Marshall Herskovitz, quarterlife Creator: Web Will Have Breakout Scripted Hit

Producer Marshall Herskovitz on reality in the digital trenches

Q: Do you think Hollywood is actively engaged in adapting to the changes posed by the Internet?

MH: I don't think the industry is particularly on top of the changes. Every company is spending a lot of money trying to figure out what these changes are going to be.

But I'm not sure anyone can understand what these changes will be, or if the companies are equipped to be the bellwethers. I have a feeling that the corporate structure as it manifests itself in Hollywood is too rigidified.

Q: What did you learn from producing quarterlife'?

MH: I learned so many lessons. You can break down TV advertising into cpms. It turns out advertisers pay the same cpm for TV as for the Internet. But the audience for any particular piece of video is 1/10th to 1/100th what you get on TV. If you take Nielsen numbers and advertising revenues you can get a cost per thousand, and it's within the same range as on the Internet. And on TV you get to place 30 commercials instead of three. We're headed for a moment where some piece of serialized video on internet will average 1 million. The highest average is ours -- 300,000 unique visitors. No scripted video has ever done better. The moment of convergence is where you can create serialized video for 1 million viewers per episode. I don't think we're that far off from that. But no one knows how to do it. No one knows how to market that show.

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