Unlike many meandering online comedy series, there are actual jokes written into the first episode, and lots of obscure baseball references, sure to please any sports fan (they’re lost on me, but I get the gist). Pre-launch promos for the show include Jordan Farmar of the LA Lakers and Dennis Rodman of the Crazytown Crazies.

In particular, the receptionist at Topps, Bev, plays her role brilliantly in the midst of a male-dominated cast and subject matter, reminiscent of Kaitlin Olson (Sweet Dee on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia).

The show has all kinds of things going right for it — niche subject matter paid off by thoughtful knowledgeable jokes. The editing is a tad slow, but it’s forgiven with the snappy writing. I’m a fan of the video content… but that’s all…

Now, for the marketing, I’ve been woefully disappointed in most of the support given to Vuguru shows, but Back on Topps takes the cake. The BackonTopps.com web site has no further information on any character (not even a mocked-up baseball card? come on!), no clickable links, no information on guest stars, and you can’t embed their video. A few days after Episode 1 appeared, they added some content to the BackonTopps.com site. Better, but not mind-blowingly awesome (which is what I demand!). Lots of “Coming Soon.” Eh. Still Strike 1.

Perhaps Back on Topps is hoping its Fox Sports/MSN Video home with provide it a super-targeted audience, but the user experience there is fourteen times more difficult to manuever. Strike 2.

Where is the heart of this show’s audience? Just 43 views on “special partner” Veoh for Episode 1. Episode 1 hasn’t fared better on YouTube. It barely has 400 500 750 views. Not the right view counts for such a good show. Strike 3?

You’d think that a niche show like backing from a smart guy like Eisner would have secured bigger distribution (uhhhh, ESPN?) and sports blogger attention ahead of launch. Without it, this show may be destined for the bench (I couldn’t resist).

Just got an email from THR and all three articles in it were about TV networks hemorrhaging audiences:

• ABC had three season premiere stinkers (all good shows, btw): Pushing Daisies dropped 55% over last year, Private Practice 38%, and Dirty Sexy Money 31%.
• Despite being the first basic cable show to earn a ‘Best Drama’ Emmy, Mad Men lost audience in the week after its big win, from 1.9 million the week before the Emmys to 1.6 the week after.
• And despite Dexter’s big gain in audience (likely due to its temporary move to CBS during the writer’s strike), Californication lost audience as well.

Broadcast networks, cable networks, and premium cable networks all getting the same story. They’re losing audience.

Add on this article from the New York Observer: Only Two-and-a-Half Sitcom Writers Left in Hollywood.

“At one point in the 1990s, NBC had 16 half-hour sitcoms on the air. This fall, it has four. And two of those four—The Office and 30 Rock—though critically beloved (both are up for Best Comedy Emmys on Sunday, Sept. 21), are struggling to be embraced by mainstream audiences.”

Yikes. Makes it a difficult sell to work up the courage, nerve, and gusto necessary to write a TV spec script, doesn’t it? With all the money in the world for advertising, production value, and star power, what the heck is going on?

We’re in the midst of a painful shift of media, and everyone is feeling the pinch. Writers, directors, actors, executives, agents, everyone. Especially up-and-comers that are working dangerously hard to ‘break into’ the business. Will there be any ‘business’ left when they get there?

Well, the only answer is: adapt or die. The only thing failing faster than traditional network’s’ TV shows are traditional networks’ online shows. They’re suffering from the same symptoms. These fledgling show concepts are expected to bolster the weight of a lot of overhead (only with less money). They’re hoping the independent producers will sell out their ideas so that the future revenue will remain in the corporation. You can’t build a lasting model that way, when self-distribution costs are so low. Everyone has to work fast, cheap, and good. The trifecta of creativity.

The audience (their attention to ads being the primary source of revenue these days) is not staying with any studio, network, or medium. They’re fragmenting like crazy, and it’s up to the individual creator to harness, compel, and motivate an audience to stick around.

Adapt or die. It’s no longer good enough to just write. You have to write and edit and web design. Or know about online video distribution, direct, and act. Or all six.

Creativity is the only thing that’s still pure about this business, and a new wave of audience is seeking it out. Online originals, TV-on-the-Web (Hulu, ABC.com, etc.), and Tivo are all killing traditional numbers because they give choice and satisfaction back to the consumer.

