Quarterlife Numbers in Question at NewTeeVee
December 5th, 2007 by Alec McNayrPosted in Metrics, Producing, Series | No Comments »
Chris Albrecht at NewTeeVee writes about the viewership numbers of Marshall Herskovitz’s Quarterlife. The Quarterlife team claims 2 million views, but the publicly-available viewer numbers may say otherwise.
Based on Marshall’s response via comment, the numbers mentioned in the article are in question, but the primary issue is clear. The success of an online series is still a crapshoot. It takes some unknown combination of show quality, creator celebrity, viewer buzz, and offline promotion.
My comment on the story:
It seems like there are some questions on the surface issues of this story, but the themes mentioned are perfectly clear.
There is still no real success model for video serial content online. Even when the “big boys†from film and television do something for the web, it’s still an educated guess, and, as Marshall himself points out in his comment, the results of Quarterlife are positive, but not consistently so.
But I think that’s a good thing — it forces him (and all of us following along) to analyze two important things: a) what builds an audience immediately (you might call this “viral-ness†or “one-time attentionâ€) and b) what builds an audience over time. I assume that most people reading this site are interested in the latter.
I think two things really affect the popular of online content — one is basic (consistency) and one is nebulous (value).
When considering the world of online video, consistency is rare. There are no standards of production quality, delivery schedules, writing, acting, authenticity. It’s all over the place. So, setting an expectation in the mind of your viewer and then consistently delivering on that expectation is a huge advantage over 99.9% of the market. This is an important lesson I learned from Ask A Ninja — their production values are not amazing, but their voice and delivery schedule are. I also learned this lesson on my web series, Flipper Nation. The production value was good and people responded, but we didn’t deliver new episodes to meet demand. So we lost out on an opportunity. Good learning experience. As for Quarterlife, the jury is out on whether or not a large population of people want to watch the show, but I appreciate Marshall taking a huge risk and promising to deliver regularly on his promises (high production value and regular, longer-form delivery). That’s a huge step in bringing all of our games to a higher level.
Secondly, value. This is harder to strategize. How do you tell your viewers that you value their watching your stuff? I bet that Marshall and his team know that, amongst the viewing audience of Quarterlife, there is a small audience of hardcore fans. His history and his paid-for promotions brought them in. And so, his work should be to incentivize this small group to become show evangelists. To promote the Quarterlife brand, to grow the overall numbers. To build the conversation. To reward them for doing so. Increased interactivity, increased exposure, celebrity, or access. These are all structures made for your core fans (not the casual viewer).
So, how do we build our core audience to go out and grow our overall numbers? Well, that’s the question really being asked in this article, I think. Sorry for the long rant. I’d love to hear how are other people here engaging their core fans and growing their overall numbers?
