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One of the reasons I rarely write about a lot of the "digital production" initiatives set up by Hollywood agencies as ministudios for digital entertainment from established actors, directors and others is because they usually go belly up. Many agencies have made splashy announcements over the years only to very quietly close such new ventures. Now it's United Talent Agency's turn. Shutting down is its 2-year-old digital producer 60Frames Entertainment which was incubated by UTA and advertising agency Spot Runner, but funded and operated independently. (This is not UTA Online, which is an integral part of the agency.)
I'd heard for months that 60Frames was going to shutter, but now its disappearing act is official. Run by Brent Weinstein with a 7-member staff, it garnered a ton of hype for the agency in the media (like this story in The New York Times) and inked deals with Warner Bros' TheWB.com, Sony's Crackle, and NBC Universal Digital Studio. But not even additional financial backing from The Tudor Investment Group and Bob Pittman's Pilot Group could keep it going. "It literally ran out of money because of the economy," an insider tells me. "The truth is what was a very cool company that did a lot of successful innovative deals. And it was just a casualty of the recession."
The problem as I see it is that these digital production studios need to be home-grown inside the agency without a lot of outside investors demanding sooner-rather-than-later returns on their investments. It's short-sighted to ignore what is obviously the next wave of Hollywood agenting. But also foolish to expect it's going to make money within just a couple of years. That said, the problem now is what it always is in tenpercenting: as Big Media make moves every day to control not just online content but also online distribution, the agencies find they still have to go begging to the same Hollywood CEOs to make digital deals.
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I was surprised we never saw 60frames syndicate content to Hulu where it could have reached their target audience (I suppose they were tied with Crackle…lame). Even though these digital arms aren’t catching on yet, I’m hopeful the studio system won’t ever fully dominate the Internet, though they will try like hell.
Yet Manka Bros. still survives (and thrives) with its total monthly expenses of $76.50. Granted, everyone works for free, but that may be the only business model that works in this current economic climate.
60Frames suffered from the same problem most unsuccessful content producers do: lack of taste.
It’s too late. Big money and studios already dominate the web. Consider, first, how much content is shared illegally through P2P networks. Then, consider how much of the “viral” content that has blown up over the past year is really viral advertising (T-Mobile is on a roll right now). Finally, Hulu being second behind Youtube, who is racing toward professional content as fast as it can, is all the evidence that you need that the little guy is NOT the bulk of online entertainment. I mean, come on, how many people do you know who actually watch Rocketboom?
60 Frames had a horrible model. No one in this space is surprised to see them go.
Earnest – While the big boys are dominating the web, 60 Frames, in theory, could have succeeded. But they decided to produce a few episodes of a ton of crappy series in hope something would naturally go viral. That’s not how the web works.
Viral advertisements are not original online series. Comparing the two is pointless.
The promise land of edgy, interesting content on the web seems to be fading as we are force fed bland comedy that is advertiser friendly. Hopefully web video will grow up in 2010 and advertisers will take more risks.
Peace out 60 Frames.
What about my project they were gearing up to launch??
What happens next?
Jeremy Zimmer hatched it, so it was doomed from the start.
Adam Carolla at Adamcarolla.com is putting fresh content out everday on his own url… NO suits, no ridiculous Beverly Hills office and accompanying overhead… Studios can’t make this space work because they are about themselves first, the audience second… Carolla has got it and marketers will flock… Companies like 60 Frames are not necessary to the process nor will they ever be… Its about artists and marketers one on one..
There are two major problems with these sites.
1. Most of them try to start out big and have multiple shows. They need to create one or two shows, promote them and really put in the time to build a web presence, and then try to expand.
2. They need something besides the shows to bring people back every day. Relying on just the webisodes isn’t going to work. I think it makes more sense for sites like this or The Daily Beast or AICN to expand into hosting these shows rather than trying to create standalone sites like 60 Frames or Vugaru. (ESPN kind of did this with “Mayne Street”)
Finally, to do this right, the site requires a lot more effort than these bigger entities seem to be willing to invest. The ground work and elbow grease is far more important than the startup cash.
Their stuff is utter crap. Take a look. Amazing that they got even b-level talent for some of their series. No real creative strategy behind any of their “shows.” Insults intelligence and goes for lowest common denominator. But go ahead, blame the economy instead. Good riddance.
