What are you watching?

So, the rush is on to create video content for the web. You probably already knew that. But, apparently the big movie studios are just waking up to that fact. I read an article from the NY Times today (Warner Shifts Web Course, Shouldering Video Costs) that talks about how Time Warner is giving up on trying to get advertisers to pay the costs up front for web entertainment projects, because they, like many other Hollywood studios, are falling behind in the race to create content for the web. Edgier, scrappy newcomers are getting ahead in the race to provide content. So, like other studios who have been trying to play it safe, they’re jumping in running. They announced a whole slate of minimovies, games and eposodic TV shows they’re creating specifically for the web.

All this got me thinking about, what’s out there and who’s watching it. First off, you can catch up on all your favorite shows online these days with varing degrees of sucess. When I missed an episode of Fox’s "On the Lot" I was very frustrated, not able to get their episodes to play on my home computer. When I wanted to catch up on missed Heroes episodes, I was amazed at how quick they loaded and how smoothly they ran on NBC’s site. But, it’s not just the big networks. My daughter got hooked on Sci Fi’s "So you want to be a superhero" several episodes in and went back and got caught up with ease.

All that’s great if you haven’t joined the DVR set yet, as we haven’t. But what about original content? I liked the webisodes of "In the Motherhood" which I talked about in a previous blog. One of my favorite places to go for original content is a site Will Farrell launched for short funny videos called Funny or Die.  It’s where he first played his now famous Pearl the landlady videos.

What are you watching online? Why not share some of your favorites with the rest of us? I look forward to watching more good stuff (on my lunch break, of course!)

Mike McClure, ECD