Former Walt Disney (DIS) CEO Michael Eisner formed a new studio called, Vuguru, which created for its first project "Prom Queen," which is a scripted mystery that entails 80 episodes 90 seconds long each. As of today, May 2, the show is on its 31st episode and is doing fairly well.
The short-form teen soap opera has been receiving about 200,000 visits a day, and to date has received 5.2 million views from its debut on April 2.
There is really no way of knowing what these measurements show, as there's really nothing to compare it with online. But if you were to measure it against cable TV, it would be considered a low-rated cable series. Of course the cost of production compared to a cable series would be so much lower that the profit potential would be much higher.
Something very encouraging is the number of friends the show has garnered on its MySpace (NWS-A) site, which is over 18,000 at this time. The site also accounts for 3.7 million of the 5.2 million views the site has received. One reason for this is MySpace gets to air the online show 12 hours before other online distributors do.
Whatever online niche you serve, you should consider doing something like this. It could be an online training video series that leads up to selling a product or service that takes it beyond the basics, to your own ad-supported online programming series.
I think including some video on our Web sites will be a necessity in the near future; even if it's made by someone else. Start to think of things you could do now as that time approaches. The one thing I would do at the beginning would be to keep your video clips short like Eisner is doing with his show.
I like it because it has racing cars and I like that game too.
Posted by: Harsha | June 20, 2007 8:58 AM | Permalink to Comment