A Niche Audience and a Recognizable Star
June 16th, 2008 by Alec McNayrPosted in Drama, Online, Producing, Series | No Comments »
I met with Christine Park of Paulist Productions a few weeks back, and aside from having an amazing office on PCH that overlooks the Pacific Ocean, they have a new web series from which I learned a good lesson.
Tyler’s Ride is a 12-episode series [guest] starring Christian music star Jeremy Camp. The company is self-hosting the video files, so viewership numbers aren’t readily available, but I’m really interested to see what a niche star like Camp brings to the table. The Tyler’s Ride MySpace page has 1546 friends, if that’s any indication.
The show is a prodigal son-type story with Christian undertones (and overtones, I hear, later in the story). I’m also really interested to know what kind of reaction the audience will have to the “course-shift” in the story. Could this show carry a secular audience and then keep them with the introduction of overtly Christian themes? I think not.
Then again, Jeremy Camp will likely only draw young Christian fans, and without a big marketing campaign, the series probably won’t gather a broad audience to begin with.
But that’s the power of the Web, right? To deliver content to a niche audience. If your production values are good, you can produce on the cheap, and you have a compelling story, you can monetize a project that wouldn’t have made it to TV.
Christian content is certainly an interesting market, and for too long has felt either too hokey or too preachy. Certainly, online distribution can give new voice to new relevant artists, which is a good thing no matter what you believe.
