Fox Television Studios, Fox’s cable production arm, best known for edgy shows like The Shield and Burn Notice, is taking a different approach to creating a new media branch with 15 Gigs. “[We’re] not in the business of creating a destination site” proclaimed Webber, such as Sony’s Crackle, perhaps to avoid competing with parent-backed Hulu. Also, they are not strictly sticking to branded entertainment like NBC’s Digital Studio. They are looking more towards a diversified portfolio strategy, and as a company under Fox’s cable production arm, they are expecting to launch some of their web series to cable television. Don’t get the idea that they are trying to produce TV content squished into a YouTube box either, like ABC/Disney’s failed attempt, Stage 9. While their series thus far have not completely leveraged the internet’s key difference from TV, interactivity, the series they have put out have been compelling and have explored new formats. A few examples from their current slate:
They are continuing to look into Branded Entertainment, Berg mentioned, “We really wanted to get our portfolio of content out … so we can take [it] to brands.” She also added, she did not want to go to brands necessarilly as simply a way of financing, “we’re really looking to work with brands in creative ways.”
As a brand themselves, 15 Gigs is not expecting to be consumer focused. Webber explained, “15 Gigs brand matters in the B2B sense … [we want to] mean something to the young creative community who will work with us and [as] a brand that matters to a network and a branded content community.” They are really more interested in letting the individual content speak for itself, as can be seen by their current strategy
of releasing content with little fanfare.Webber will be ramping up marketing efforts for the fledgling studio as she finishes her transition, “We’re really just starting out, … figuring out out how to virally get stuff out there.” One of the reasons they aren’t pushing marketing so heavily on these series perhaps lies in their goals for 15 Gigs. “Numbers aren’t the only measures of success” added Berg, “I don’t think that network executives are only looking at numbers in the digital space,” also, “Ultimately, it’s about the content and can that content be episodic.”
On top of this, their hope is to leverage key distribution partnerships and existing social tools such as Hulu, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter to promote interactivity without the hefty price tag that comes from full scale build-outs. They believe they can do some cool things utilizing these platforms. They hinted at a future project that uses some additional features on Facebook that will help create a truly branded entertainment series, but they could not comment further.
Another benefit of being attached to a major studio is getting big name talent attached. Mike Horowitz writer on USA’s Burn Notice created Ashley the Wise, a post-apocalytpic comedy following a valley girl trying to find her boyfriend. To sweeten the pot, the series is narrated by the most famous B-actor of all time Bruce Campbell. While its genre mash-up may scare away the traditional network folks it’s a perfect fit for the web.
As mentioned earlier, one of their biggest goals is to push some of the web content to television. Berg explained, “we will be redeveloping [series] for TV based on what works … online … [and] what networks want [to see].” Just within weeks of launching properly, 15 Gigs is already hard at work developing their series, When Ninja’s Attack for television. They are even going so far as repositioning this scripted game show as an actual game show with real life contestants.
For now, their key to future success will be in frugality. “We’re not spending at the same kind of levels [as Studio 9] … It’s really the DNA of Fox TV Studios in general … our traditional approach in development is how do you minimize [cost] the most.” They are generally spending somewhere between $5,000 and $25,000 on their series.
It remains to be seen whether or not they will reign in as major competitors in this space. While they are not first movers, they seemed to be taking to heart the lessons learned previous ventures into this arena.
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