December 15, 2005 marked YouTube’s official debut. Within a month users were watching an astonishing 25 million videos per day. By July 2006, that number topped 100 million, with 65,000 new videos being uploaded daily. As of early 2013, YouTube had a mind-boggling 800 million unique users per month watching more than 4 billion hours of video during each month.
Though much of the early content was either clips from ordinary broadcast and cable television or amateur silliness like teenagers lip-syncing to pop songs, the popularity of the site and promise of a ready audience opened the Internet floodgates for well-crafted content in episodic form. Among the early webisode hits launched on YouTube was lonelygirl15, a serialized webcam confessional of a lonely teenage girl. Though the series was presented as if the title character made the videos herself, it was soon revealed that lonelygirl15 was not an authentic teenage video diary but a carefully scripted show starring an actress named Jessica Rose created by aspiring filmmakers who saw this new Internet venue as a way to make a name for themselves in the film business. Despite the deception and the fact that the public soon knew it was all professionally scripted, the series remained popular on YouTube and led to the creation of another series in a similar webcam diary format called KateModern.
Another early web series success was Sam Has 7 Friends, created by a group that called themselves Big Fantastic. These aspiring video makers saw the world of short-form Internet TV not as a stepping stone to other film opportunities but an art form to be mastered in and of itself. Sam Has 7 Friends premiered on YouTube, Revver, iTunes, and its own website on August 28, 2006. It hooked viewers with the simple slogan, “Samantha Breslow has 7 friends. On December 15, 2006, one of them will kill her.” Each of the 80 episodes brought Samantha one day closer to death. It was compelling Internet television, a serialized thriller with new material and clues made available a bit at a time day by day, and its audience grew steadily as word spread.
Suddenly, amateur and professional content exploded across the Web. The webisode revolution was on, and it was televised over the Internet. YouTube had become the fourth most popular Internet site in the world and an integral part of the public’s daily vocabulary, like Google or texting. Those under 30, especially, were so comfortable with capturing, editing, and posting video online that millions now thought they could create videos as easily as they could send e-mail.
The public hunger to consume short video was not lost on the professional world. If millions of eyeballs were leaving broadcast television in favor of short video on the Internet, then Hollywood, the networks, and the rest of the global media establishment wanted to find a way to recapture those valuable eyeballs.
Global media giant Sony Pictures Entertainment jumped in, creating a site called Grouper (later known as Crackle) that billed itself as “a multiplatform video entertainment network and studio that distributes the hottest emerging talent on the Web and beyond.” By 2013 the site featured original web series right alongside much of Sony’s library of traditional sitcoms, dramas, and feature films, a testament to the growing reality that today’s audience, especially the younger part of it, makes fewer distinctions between movies, TV, and the Internet. If something is entertaining and compelling, they’ll watch it. If not, they won’t.
Disney launched Stage 9 Digital Media, a division dedicated to generating original online-only content. It debuted with a series called Squeegees, about window washers, created by a Los Angeles group known as Handsome Donkey.
Traditional broadcast networks like ABC, CBS, and NBC, which at first cursed Internet video as the enemy (just as the major movie studios had cursed broadcast television as the enemy in the early days of TV), quickly realized Internet video was here to stay, and they needed to be part of it. They made full episodes of their shows available online and soon discovered that rather than decreasing their overall audience, Internet availability of series expanded their reach. They also created original short-form webisodes for shows like The Office and 24.
Established filmmakers loved the creative spirit of Internet video and dove into the webisode pool as well (though they stuck to using their real names instead of cool monikers like Big Fantastic and Handsome Donkey). Oscar-winning directors Joel and Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men, Fargo, The Big Lebowski) committed to produce short features for 60Frames, a company run by former UTA Online head Brent Weinstein with an ambitious production slate. Charlie’s Angels director McG was hired by Warner Bros. to create a series called Sorority Forever for The WB. Will Ferrell and other established stars contribute Internet videos to a site called Funny or Die. Successful writer, producer, and director Jerry Zucker (Airplane!, The Naked Gun movie series, Ghost) went so far as to form a new company, National Banana, with a soundstage and postproduction facilities and staff dedicated to creating online content.
Though A-list players were storming the Internet video world in droves, Hollywood also recognized that this new form demanded a new reservoir of creative inspiration and energy. Major Hollywood talent agencies like Creative Artists Agency and UTA formed divisions dedicated to finding new Internet talent, both in front of and behind the camera. These new agency divisions also sought to develop online opportunities for established mainstream clients who wanted to work in this exciting new realm.
Suddenly, once-obscure guerilla video artists like the Big Fantastic were in hot demand. Well-financed media mogul Michael Eisner, former CEO of the Walt Disney company, hired Big Fantastic to create a web series called Prom Queen, which became a major hit racking up over 20 million views in short order. Eisner then upped the ante and hired Big Fantastic to shoot 50 two-minute episodes of Foreign Body, a medical thriller tied to the launch of a book by the same name by best-selling author Robin Cook.
Today, nearly every major media player has made at least some commitment to create original web content ranging from low-budget experimentation all the way to Netflix financing two seasons of the hour-long drama House of Cards, starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright and released directly via the Internet.
For advertisers, who had long relied on television to provide the precious eyeballs they needed, the new Internet video culture presented a variety of problems. Not only were fewer people watching network television, but those who did were armed with digital video recorders and other devices that allowed them to skip the commercials. Advertisers quickly realized they needed to take the lemons they’d been handed and somehow make lemonade. Rather than merely placing the same old ads in this new entertainment arena, advertisers seized the opportunity and made new short-form content of their own that married their sales message to entertainment. Consumer giant Unilever promoted its new spray bottle version of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter through webisodes of a series called Sprays of Her Life, a parody of soap operas with the slogan, “Romance. Passion. Deception. Vegetables. Watch things heat up when the refrigerator lights go down!” Anheuser-Busch ponied up $30 million to create Bud.tv, a video site that promoted brands like Budweiser not only through product ads but by hosting original, nonadvertising entertainment content aimed at their target audience produced by Internet-eager talent like Matt Damon and Ben Affleck.
In the old network television advertising paradigm, advertisers looked for shows whose audience included the advertiser’s target consumer group and bought 30-second spots on the show, hoping against the odds that the audience would stick around for the commercial message instead of muting the set, raiding the fridge, or taking a bathroom break. But in this new, short-form Internet video world, advertisers could design the entertainment to appeal to their consumers and embed their advertising message seamlessly into the entertainment itself.
Suddenly the Internet was no longer the arch enemy of Fortune 500 advertisers; it was their new best friend. Advertisers were making entertaining commercials hoping they’d go viral on the Internet. Take, for instance, the wonderfully entertaining Old Spice deodorant commercials featuring hunky actor Isaiah Mustafa as “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.” The