Comedy Tops User-Gen Video Genre
Askaninja.com and other YouTube stars are re-inventing comedy as a dominant format of user-generated video. For talent executives, scouring comedy clubs and reviewing spec scripts and DVDs are no longer the primary means of discovering new stars.
Ask A Ninja on YouTube
Comedy is helping develop the audience for original online-video programming — driven by short, viral material spreading by word-of-mouth. As a result, semi-pros are producing regular Web videos — including scripted and episodic programming. Though viral video can often be one-hit wonders with low repeatability.
Comedy Central has produced Web originals Meet the Creeps and Odd Todd for its Motherload Web video channel.
Meet the Creeps on YouTube
Blip.tv distributes Good Night Burbank, a show by a group of improv performers in Los Angeles about a fictional nightly newscast where all the anchors hate each other. The show generates up to 10,000 views per episode.
Good Night Burbank on YouTube
Such online-original shows are expected to generate sustainable only-only audiences. NBC lowering is budget expectations on sitcoms from 2-4 million to $500,000 — a factor turning the network toward the Internet for new talent.
Couple of corrections: Goodnight Burbank generates up to 10,000 views a DAY, not per episode (those numbers are in the hundreds of thousands). And the show is scripted by one person (Hayden Black) but the cast is made up of improv performers and actors. There is no improv in the show!
Gordon Winston-Smythe
March 13, 2007