NBC Hoping "Quarterlife" More Popular On TV Than On The Web

New York Times:

Scripts by Marshall Herskovitz, the Emmy award-winning writer and producer, have drawn millions of viewers to movie theaters and television sets over the past two decades.

But on the Internet, where his 36-part series "Quarterlife" is unfolding on social networking sites like MySpace, the audience metrics are starkly different.

Some episodes of "Quarterlife," a drama about a group of good-looking people in their 20s, have yet to attract 100,000 video views, according to combined view counts from MySpace's video site and YouTube. Episodes of "Quarterlife" are being released in eight-minute chunks on those sites twice a week.

The low traffic numbers are significant because the series has been touted as the first television-quality production for the Web, as well as the first to be introduced online as a warm-up for its network debut. NBC will broadcast "Quarterlife" in one-hour increments beginning in February, and the Web-to-broadcast process is being closely watched as a potential business model for television on the Internet.

Read the whole story: New York Times

Comments

[sparkey]

As any network exec will tell you,a little sex and violence will up any ratings. That will be next for this internet show. Count on it.

[godlessclif]

As the advertsing banner indicates "Shooting War' would make a better TV show. Anything with a plot.

Friends, or 'Real World without Puck' has been done to death.

[Wilsonfisk89]

I think perhaps its the content that sucks, not the business model. Saying the series is about "A group of good-looking people in their twenties" is not really a selling point. And even if it was, doesnt GOSSIP GIRL have that market by the undescended balls? I think a lot of other types of programming would work in this format, maybe just not this garbage.