Does Joss Have the Key?

Making money with online video has been a mystery for Hollywood. Has Joss Whedon solved the puzzle?

"Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" is two-thirds over.  Whedon created the three act, 15 minutes per act, no-commercial insta-epic during Hollywood's writer strike, signing up a select list of actors and spending six figures to put it all together in about seven days of filming. Tuesday's demand for Act I overloaded a server and annoyed people outside the United States who couldn't get access to the Hulu-hosted piece.

Act III will be out on Saturday through Sunday night, so the true test comes over the weekend. Will Joss be able to get an online audience running to his website to witness a free Act III before it goes into pay-per-download land (well iTunes and a forthcoming DVD, mind you)?

Whedon is playing a careful game between building grass-roots enthusiasm and being able to generate serious audience numbers for a potential sequel. He's counting on fans buying DVDs and T-shirts and other trinkets to cover his costs. If it works, he has another little franchise to entertain people and make a buck. If it doesn't, there's always  his next TV project.

Up to now, there's been the grass-roots short form, episodic players and longer-form "Let's blow the dust off" re-runs, with the theory being that online video viewers will tolerate short ads, prefer to select ads if they get a choice, and maybe pay for some product placement.

Nobody's really in love with grass-roots video, other than trying to find ways to either syndicate it or bootstrap it to broadcast TV. The re-runs market is interesting for the ad value, but there's competition through broadcast re-runs and archival DVD sales. And, I'm still waiting for my product placement deal with Asus or Acer, so it's all wait and see (OK, so the dancing guy with the gum sponsor got his 5 minutes of fame last week, but forget about it otherwise).

Any have any better ideas?

- Doug