DSA Online | New Media Updates

This being fall-preview month, I followed up my presentation at CBC this week with a trip to Global. A smaller, more intimate session than in previous years (honestly, my preference with a hearing problem) we were shown a 30 minute video with clips from new and old shows to tease us about the new season.
For your own private session, visit the CanWest sales site.

Since I had been following Dollhouse’s renewal along side the Joss-cult online, I knew of Fox’s decision to renew back on my birthday in May (thank you for the gift Fox). While the community rejoiced, I had a another stretch of time to wait since Fox’s renewal didn’t necessarily mean that Global would pick up the show. Let me give you some background (or roller coaster) that was season 1 of this show.

If you know anything about the more nerdy, web-savvy and non-Nielsen measured web world, you’ll know that Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the spin-off sister show Angel and the short-lived (but spectacular) Firefly, is an internet God. Following his TV heartbreak, Joss went on to create spin-offs comics of the Buffy, Angel and Firefly series. Then came Dr. Horrible’s sing along blog. Perhaps you’ve noticed how Neil Patrick Harris is popping up everywhere lately? Here’s how the first online musical went down:

-Industry strikes. No one in the writer’s guild is writing anything for TV.
-Joss wants to do something. He’s a creator. He wants to show exec and viewers alike that we don’t have to be constrained by traditional TV.
-The web is in love with Joss and his oeuvres.
-Joss makes a 3-part web miniseries show by asking anyone he has ever worked with to participate in this project.
-It’s a musical (awesome music BTW).

The anticipation grew as more and more news of the upcoming “Dr Horrible’s sing-a-long blog” circulated the internet. Actors who had worked with him in the past proclaimed that Joss’s magic touch with the cult/geek community was going to strike gold. Final results: visitors crashed the site for the initial debut online, the episodes shot immediately to the top of the iTune video chart (where you could download each for about $4) and was viewed over 2.2 million times in it’s first week. No restrictions on geography with it being an independent work and recently, it was re-released on DVD completed with new songs and commentary.

Joss knows how to create for the web community, but Fox (and other broadcasters) just don’t get it.

You can imagine my shock and disbelief when I found out that Global had picked up Dollhouse season 1 last year with NO PLANS to stream it online. Completely missing the mark, thousands of web-savvy Canadians simply loaded up their bit-torrent feeds and watched it faithfully every Friday and Saturday on their own schedule – COMPLETELY AD FREE.

The current meter system, including the online-broadband viewing, is not working for these shows. People who watch cult-TV are not part of the Nielsen/BBM samples. Shows that traditionally do well with this community tend to be low-rated in traditional TV for a reason. If you have a sweet set-up where you can record your shows, or download them online and on demand, then why would you buy cable? Luckily for Fox, this year, they decided to listen. Dollhouse was hosted on their broadband site and saw soft numbers for the initial few episodes. On TV, Dollhouse was slotted on Friday night where it was pulling in respectable numbers for a Friday TV show, but not at all spectacular when compared to hot nights like M-Th. For weeks leading up to the finale, I had tweets and emails soaring back and forth imploring the community to try and watch it online to help show some ratings that the networks would understand. Unfortunately, Fox has already taken down season 1 (have to make those DVD sales), however, if you visited the site during it’s finale week, you saw the numbers soar from a modest thousand or so each week, to 10s of thousands viewing online right up to the finale. Moving away from traditional broadband to those pesky DVR viewers and you saw numbers jump around 30% in the states. In the end, Fox was convinced to give Dollhouse another season based on non-Nielsen measured data and through the understanding the Joss-shows sell DVDs. How’s that for unconventional TV thinking?

Fast forward ahead to my Global fall launch presentation. After sitting through 30 minutes of animated humour (Cleveland Show), a horrible cross between HS musical and the breakfast club which is sure to do great on conventional TV (Glee), a strategy focused on reaching non-Jay Leno viewers and still more NCIS (with LL Cool J and Chris O’Donnell); Dollhouse was finally mentioned. Global HAD decided to renew, but was keeping it on Friday nights. My elation was quickly swatted down when the programming director stated that he was uneasy with Fox’s decision to renew the show. He went on to say that while Fox’s reasoning based on unconventional viewing was sound, they would keep it on Friday nights to pair with The Guard. I waited until the presentation was over to ask if Global had any intention of putting the show up for Broadband viewing and if they would be hosting the first season online throughout the summer. After telling me that the show was currently online (lie) and that the second season would probably go up, I was dismissed with a hand motion as the next group came in to view the fall line up. As I was ushered out the door, I was shocked that Global would continue to be so flippant about the growing online community. Dear TV stations of the world over: Your audience wants to watch your shows (ADS INCLUDED). I would have through that with CanWest tightening up their belts, some really innovative and low-cost solutions would be coming out of their sales teams this year, but with the digital site not even being mentioned until we brought it up, I have limited interest in Global online this Fall. Let’s hope that Dollhouse does get streamed; but hey, whatever, I know where I can get it.