It is impossible to create a business model around series called “Douchebag Beach” “Carpet Bros.” “Black Version”"Dirty Jay” “GILF” etc. 99% of all advertisers would get nowhere near titles like that… and when most the Internet is geared towards 20-year college dudes, that 1% of ad $$ available makes it even harder to maintain a biz.
Tommy,
You have no idea what you are talking about. Two of the series you listed are 2 that 60Frames actually got advertisers attached and that 60Frames actually made money on.
It was not the best company. They just had the wrong idea about the internet and most of their product was bad. The internet will be a cult of personality type place. Adam Corolla is a good example. People aren’t going to go to a website because they made a good show here and there. It’s not like network tv. They will go because of the creator or talent in it. These companies need to make deals with people who they think will create good content and let them go wild.
That’s it. Until these people get their head around that, they aren’t going to make any money.
I work in the building nextdoor to 60Frames. Just passing by their windows a couple times a week I never once saw a single person in the offices in the last six months. Maybe more. I couldn’t understand how this place was always, ALWAYS empty.
Now I read this. Agree with the comments above – it’s not the economy’s fault. Just bad videos (albeit better than average production value).
@Bligh, 60frames did syndicate content to Hulu, btw, quick, hit it before it goes… http://www.hulu.com/videos/search?query=60Frames
@Tommy, I think you nailed it–there’s no ad friendly content, so there goes the cash.
As for Nikki, “It’s short-sighted to ignore what is obviously the next wave of Hollywood agenting. But also foolish to expect it’s going to make money within just a couple of years.” I think you’re way off the mark. Investors don’t need to see the return, they need to see the potential for return, and 60frames couldn’t justify its business model. It also doesn’t help that one of its parent companies is being sued into the ground by WPP–who is as big an ad company as you get.
As for “next wave” of agenting, good story sells, bad story dies. As long as crap like Quarterlife is what the agents are offering, the Internet is serving as no better a channel to good talent than anything else…
TJ: Thanks, I checked out their work at Hulu….it sucks! Reminds me of a really bad community service network trying to emulate Mad TV. Jason Priestly, you deserve better!
UTA gargles my balls. Nikki, your the best there is, plain and simple, you piss excellence in the morning. Don’t waste your time with reporting about a piece of shit like UTA.
Somebody tell me why 60F was innovative? They simply waited 7 years and recycled the same biz plan of AtomFilms, without having a little cash flow from an ad-supported web site. This deserved to fail. It was all wanna-be TV ideas turned into small screen crap.
i’m sorry to see them go. i’m doing a ton of stuff in this space and i think the hardest thing is to try to quantify it. deal to deal there are vast differences. where the money is coming from, when the money comes back in, what the value of elements (talent/direction/quality of look/writing) is, there are no sure answers yet. i find it constantly exciting but at times frustrating. the time will come where it all makes sense and to me the only plan that makes sense is to stay in the game until that happens.
anyone who was doing cool stuff with 60 frames, feel free to get in touch.
the only company getting any of this shit right is EQAL. deal flow is insane right now.
Anybody who criticizes 60Frames for having a “horrible model” is an idiot. Their business plan adapted as the space evolved. Where a site like Turner’s Superdeluxe.com relied solely on driving traffic to their site (the oldest model), 60Frames distributed their content across multiple platforms. After initially funding a series in the hopes of finding a viral hit or attaching advertising to it (an older model), they moved to an advertiser-first plan that may have worked out, were we not in the midst of a horrible recession.
Oh, and there’s nothing wrong with hitching your wagon to a show with the title “Douchebag Beach.” McDonalds didn’t mind. They ended up sponsoring it.
Is anyone really surprised this didn’t work? Does anyone have any idea what UTA’s original goal was in setting up 60 Frames? Was it to nurture and grow new clients? To become a production entity in itself? And of course the biggest question, did they have even one soul there who had even the faintest understanding of what works and what doesn’t in the nascent, quirky and frighteningly idiosyncratic world of online video?
With a business model that has devolved into requiring 9, 10 and sometimes more “Producers” to make a movie, is anyone surprised that “Hollywood” repeatedly fails at creating content for an audience which has little or no interest in paying for it?
