Dr. Horrible's Quick Return (Or I Feel Used)

Doug Mohney — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 17:10:52 -0400

The "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" web-isode by Joss Whedon was cold barely a week before it suddenly reappeared on Hulu and MySpace. So much for "ad free" and "exclusive."

Whedon's initial telegraphed business plan was to run the three-part web series across a week without commercials and then pull it off the air, er servers, forcing people to either buy the iTunes now to catch up with what happened or buy the forthcoming DVD with guest commentary. If viewers caught it on line during its limited run, they would feel, well, special.

Instead, "Dr. Horrible" quickly returns online with ads (sponsored by Hungry Man and some cat food maker during this reporter's viewing) and is being syndicated across multiple sites; Hulu has Dr. H. for a four-month run.

Don't worry, the "Dr. Horrible" DVD with plenty of extras is still coming and a sequel is in the works. There's even speculation Dr H. may appear as a holiday special on "classic" TV (but more likely a cable run on VH-1, M-TV, or Sci-Fi Channel).

Dr. Evil, er, Joss Whedon does, alas, have good green reasons to shuffle up his online viewing plans. The first run of Dr. H clocked nearly 450,000 streams a day and a mind-boggling 2.25 million streams (actually more, due to some Hulu accounting tricks) across its five-day run. And that's before adding on iTunes sales.

If you are really a "Dr. Horrible" fan-person, Whedon is reportedly going to take 3 minute video submissions if you want to be in the "Evil League of Evil." Think Survivor. Sort of. Top 10 will end up on the DVD.

For more:
- LA Times announces the rapid return of Dr. Horrible
- Dr. Horrible sequel news from Paste

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Cuban’s On-Demand Disaster

Doug Mohney — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:53:37 -0400

Mark Cuban, billionaire, founder of HD.NET and broadcast.com, and prolific blogger, has stepped onto his soap box to talk about the failings of Internet video and the expectations of free content.

Cuban, who built broadcast.net from scratch and sold it to Yahoo before the dot.com era slid into dot.bomb, knows a lot about the economics and technologies involved in online video. So it’s interesting to find him quoting from and agreeing with a recent report out of Bernstein Research, “And Now for the News…The Emperor Has No Clothes.”

The report presents disturbing findings when comparing online video to classic cable offerings. Online viewers will tolerate less than two minutes of advertising for a typical 30 minute show; contrast that to 8 minutes of ads on cable, add on other overhead and you end up with one-eighth as much revenue per viewer. Worse yet, best-of clips on the web don’t make up for affiliate fee revenues lost by multiple networks.

Cuban says while a la carting of the best of web video is loved by consumers, it also is the biggest risk to professional video content producers everywhere. Serialization doesn’t work because it’s expensive to refresh shows, leaving independent video content in the hands of Google and YouTube and search engine optimization firms.

Will advertisers pay larger CPMs to be online for 2 minutes of ads vs. 8 minutes of ads in a broadcast TV show? Will the shift to 2 minutes of ads for online TV drive more viewers to watch their favorites online rather than through broadcast? Will networks be forced into offering differentiated versions of their shows, perhaps offering a PG rated version for TV and an R-rated one for online viewing.

“Something has got to give,” says Cuban, but further problems lurk as TV moves their broadcast content online.

For more:
- Read Rantmaster Cuban’s blog posting on A la carte online video.

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Content Producers

Dr. Horrible's Quick Return (Or I Feel Used)

Cuban’s On-Demand Disaster