Why don't Web TV shows make it on broadcast TV?

It is the dream of lots of my videographer friends.

• Step one - Write your own show. Make it edgy and cool. Shoot the first few episodes on the cheap using with your prosumer camera and a light kit bought at Home Depot. Use a few of your more interesting friends as the cast.
• Step two - Put out an episode a week on your MySpace page or YouTube Channel.
• Step Three -- Work the social media outlets trying to generate enough buzz to build up a loyal audience of millions of viewers.
• Step Four – Cash in when you get the call from a network executive waving big bucks at you to move your show to their network.

Sooner or later its going to happen. Why is it taking so long?

• Might it be because the sort of stuff that works well on the web won't work on network TV.
• Or maybe because audiences for the web and TV are different or different audiences have different expectations?
• I don't know.
• I want to know!
• How else can I write that show that will bring me fame and glory on network TV?
• What makes me ask these silly questions?
• Why of course, the arrival of another TV show ported over from the Web.

Another web show is porting to basic cable.
The Rate My Space website provides a place for homeowners to post snapshots of favorite rooms and tools so that others to rate and comment about those rooms. Thousands have posted photos on the website in the last year and million have commented about them. So HGTV (Home and Garden TV) decided to take the concept to the next level and started posting short videos of designer Angelo Surmelis' tips about how to fix the lowest-rated rooms. Again this did well. Now HGTV has started airing Rate My Space: The TV Show. This show, which features makeovers of low-rated rooms from the website, is probably going to do fine, in large part because the production matches audience expectations .

The parent company of HGTV, Scripps Networks Interactive, has worked hard to created a whole line of narrowly targeted television channels and related websites. In addition to HGTV, it owns Fine Living, the Food Network, and Great American Country. The plan was to develop and test out concepts on for each network on the web and then bring shows to TV when they proved ready. The audience for each network tunes in to get a very specific type of programming. Production values here are less important than giving the audience the sort of programs they have tuned in to see. I think it is a great recipe for success.

Why did Quarterlife fail to make it on network TV?
Other web-to-TV conversions have taken a much more conventional approach, trying to create mass-market shows with great production values in order to grab network-sized audiences. The result has been monumental failures. Take, for example, the show Quarterlife.

Created by big-time television producers, Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, the first episodes of Quarterlife premiered simultaneously on MySpace and the official Quarterlife website. It grabbed great audiences on the web (third-highest rated scripted series in MySpace history). Five months after premiering it had racked up over 9 million views. Then the series got picked up by NBC. The first airing of the show collected the lowest rating of any show in that time slot for in the last 17 years. Suffice to say, there was no second showing.

Managing viewer expectations
My guess is that the total audience for any one screening of "Rate My Space: The TV Show" won't be as high as the 3.1 million who tuned in to see the one and only network screening of Quarterlife. The difference is that Rate My Space doesn't need millions of  viewers to succeed. Like other forms of mass communications, TV is changing. Success in the future will depend upon targeting shows for narrower audiences - and adjusting expectations and budget to match. That's the lesson I have learned from writing this blog post.

Stay tuned over the next few months and we will see what new lessons we can learn when Will Ferrell’s Funny or Die tries to make the leap  from the web to HBO.   Also what lessons can we learn from the jump of the Tom Green Show from MTV to the web? (Just kidding about the Tom Green Show. It did, after all, start off on cable access!)