AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

LA Times’ Webscout, David Sarno

IT was Jessica Rose who gave this funny little genre its first hit, way back in 2006. Lonelygirl15, if you’ll recall, was the headline-grabbing video diary of a pretty teenager, later exposed by net detectives (led by the Los Angeles Times’ Richard Rushfield) as a brilliant, CAA-backed fiction. The lonely girl was by no means alone — she had a team of writers and producers behind her, and though the case was closed on lonelygirl15, the frontier of “webisodic” video was wide open.

The problem with open frontiers is that the people seeking to colonize them, to borrow a quote from Ms. South Carolina, simply “don’t have maps.” Which is why, almost two years after lonelygirl15, no Web series has established a viable, let alone profitable homestead.

But this week, more wagons are arriving. On Monday, Sony Pictures Television launched C-Spot, an online comedy channel featuring six sharply produced programs with enough short episodes to fill a 13-week season. ….more….