YouTube For Grass Roots Sitcom Revival... Or A Way To Get Some Press?

from the either-or dept

About two weeks ago, Engadget had a column talking about how a sitcom that no TV station wanted had shown up on YouTube. The column discussed how perhaps shows could be launched this way in the future. The article was interesting, and the sitcom pilot was mildly amusing -- but it wasn't at all clear where this story came from. It doesn't say who had posted the video to YouTube, or how the Engadget writer, Stephen Speicher, had all the details about the show. If anything, it sounded very placed by a PR effort, rather than a real grassroots revival of a show that never went anywhere. It took about a week and a half for a similar article to show up in the NY Times as well, once again talking about how YouTube may have brought this sitcom back to life. However, the show really hasn't received that many viewers, and it really doesn't seem so much about a real YouTube "hit" as much as a case where the show was put on YouTube and then almost immediately fed to various folks in the press as a "story." It's nice to think that TV shows could get a better sense for success or failure by making use of such online video platforms -- but it's not clear that's what really happened here. Instead, like PR people who used to put things on eBay solely for the publicity, it sounds like the story is really how some savvy folks recognized that having the show on YouTube would make for a story the press couldn't resist. Update: The folks from Engadget have reasonably taken exception to the idea that they were taken by some PR person. My apologies for not doing a great job explaining myself and for unfairly making Engadget look like a PR mouthpiece. That wasn't my intention. What struck me was the idea of using any kind of "success" on YouTube as a potential storyline to get the press interested, similar to what has been done in the past on eBay. I don't think it makes it any less of a story either way. In the meantime, multiple editors at Engadget, as well as the original author, have all made it abundantly clear in a series of emails that this is not how their story came to be, and they don't appreciate the implication, whether intended or not. So, again, my apologies.
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  • identicon
    Jeff, 5 Jul 2006 @ 5:53pm

    More tube junk

    It's all this YouTube stuff that's cluttering up all OUR TUBES. Oh the depravity.

    ***INSERT JOKE SIGN HERE***

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    rijit (profile), 6 Jul 2006 @ 12:14am

    Way to go Mike!

    Etu Brute?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Louis, 6 Jul 2006 @ 2:56am

    UTube

    Goddamnit! Its the YouTube that´s been cloggin' up the internet tubes!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Just Me, 6 Jul 2006 @ 7:00am

    Endgadget

    I regularly read Endgadget, and I trust their reporting as much as any other tech blog, but I owuld like to know who they had the inside details.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Yakov, 6 Jul 2006 @ 8:55am

    Tubes are all clogged up!!!

    The internets arive late, because the tubes are all filled up with youtube stuff, so this is a big problem.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 6 Jul 2006 @ 9:50am

    I agree! We need to get the YouTubes shut down so MyTubes don't get clogged.

    I want my emails to go through the internets unimpeded by such things as commercial video applications.

    Why do I have a feeling that the poor dude is going to be the brunt of *tube jokes fora VERY long time?

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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