UPDATE: Yahoo Board OKs $1.1B Deal To Acquire Tumblr … 
Cannes: Sony Classics Wins Stateside Rights To Asghar … 
‘Fast & Furious 6′ Breaks Records In … 
Specialty Box Office: ‘Frances Ha’ Triumphs As … 
‘Saturday Night Live’ Season Finale Posts … 
‘Star Trek Into Darkness’ $164.5M Global: Lower … 
Cannes: Backup Media, Memento Bring Heat To Fest Helmer Jim … 
Cannes: Sundance Selects Acquires Dardenne Brothers’ … 
Cannes: Wrekin Hill Acquires U.S. On Gabriele … 
Bill Hader’s ‘SNL’ Stefon Farewell: Video 
Cannes: The Weinstein Co. Books ‘Suite … 
BBC Confirms ‘Doctor Who’ Season 8 
Finally, Cannes Dealing! Radius-TWC Nabs Director’s … 
Hammond On Cannes: Wet Fest’s Official Competition … 
‘Vampire Academy’ Adds ‘Modern … 
RATINGS RAT RACE: ‘Shark Tank’ Finale Up, … 
Cannes: Worldview Options Andrew Dominik’s Marilyn … 
UPFRONTS 2013: The Overachievers 
‘Mike & Molly’ Creator Mark Roberts To … 
Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts Set For … 
Hammond On Cannes: Weinstein Brings Out Stars For 2013 … 
UPDATE: Sources say Quarterlife will move from NBC to NBC Universal-owned Bravo.
The announcement that Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz had sold their 36-episode Internet show Quarterlife to NBC for a network series caused a lot of talk during the writers strike. (See my previous, Zwick/Herskovitz: WGA Friends Or Foes?) The show was seen as the first wave of an independent production future on the Internet for writers. But when NBC bought Quarterlife during the strike (after ABC passed years earlier on it as a TV series), striking writers questioned whether it was morally right for Herskovitz and Zwick, both WGA members, to help a network. But bad news: Quarterlife debuted last night and it bombed big-time. The team behind thirtysomething and My So-Called Life recorded NBC’s worst time-period performance in at least 17 years despite The Biggest Loser as a lead-in. Agents are telling me that as a result the show may only get one or two airings on NBC.
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
Loading ...
But. But. No that can’t be. That’s impossible. The internet was supposed to be the incubator of the next wave of programming. Surely NBC must have dropped the ball. They didn’t promote it right. It was a big hit on My Space. What? Maybe that’s where it belongs? On the web only and not on network TV? Nonsense. Anything that’s a hit online will also be a hit on the airwaves. That’s what all the striking writers said so they must be right.
This is kind of… confusing. I mean, was the show popular on the internet (or has it aired on the internet yet?)?
And will the internet simply be a place where shows are ‘tested out’? A place where networks simply buy the most viewed shows?
Hmmmmm…let’s see, trying to sell something during the writer’s strike? I seem to remember something about that being a violation of the WGA rules…
I guess scabbing doesn’t pay off after all.
My heart bleeds for NBC, Zwick, and Herskovitz. No, really it does. Seriously, it does. I mean, I don’t wish those two scabs ill will. Much.
The networks are to blame half the time for poor ratings, though. They don’t give shows a fair go to find an audience, nor do they leave shows in regular timeslots, which really gets viewers peeved. It’s almost blind luck when a show is a hit these days, and the mistake the networks make is they overthink the formula of creating hit shows. It’s simple, but they make it complex.
I’m not surprised it bombed. Unlikable characters, cliche complications that don’t go anywhere, the production values and look of a show shot for an iPod … the bigger surprise is NBC picked it up in the first place, hadn’t anyone watched it? Or did they just look at the MySpace viewers and think that meant something?
most shows fail
saying that new media is not viable because a show failed when most do, is the same insane logic that warner bros. misogynists use saying female actresses are not viable because a movie failed when most do
It made bad TV look good.
I’m not surprised. It was a bad online show.
It seemed really insipid. Come one, the thing was created for the INTERNET. How good could it be?
