Quarterlife has a short half-life

So, Quarterlife.

Not doing as well as it was hyped to do, but hard to call it a failure since web success may never have been the true plan.

Looking over the history of how the got to where it is, it seems reasonable to assume that the net launch of the episodes was never intended as much more than a PR push for the TV version.

A while back, the producers put together a pilot for a show called 1/4life. That pilot was rejected by ABC, so the producers decided to put together a different pilot called Quarterlife, and promote it as a web series in partnership with MySpaceTV.

Quarterlife the web series was then picked up by NBC amid all sorts of commotion about the WGA strike.

The webseries continues to "air" on MySpaceTV and YouTube, but hasn't been logging numbers in line with the hoopla surrounding the show. The hoopla has been huge indeed, with front page placement for epsiodes on MySpace.com along with banner ads throughout the site. In addition, the first episode was featured on the front page of YouTube for several days, and a director's channel complete with banner ads etc was set up for the show itself.

Add to this the production costs, reported to be over $500,000 per hour (or over $80,000 per webisode), and you can see the standards for success have to be set fairly high.

As of this writing, 24 days after launch, the first webisode is sitting at a total of 822,798 views total between MySpace and YouTube. Interestingly, given the show's partnership with MySpaceTV, about 3/4 of those views come from YouTube, which featured the webisode on its front page for a few days. Damningly, the first webisode has a grand total of 8 comments on MySpaceTV, orders of magnitude less than what a successful video with that many views should have.

After the first episode, the dropoff in views is quite steep. Episode 2 has 104,000 views, Ep. 3 has 164,000, and Ep 4 has 84,000, or less approximately 10% the total views of the first episode. Later episodes have not been on YouTube long enough for a meaningful comparison.

Altogether, the show has garnered 1.4 million views in the month since launch. That doesn't sound too bad, and indeed would be amazing for a cheap show with no hype. But it can't come close to paying back the money invested in the show, no matter what sort of CPM and revenue sharing plan the show has with the two sites.

So why isn't the show doing better? Here are a few thoughts on what's wrong and how a show of similar talent magnitude could be done right.

1. The concept isn't that interesting or original. Real life vloggers are more captivating and less stilted and besides, the whole vlogger show thing has been done. If you're going to move into this arena, find a new approach and more compelling characters.

2. The episodes are too long. The shortest is just under 7 minutes, but the longest pushes 15. Fifteen minutes is far too long for the current net audience. The optimal length at present seems to be around 6 minutes, but the average here is closer to 10. It makes a difference. People get bored easily on the net, so if you aren't keeping things moving, you've got to keep things short.

3. Bringing us to the next point- things don't move. The webisodes written and cut like a TV show. This ain't TV, it's a different medium, and requires different pacing. Quicker, more efficient, and denser, please.

4. The inter-epsiode pacing is non-existant. Where's the compelling reason to come back to see the next one? Where's the need for more? The mystery? The drive? The internet is not based on habit and appointment based viewing, it's based on doing what comes to mind. Shows have to remain near the center of the viewers thoughts between episodes so they don't forget to return.

5. It's the same sort of story I'd see on TV. If I wanted to see this, why wouldn't I watch it on TV? At present, a net show needs to serve audiences that are not being served on TV. Upwardly mobile young 20s white actors, filmmakers, and magazine writers are not that demo. There are countless shows about and for this audience on traditional TV

6. Where's the money? I don't see anything near $80,000 per websiode on the screen. Sure, it's slick and professionals made it, but you could get professionals to make it just as slick for 1/10th that cost, and then it might have a shot at being profitable.

Basically, Quarterlife is a TV show sliced up and placed on the net. In a way, it's good to have, because now there's an example to point to in order to explain why that doesn't work. Webisodes are their own medium, and demand new approaches.

Again, though, I can't call the show a failure. It accomplished what was its likely goal of a network pickup, and when the show starts it will have a lot of PR surrounding it. It's likely the creators were able to get a better deal than they would have otherwise. It just isn't headed for success as a web-based show.

But there are lessons here for the next show, and all the shows to follow!