A few posts ago I linked to Julie over at Happy Catholic and her post of the wonderful independent short YouTube film, Validation. A while back, I watched most of the God, Inc. series on YouTube. I read that recently God, Inc. was picked up as a series for the SciFi network.
Here's the question. Now that an independent film maker has shown that one can successfully transition from YouTube to a network, won't lots of others start to do the same thing? After all, YouTube is a fantastic way to showcase your talent and gives audience feedback in the form of comments and hit counts. It's better than a focus group for figuring out which shows will be hits and which ones won't. It's free and the focus group is thousands of times larger than anything a network can assemble.
And therein lies the seeds of the networks' downfall.
God, Inc. is funny, intelligent and captivating. Many of the imitators it inspire will be as well. Some of them will be picked up by the networks and some won't. The number that won't be picked up will be, shall we say, ten times as many as the ones that move to the networks.
Why watch the SciFi channel? The ones that don't get picked up may be as compelling to you as God, Inc. was to them. All of the sudden, there are lots and lots of series available for free on YouTube and only one on the SciFi channel. With their audience diluted as people choose to watch shows on YouTube, the SciFi channel will see their audience share and therefore advertising revenue fall.
By rewarding the makers of God, Inc., the SciFi channel has guaranteed the existance of many competing shows for free on YouTube.
Hmmmmm.
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