Beyond big video: The instability of independent networks in a new media market

Abstract

This essay explores the possibility of an online video market operating independent of conglomerations. At stake is whether new media can operate ‘democratically’, providing more equal distribution of control to producers and distributors within an unequal market. This is the story of a handful of these websites, all of which promise this possibility: Strike TV, My Damn Channel, KoldCast, Babelgum and Quarterlife. Their stories offer telling case studies of new media in their formative years. In the end, without industrial structures in place, independents must grapple with rapidly changing conditions, improvise business strategies and, ultimately, work with the mainstream, traditional structures to which they were, however superficially, in opposition. Independent distribution in early media emerges as a practice as much indebted to the old media as it pushes new forms of engagement, marketing and production.

Notes

1. ‘Independent’ here is as specific as it is malleable. By ‘independent’, this essay describes producers who are not making videos under corporate control. Some, but few, are ‘amateur’ in that they are unskilled in film production. Many are Hollywood professionals (behind the camera or B-list talent) who simply want temporary independence from their regular employers. Others are young, straight out of film school and have yet to be assimilated by the industry.

2. The question of product placement is, of course, critical, and will be explored. While declining revenue and audiences on television, particularly broadcast television, has necessitated product integration and has for decades, the amount of revenue they enjoy for 30-second spots allow them to operate – commissioning pilots, hiring stars, broad storylines – relatively independent of any one particular brand. This is coupled with television's alternative forms of revenue – licensing, retransmission and carriage fees, DVD sales, international distribution, etc. – to be discussed. Turow has remarked how marketers were always sceptical about how much product placement could ever replace the more efficient ad delivery system (Turow 2006, 102).

3. KoldCast has a content distribution partnership with Strike TV. (PR Web 2008)

4. For the series' next season, the creators solicited fan donations and raised more than $30,000; with some extra funding sources they were able to make a shorter third season.

5. Other reports have estimated attendance at 300 (Burton 2008).

6. Dr. Horrible remains an ideal within the industry: professionally produced with famous actors, it eventually made money primarily through DVD sales, along with other deals with Hulu and Netflix (Whedon 2008).

7. Hyoguchi noted it was in its pilot stages.

8. Recently, the digital arm of Fox Television Studios, 15 Gigs, went to My Damn Channel to help distribute a web series it had developed months before and place on YouTube and Hulu to little avail (Christian 2010a). ‘If you're going to be lost in somebody's sea, there's a lot of effort lost in putting it up there’, Barnetet said when interviewed about the site's deal with the studio.