News Flash: The “dream factory” which was Hollywood no longer exists.
Like much of our culture over the last 30 years, it was redefined by the greed of wildly unregulated free market capitalism and the systematic acquisition and consolidation of studios and networks by global conglomerates. With the exception of the net (for now) conglomerates now control both production and distribution, making what was already a difficult system to enter a more closed than ever.
Historically, the exceptional agents have found opportunities and vehicles to exploit talent. (see DHD’s piece on the late, great, Sam Cohn). Unfortunately, agents in “Hollywood” haven’t done much of this for decades. Under the leadership of people like Ray Stark and Michael Ovitz, the 70’s saw the agency business morph into a bona fide cabal, with a moral code which placed amassing money and power as job one. Careers were ended, lives were ruined. Anyone here old enough to remember what happened to David Puttnam in his brief stint at Columbia?
Today “Hollywood” agencies have devolved into glorified farm teams, bullpens if you will for the legions of nameless, faceless suits waiting to transition to the ever more bloated ranks of middle management jobs at “Hollywood’s” networks and studios.
But like the rest of our world, digital technology and the Internet has changed all this.
News Flash “Hollywood” — fat dumb and happy don’t cut it on the Internet. Talented, hungry, smart, and patient — just might.
The future of ALL media is in the hands of the same kind of relatively unstable personality types who started it: a.) the Talent and b.) the Impresario.
UTA and the quickly disappearing Spot Runner’s money (oh, there was a doozie of a business model) would have been much better spent doing what talent agencies and agents are supposed to do; finding and nurturing new and undiscovered TALENT.
Don’t kid yourself, they’re out there. The next generation of writers, directors, artists and yes, producers, with a passion to make movies and a burning desire to express themselves which (at least initially) far outweighs their interest in dining and being seen at the Ivy. People whose biggest goal in life is to make a great movie, touch people’s hearts, maybe even teach his and her fellow inhabitants of the planet something about themselves and the place we live as opposed to buying that Bentley or some other piece of consumerist trash.
Viva la revolucion!
Amen to the Optimist!
Hollywood still is making the same mistakes over and over again with their ventures into the internet. Those old enough to remember the last boom of content-based web networks, which were headed by Hollywood cast-offs and actual Hollywood players, know that only a few of the lessons of the year 2000 have been learned.
Back then, companies with names like Pop.com (funded by Dreamworks), Z.com, and many, many others signed deals with “name” talent to star and produce in various web series. Few, if any, of these really took off. And Hollywood was befuddled, because didn’t names and stars usually equal success?
The same thing has happened all over again, close to a decade later. Hollywood funds a company on the web, throws money at attracting name talent, then loses a bundle when the eyeballs don’t show up.
They did show up for Will Ferrell’s “The Landlord” sketch, so there are exceptions. But they are few.
Meanwhile, one of the biggest hits of the last two years was a clip featuring a chipmunk looking dramatically into the camera with a dramatic sting.
The Optimist is right. All the talent you need is already there. Spend an hour on YouTube and you’ll find better material created by “amateurs” than at most Hollywood-funded start-ups.
60frames demise was due to a combination of bad content and a bad business model. This has become an industry driven by ad dollar integrations…and McDonald’s participation in Douchebag Beach notwithstanding, they didn’t generate enough ad revenue in their projects to come even close to being profitable.
While the EQAL guys are great guys, I’m not sure you can say they’re “the only company getting any of this shit right.” They struck gold with LG15 in large part because they were in the right place at the right time… but have had trouble replicating anything resembling that success in subsequent LG iterations. They are now banking on their social network technology platform to distinguish themselves from the rest of the field. Their latest project, the web component of Harpers Island, was work for hire.
All of the Digital Studios are struggling; it’s the nature of the beast right now, as the industry shifted from a commission model to one of branded integration.
If there is a studio getting it right, it’s probably DECA, who’s low-cost / highly targeted niche driven projects like Project Lore, Momversation and Smosh may not have necessarily become viral hits… but they’re generating significant traffic… which in turn generates significant interest from advertisers. THAT’s an effective business model.
Maybe if they spent less time and money on getting attention in the press and focused on the work they could have had a chance. Plus, the guy who ran the place has the charisma of a granite slab