strategy.’
But if people continue to support internet broadcasting as new names and faces come onto the scene…well, that’s where things will get interesting.