I think it’s good old fashioned hubris. The show was touted as something amazing. No network interference equals great television. Hmmm. I might have to rethink my opinion of network notes. Did anyone see the show? It was just the same old same old. It was all spin. Good for them!
internet programming, with its ragged, spontaneous, amateur quality will only spur more deliberate, careful scripting and expert storytelling in tv programming, dramas especially. bringing internet style content to tv will never work.
the only way tv can survive is by amping up the quality and originality of its execution to stand out.
never mind the fact these guys have no business creating television programming about high school age issues without considerable research. my so called life was mawkish and humorless when it originally aired; it is now moving into guilty pleasure premenstrual zones.
and don’t forget ‘relativity’ the zwick/herskovitz bomb that had episodes whose dramatic thrust sprang from which air hangar sized loft apartment the leads were going to move into. obscene wealth is not a good idea for writers. try alcoholism.
consider watching more british tv, with its bracing storylines and real world, lived in faces.
Nice post. What’s the problem, “Dr. Ziering,” is the labor of actually using CAPS at the beginning of a sentence asking too much effort from poor lil’ you?
I love it when 13-year-olds chime in.
I seem to be alone here, but I really liked this show. A lot! Good writing is good writing.
I didn’t watch it on-line, just on network and was surprised at how well it flowed . As a business experiment, there is much to be learned here. On the plus side, it’s a ground breaking deal for full ownership of the author’s content. On the other side, if you just give a show away for free, don’t really expect anyone to watch it on network tv. Except, of course, for me.
Peggy Lane O’Rourke
Why in the hell would you put Quarterlife on after Biggest Loser? Their target audiences aren’t even in the same realm. Of course it tanked.
I’m not saying the show was groundbreaking or even that good, but really NBC didn’t promote the show at all so I think that’s a big part of the story here that no one seems to note.
I’m taking a class at UCLA Extension where we dissect shows like this and figure out how to monetize them for the web. The professor, a successful web video entrepreneur, touted this show as the quintessence of everything good and right in web programming. I thought it was crap. It had almost no appeal, and I’m supposed to be their target audience.
This has nothing to do with whether a series made for the web could be commercially viable on TV. All those who think that way are just struggling writers looking to throw the future under a bus (and massage their crippled egos). This is plain and simple crap work. And apparently, crap Internet programming doesn’t become more entertaining when transferred to the tube.
Hello? The show sucked. On the net. On the network.
Sucked.
this show sucked on the web and had ZERO promotion. I wonder why it bombed.
Bottom line is the internet show simply don’t make enough money to make a good show at the moment.
It is still plenty far away from being a contender. Even then it will be an animated series that does it. (I am positive South Park could have been that kind of series had it debuted 10 years later than it had)
Is there anything to the idea that NBC would want to kill this show? After all the show is writer-owned. A huge writer-owned hit may not set a good precedent for the networks. Picking it up was not a bad insurance idea during the strike, when who knew when we would see original programming. Strike over, why heavily promote and push a show that the network doesn’t own? So you eat the distribution fee paid to the creator/owners and kill the f’n thing off before any other independent-minded creatives get any ideas of launching shows on the net and then making deals where they own the shows and the networks just distribute. Don’t think that’s a business model that networks want to see succeed.
I watched the first two episodes – as shown on their website – and found that although it was a strong premise the show was dated out of the box.
There was nothing that hadn’t been seen before in many other so-called teen-dramas and the fact that someone was blogging their life – & their friends too – well it isn’t unusual.
As for the unrequited love interest in the opening episode, there was a ‘vibe’ that made me think it might be between the two male leads, Jed secretly longing for Danny (they had chemistry and that would have been a more interesting train-wreck of a thing) but…
It was all the same familiar territory – or seemed to be. Hence my bowing out after episode two.
Wasn’t this show a bomb on the Internet already?
Nothings new they test those shows on the internet and even it is that bad they still show them on TV! That ridiculous!
There’s no reason to say that any content on the internet is not suitable for TV. It all depends on the content itself. It’s not impossible to make quality, budgeted content for the internet, but no one is doing it because there’s no money in it. Good content is good content regardless of what medium it’s on.
The “They didn’t promote it enough!” line is nonsense. I saw promos for that thing everywhere…even in the golf telecast this weekend.
This doesn’t have anything to do with the internet… It has to do with quarterlife being so unwatchably bad that i literally could not force myself to watch it despite my best efforts.