Earlier this year when I announced Rocketboom’s partnership with Sony Pictures, I also mentioned that we believed in their vision for the future. At the time, I wanted to explain what that vision was but I haven’t been able to say.
Today they announced it themselves so I wanted to highlight this point from the stories out there about the approach to content for the web. From today’s Reuters:
“Crackle’s new season begins on December 1. The shows, which use the kinds of production techniques that Sony Pictures puts into movies and TV, resemble other online programing by staying short, often no more than five minutes long.”
That is, the content is created for the web yet with the production values we have come to expect from the best works on TV and Film.
Like hulu, YouTube and iTunes, Crackle has been thought of as just a platform, but unlike hulu, YouTube and iTunes, Crackle is for Sony Pictures and Sony Pictures is all about producing *content*. You can kick down YouTube for presentation design and tear down hulu for being just a distributor of old-school TV reruns, but you can’t knock Sony Pictures for taking the first steps in funding and creating content with traditional TV and Film production standards made specifically for the web w The closest thing I can think of that was a hit is Dr. Horrible but that is not exactly a content studio.
It seems the other traditional TV studios like ABC, CBS and NBC (to name the ones I had to live with) are still just throwing their made-for-TV stuff onto the web and have been unwilling and unable to fund high-dollar productions tailored for the small screen without first justifying a return from viewership and revenue. Over the last year, not much has changed…still yet, they could die.
Sony Pictures said lets do this, thinking much more long term. If the content is good, the people and the advertisers will come. Will *you* like Sony’s newest shows coming out in December? I guess it will always be like going to the movies; sometimes you like ‘em and sometimes you don’t. And then along comes your Spiderman.
