There’s a time and place for everything. Sometimes that place is not on television.
Not to prejudge, but we know from experience that, when it comes to cute clips posted online, a little goes a long way. Snippets of cats flushing toilets may be fun to watch. That doesn’t mean they deserve 23 minutes of prime time.
A clip is not a series; a Haiku is not an epic poem. But in this age of TV experimentation, all bets are off.
We know better than to expect the old ways of creating content to continue unchanged, but lots of Web-to-TV experiments are going to fail.
Increasingly entertainment offerings come from out of left field.
For example, an amateurish and not very funny Web irritant that claims more than 1 billion views on YouTube. The obnoxious bit of produce, created for the Web by Dane Boedigheimer, travels through time on his magical fruit cart. The idea has been picked up by as a series and puffed up to a half-hour.
“Annoying Orange” premieres on Cartoon Network at 6:30 p.m. Monday.
Maybe “Orange” is ripe for exploitation, but I’m not betting on it.
Ever since broke through to mainstream attention in 2006, TV executives have hoped to use the Internet as a testing ground, a fertile brainstorming forum, for exploitable rough drafts. That fictional series caught fans unaware; many accepted the fiction as fact and only became suspicious months later when the story arc appeared to be too professionally crafted, the production values too slick to be those of a teen girl chatting via computer in her bedroom.
TV executives recognized that storytelling efforts like lonelygirl15 have the potential to be nursed, crafted and enhanced by experienced producers with money to spend.
If a Web concept is funny in 10-second bites, no doubt someone will try to inflate it to 23 minutes and pitch it as a TV series. But irritating, adolescent-humored fruit?
The networks latch onto ideas wherever they find them, reworking foreign hits, comic books or gimmicks born in some kid’s father’s basement. Nobody expects the lightly animated pieces of produce on Cartoon Network to measure up to the latest But the costs are relative, too.
Most successfully, a pay cable network picked up a Web series and built it into a full-length comedy in the case of on Showtime. This one works for several reasons, not least thanks to Kudrow’s hilarious performance. Additionally, the subject is a smug and pretentious therapist (Kudrow) who conducts quick bits of really bad “therapy” online because she thinks the typical 50-minute “hour” is a waste of her time. Naturally the therapist’s personal problems tend to overshadow the needs of her patients. The Webcam bits that launched the concept are rolled seamlessly into the TV series. .
Other Web-to-screen translations have met with some success. A batch of free Canadian webisodes was picked up by a U.S. cable network and given a full 13-episode commitment as which ended up drawing millions of viewers and running four seasons on SyFy.
The goofy nerdfest ” was created by a teenager on YouTube in 2006, became a movie on Nickelodeon and has turned into a franchise for the network, with more movies planned.
Rob Corddry’s dark satire, was a Web series when it was picked up by TBS’s Adult Swim.
HBO this month is showing a documentary, by online video blogger Chris Crocker who, by his own account, was raised by the Internet. He’s an “Internet celebrity” (no longer an oxymoron?) who has achieved a measure of mainstream success.
And then there’s the adjunct route, in which broadcast TV series attempt to extend the brand by adding Web components, as “The Office” and “Dexter” have done. These offshoots are essentially marketing moves more than creative undertakings, and they feel like it.
There are even awards for the online series, the Streamys. A 2009 Streamy winner, or YouTube. The series voiced by a fictional Donnie Hoyle, whose musings about his unfaithful wife and sad life seep into the tutorial.
So far, the traditional broadcast networks have had more misses than hits trying to import concepts from the Web. “Quarterlife,” a Web comedy from Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick (“thirtysomething”) about 20-something angst, was short-lived on NBC — it lasted only one episode. Similarly, “In the Motherhood,” a Web series with underwriting from advertisers targeting young moms, was picked up by ABC and canceled after five episodes.
Maybe cable is better suited to niche-appeal experimental fare like “Annoying Orange” because expectations are lower. So are costs.
Maybe someday the broadcast networks will land on some trifle that can be inflated to series length. For now, not everything that draws attention online deserves a place on TV.
Joanne Ostrow: 303-954-1830 or jostrow@denverpost.com
A few local entries vying for attention
• “Starto,” an instructional Web series about startups, entrepreneurship and technology, is the brainchild of ICOSA Media. They offer film production and social media classes and hope someday to make the leap to cable TV.
• Filmmakers Adam and Evan Nix (“the Nix Bros.”) are working with The Grawlix, three Denver comedians, on a comedy Web series (online at ).
• University of Colorado Denver College of Arts and Media Professor Craig Volk and his students produce Web series, one of which made it to Rocky Mountain PBS. The latest, a comedy spoof on Westerns using cats (!) posted last week.
•Writers-filmmakers Colleen Hubbard and Larry Bograd of Denver’s Roundtable Media are behind “The Carla Critical Show,” regular visits with a highly opinionated comedic character, airing on YouTube.