What are you doing to increase your skills? Editing better, writing better, marketing better? We’re learning that big, slow overhead won’t get the job done. Nimble, quick responses to audience will build an audience.

Update: Fresh Hell reports on shows that gained audience this fall — most of them on CBS and CW. My rant still applies…

I stumbled upon an illustrator who shares my passion for the 1960’s advertising drama, and has created a whole slew of retro illustrations from the show’s most memorable moments, including Joan and the Xerox (below), Duck and the Dog, and Betty and the Chair.

All are available for download for desktops or other fine use. You can also buy some of the work at Zazzle (t-shirts, framed prints, etc.).

Link to: NobodysSweetheart.com
Link to: Mad Men Illustrations on Flickr

LonelyGirl15 Creators Not So Lonely Anymore

Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried Have Built Their DIY Web Series into a Million-Dollar Online Production Company
By Robert Gustafson and Alec McNayr

On an otherwise average Tuesday morning in September 2006, Greg Goodfried made an ominous move. An associate lawyer at Mitchell, Silberberg & Knupp, he walked into his boss’ office and shut the door behind him. He informed his boss that the following day he would be featured in both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times as one of the masterminds behind the popular YouTube video blogger known simply as “LonelyGirl15.” The articles, he explained, would confirm suspicions that the confessional-style videos were actually part of a fictional series created by he and co-creator Miles Beckett.

Lucky for Goodfried, his boss had actually heard of the Internet sensation and offered him a six-month sabbatical to finish the series, after which he could return to the firm. He never went back. Instead, he and Beckett turned their experience creating LonelyGirl15, now viewed over 100 million times, into an online production company called EQAL. In May 2008—just two years after uploading their first video—EQAL announced a $5 million round of venture capital financing.

We sat down with Goodfried and Beckett less than two weeks after moving into EQAL’s new offices in Sherman Oaks, California.

Doing It Themselves

Similar to Goodfried, writer-director Miles Beckett stepped away from a promising career to venture into online entertainment. Through fresh out of medical school, it was Beckett who originally conceived the idea of a girl on YouTube communicating via a video blog.

“He pitched me the idea,” recalls Goodfried about LonelyGirl15, “She would be an active part of the [online] community, and over a few months we’d start trickling in information: that she’s home-schooled, that her parents are in a cult, and that she’s being prepared for a ceremony. Then, after three months, she‘ll run away and you won’t be sure if she made it or not and we’ll be on the covers of magazines. And I was like, ‘that’s the best f-ing idea I’ve ever heard, let’s go do this thing.’”

They didn’t, however, intend the Web series to take center stage. “Originally, LonelyGirl15 was going to be a prequel,” adds Beckett, “We planned to shoot an independent feature film simultaneous to filming the online series and sell it to a DVD distributor or something.”

Unfortunately, they underestimated just how much effort launching LonelyGirl15 would take. “Just producing an online show is the most overwhelming experience anyone could go through,” says Beckett.

The duo spent a month prior to launching the first episode setting up YouTube and MySpace profiles for Bree, the namesake character of LonelyGirl15. In that time, “Bree” established a real relationship with the online community, so when “she” uploaded her first video, it had a built-in audience.

To build the mystique of the show, Beckett and Goodfried also created a fan Web site run by a fictional and nameless “superfan.” The site stirred conversation and offered a look into the mania the duo hoped to incite. “The idea was that a group of [real-life] fans— along with the [fictional] characters—were going to search for the missing girl,” Beckett says.

By the sixth video—just two and a half weeks into their venture—a LonelyGirl15 video received 500,000 views. Goodfried and Beckett decided to give up their feature film ambitions and focus their efforts on the online series.

The Show is Everywhere

EQAL’s tagline is ”The show is everywhere,” which represents Beckett and Goodfried’s view on the difference between online media and television. “It’s about breaking the fourth wall,” says Beckett, “All good writing is suspension of disbelief, and in TV, you suspend it within the walls of that television screen. It doesn’t extend into your living room. For an Internet show, it’s everywhere. The reality extends into your bedroom, into the real world, and onto other Web sites.” Adds Goodfried, “If you want to take Sex and the City and adapt it from a TV show into a movie, you wouldn’t string four episodes together and put it on a big screen: you would write a three-act structure and shoot it differently.”

