It looks like the success of LonelyGirl15 and Prom Queen is going to spur a herd of new offerings catering to the young female audience.
The latest entry in the field will be from CosmoGirl, which will air exclusively on the Website.
Editor in chief Susan Schulz said, "Shows like The OC, One Tree Hill and Gilmore Girls have proven to be a huge success with the teen audience. Merging this series formula with the soap opera genre, increasingly popular among teens, builds on a digital platform that truly resonates with our readers."
Casting for the series, which will begin sometime this fall, will also include one spot reserved for the CosmoGirl readers. The series is scheduled for a Spring 2008 launch.
The show will be offered over a five-week period and will show three or four episodes three times during the week.
It focuses on the lives of two young ladies at they go through their junior year in high school.
Other offerings in this genre include Kate Modern, a spin-off of LonelyGirl15 in Europe; Sophia's Diary, an offering from Sony Pictures, will also play on Bebo; and of course Prom Queen, which continues on.
While it's interesting to see this and some of the twists being added to the genre, I don't like the copycat stuff that this is going to become. We'll probably start to see so many of these that they'll flood and fragment viewers so much they'll drop in viewership.
Nothing will stop this from happening except when there's so many of them the fragmentation will make low monetization not worth the effort.
I like the creation of these stories, that's not the issue, but the targeting of the same demographic with basically the same stuff, to me is not a good way to go forward in the industry. Unfortunately Hollywood has become an industry of copycats unable to do much creatively anymore. That's the problem they bring as the online video content industry grows.
Still, it's offering insight and ideas about what will attract viewers on the web. Hopefully we won't degenerate into everything taking on the same flavor and lose the innovation and creative possibilities that are out there waiting to be explored.
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