Netting results

Having circumnavigated the over-hype and initial industry indifference to new-media tools, some Canadian producers are beginning to reap the rewards of venturing onto the Internet.

It was only seven months ago that Andrew Cochran pioneered a permanent home page for a Canadian tv show, with the Theodore Tugboat site, and since then, other shows have followed in his wake or are about to cast off for the cyberwaves.

All of this comes at a propitious time, as numerous new net users are logging on and cruising for exciting sites to visit.

There’s great synergy between the continuing series and the Web site, as the former provides continual new fodder for the latter. And as most of the new stuff on the net is commercial, zines riddled with ads and logos, and almost every home page a hyperlink to a potential sale of some sort, producers find themselves faced with the opportunity to forge many new connections.

They range from a complementary compound of marketing agendas, such as reaching buyers in distant territories or proving demographics and reach to networks and advertisers, to more content-related communication goals – linking creators of shows with direct raw feedback from their audience.

Building viewer loyalty is also a service benefit of the wired connection, and it’s no small consideration in a tvsphere where preemptions or a slot change can kill the ratings of shows that were audience darlings.

Liberty Street creator/executive producer Linda Schuyler of Epitome Pictures partially attributes the series’ success and renewal to its Web presence, which is a fairly standard, mostly national (they do get foreign visitors) undertaking. Consider then the potential of the net as a merchandising/cross-promotion program component, or for more complex international endeavors, such as the Atlantis goal for its soon-to-be launched Internet site – a global tv guide for its programs.

The possibilities seem infinite, bound only by the capacity of the technology and its rate of acceptance. Once the speed/memory is resolved for the majority of users, the www could provide more than chat forums for tv viewers or a way to hype movies. It can be a similarly useful device on the cd-rom side, a tool for focus groups or even to test movies through previews.

The producers of ReBoot (BLT Productions, coproduced with Alliance) who are developing an interactive pilot for the first interactive network, find the kind of Internet commentary on the cyberworld they spin to be exceedingly germane. And it has influenced not only the content of the series, but the direction of some upcoming projects.

The importance of being digital is only heightened by the complex new choices for viewers (not to mention delivery systems), and the Internet (if you’re in the right product category), while not yet deemed a ‘deal point,’ is a very flexible link in the production world’s circle of life.