Goodfried lists interactivity as the most important characteristic of any Web series: “An online show has three core pieces; the top layer is some type of daily or weekly consistent online content. Then there must be a community-based Web site where the hardcore fans can gather [and participate in] chat rooms, forums, and social networking. The third layer is then some sort of interaction between that community and content. It could be as minimal as American Idol fans texting in their votes, or as extreme as LonelyGirl15, where we might give out ‘secret coordinates,’ and, using them, the viewer can actually go to Central Park, dig up a flash drive, make a video of themselves, and upload it. Then the fan is in the storyline itself.”

To leverage Web interactivity into a story-based experience, the team had to think about all levels of online communication. “We think about [MySpace] profile pages, chats, messaging, and live video streaming like a feature film director would think about camera angles and set design,” says Beckett.

The LonelyGirl15 experience extends past the confessional-style episodic videos. “Each character has their own profile page and can submit their own videos,” says Goodfried. “It’s as if these are two [real] kids. This could actually happen,” adds Beckett, “And there were repercussions of each one uploading a video.”

The series, therefore, is subject to the rules inherent in someone broadcasting their life and thoughts online. LonelyGirl15 is, by its nature, interactive in a way that could never be done on TV. Says Beckett, ”The hardest thing is to be able to think in a linear narrative, but then take that linear narrative and explode it outside the walls of everything.”

Restructuring The Definition of a Series

“Since our initial concept was a feature film, it had a three act structure. It was two or three pages with major beats, inciting incidents, and so forth,” says Beckett.

But as LonelyGirl15 became an online-only experience, the team had to rethink their definition of a series. “The pace online is much faster than TV,” says Beckett, “Every week on the show, something dramatic happens, and then the next week again, and then again and again. You literally burn through plot.”

Goodfried continues the questioning of the status quo: “What is ‘an episode?’ Well, we make videos five days a week: on Monday, we introduce the conflict. By the middle of the week there is heightened dramatic tension, and then by Friday, there is resolution and a cliffhanger. So there are beats each week that fans can get excited about and talk about.”

Just because the show is interactive doesn’t mean that there’s no writing involved. “It’s all scripted. One hundred percent,” admits Beckett, ”As we’ve expanded the team to include a director who isn’t writing and an editor who isn’t directing, we’ve found we have to be even tighter on the script.”

The experience of writing LG15 for almost two years sharpened their skills. “I had written a few screenplays for fun, and also wrote a few articles for my college’s humor magazine, but doing an online show where I literally I had to break story every week made me a much better writer. It’s like writing boot camp!” says Beckett with a chuckle.

You Don’t Have To Do It Alone

“Over the past couple of years, there really haven’t been that many shows online that have achieved really, really big viewership. I don’t thinks it’s due to a lack of creativity or talent; I think it’s a lack of a company like ours,” says Beckett.

“Sure, you can do it by yourself,” explains Goodfried, “Put something together, get something out there, and maybe it gets popular, but to make an online show into an actual business where you can quit your day job, you need something else.” Beckett inserts, ”The bottom line is you’re not going to get anywhere unless you collaborate.”

“We wanted to do more interactive shows, and we knew we would need financing, ad sales, legal, accounting, and someone to build our website and run it,” says Beckett, “But there was nobody who could offer that. Some people offered pieces, but nobody offered the whole solution.”

With the formation of EQAL, Beckett and Goodfried now have the resources to build large-scale interactive Web series. They recently signed with CBS to help the network expand the online experience of their flagship TV shows. But as they reflect on starting a simple Web series, they admit that the basics of storytelling are what really matter.

“Honestly, we were lucky that we did [LonelyGirl15] when we did it. We hit at the same time as YouTube, and that’s a hard thing to replicate, but we’re a perfect example of not needing the ‘right’ equipment to do the job. I didn’t have a Mac or Final Draft, because we didn’t have enough money to pay for it,” admits Beckett. “We shot with a Logitech Webcam plugged into a laptop,” follows Goodfried, “We had no lights, just a desk lamp and a window.”

Beckett summarizes, “the truth is you don’t need it. You just need a good story, and in this case, something that will work in the medium.”

If two guys with a Webcam can turn a story into a multi-million dollar, industry-changing production company, what can you do with the tools you have at your disposal?

iTunes recently became the #1 retailer of music (physical or digital), and everyone seems to be gunning for them. Amazon has its own download service, MySpace Music just launched, Best Buy is buying Napster to help them sell digital devices, and the big music companies are still trying to build their own portal/download service.

After almost ten years of digital music, the traditional music industry still can’t find a way to stop the hemorrhaging. That’s scary.

What does this say about the traditional TV and film business? Digital downloads and file-sharing hasn’t caught the mainstream culture like it did for movies, but big media is facing a squeeze. As hard drive sizes increase, and download speeds quicken… the barrier for trading/downloading/sharing/storing video content in high-quality (that’s the key) is getting lower and lower…

What can we learn from the music business to prepare for what’s about to happen in TV and film?

Indie labels rock. They reach smaller audiences, but the talent development is there. The niche audience is a fervent, loyal one.

Distribution matters, but sharing is better. People don’t just want to buy media, they want to experience it with friends. That “experiencing” used to be gathering at a friend’s house, listening to a record player, but today is trading notes and comments on Facebook.

Free media leads to other revenue streams. Many bands want to give away music for free (or for donation, a la Radiohead), because they know it leads to other revenue: touring, merch, gift sets, etc. By the way, their free media doesn’t come with an pre-roll ad (take note, video networks).

What else is happening in music that we should be looking at?

Some are backed by big media companies (Sony/Crackle, MSN), some are fiercely independent (Ask A Ninja’s Kent Nichols and Doug Sarine, Felicia Day), and some came from the traditional entertainment world with money and contacts (Brent Friedman, Joss Whedon).

Of course, everyone’s talking about how Tina Fey played Sarah Palin, but the rest of the show was a bit of a let down… except for the absurdity that is Adam Samberg’s Space Olympics. I don’t know whether to praise it or shame it. In the end, I’ll share it:

It was billed to feature live commentary from director Jon Favreau (over the movie, a la DVD commentary), but before he started, he told us about his fight to get Robert Downey Jr. into the lead role… and low and behold, Downey himself had snuck in the back. So they did the commentary together.

And it was amazing.

Some thoughts from the experience:

• There won’t be a director’s commentary on the DVD. Favreau hinted at taping the event and posting it online. I hope he does.
• Robert Downey Jr. looks different in person than he does on film. He’s softer-looking, and smaller than you’d expect. I attribute this to great acting talent.
• It seems like 90% of the dialog in the movie was either improvised or written the night before (or hours before) shooting. Downey in particular seemed to relish messing with people (his sit-down press conference moment was improvised). Even the comedic moments with Stark’s robots came from improvisations on set, that were able to be heightened and called back as they shot scenes in order.
• Downey showed up on set even on days he wasn’t shooting. He was genuinely passionate about the project and the work.
• Gwyneth Paltrow took the role and said that, now that she has a family, she works best before 9 PM. Her first shot, at Disney Hall, wasn’t until 3 AM. Oops, says Favreau.
• Most scenes were shot with two cameras, allowing the actors to overlap each other’s lines, and to give Favreau many options for editing. (that’s how we’ve shot all our projects, too, btw)
• The heavily-CGI-ed suit-up scene was only added when Marvel saw how well Transformers did, and they ponied up an additional $2 million.
• The Iron Man sequel is not 100% official, but is being penned by Tropic Thunder scribe Justin Theroux. (Though, Downey said that he’d throw that script aside as much as he did on this one.)

All in all, Iron Man is a great movie that really does teeter between comic book action and indie-film reality. The tone and creativity of it works great, and being a part of the screening only beholdens me to Favreau and Downey’s work even more.

But I was impressed with I saw these introduction videos of the 14th season’s new cast members Eric Price, Erica Ash, and Matt Braunger. (14 seasons? really?)

I think this is a great roll-out strategy for generating some buzz around new blood. I think it would also be worthwhile to see the new cast members blog or create regular videos about their own experience coming into the world of MadTV. It would give fans something to sink their teeth into, and perhaps separate it from its NY doppelganger.

Eric Price

• Fark.com
• The Onion (Ghost Of Christmas Future Taunts Children With Visions Of PlayStation 5)
• Cracked.com (The 7 Most Useless Transformers Ever)
• YTMND.com (short for “you’re the man now, dog.”)
• Married to the Sea
• Garfield Minus Garfield
• College Humor (Street Fighter: The Later Years)
• Fail Blog
• The Superficial

And from the Fail Blog, a marriage proposal nightmare: