Ahead of Thursday’s Merging Media panel Future of 360: Inventing Next Gen TV – Opening the Box to Second Screen and Beyond, panelist Caitlin Burns, transmedia producer and lead editor of New York-based transmedia prodco Starlight Runner, discusses challenges of creating compelling content for the new mediascape, successful emerging transmedia business models, and trends for 2014.

PB: What key issues facing the transmedia industry will you be addressing in your panel?

CB: There are a few big questions that are crucial to what happens next in television. The first group is technical, where we can ask what can the next television set actually do? What interactivity will be possible, how will devices interact with our programs and how will people actually choose to interact with programming?

Along with these new technological innovations, and the fact that more and more people are getting their programming through services like Netflix, Amazon Instant, Hulu and others, [mean] there are a lot of changes worth noting on the distribution side that impact networks, creators, and the audience.

Not every show lends itself beautifully to social media pop-ups but that doesn’t mean that traditional shows don’t have big decisions to make about how they want to be seen. Right now there are big questions in the industry about how quickly to offer broadcast shows onto online services and on-demand. Netflix’s all-at-once release of its original programs like Orange is the New Black, Arrested Development and House of Cards and Amazon’s choices to release its new programs in a freemium model (a three-episode-upfront launch then released weekly for a price).  What should a season be for a series? There are many choices, each with their own benefits and challenges.

Ultimately, the biggest challenge that these new options in technology and distribution present are how to create a compelling, engaging story that’s well suited for the choices that you’re making, the story has to come first, or the rest of it will fall apart. 

PB: Have you seen any new and successful transmedia business models emerge in the last year?

CB: [One example is] The Lizzie Bennet Diaries [an online modernized adaptation of Pride and Prejudice], which won an Interactive Emmy, but was distributed on YouTube and social media.  We’re seeing really well-made stories that you can enjoy the same way you might tune in to a television show really making names for themselves on web platforms, and those are only two of hundreds entering the market.

Microsoft’s Halo franchise also had an incredible launch in the past year, where in the lead-up to the console FPS game Halo 4‘s release a webseries, Forward Unto Dawn presented a live-action military sci-fi story that weaved the history of a secondary character into the story of the game. This web series was available as a feature on-demand and DVD and was a great story that performed admirably in addition to supporting the launch of the game.  The webseries was so well done it is being turned into a long-form TV series produced by Steven Spielberg.

What we’re seeing more and more of is an integration of transmedia storytelling techniques into the everyday practice of television show marketing, like the year-round narrative content that has been built for shows like Psych (#hashtagkiller, The S#cial Sector) and shows like Top Chef winning award after award for their related webseries (Last Chance Kitchen, Battle of the Sous Chefs) and more subtly in what marketing departments provide fans through behind-the-scenes content and access into the worlds of their shows. Audiences expect more than a push around sweeps week and a push to the season premiere or finale, if they love a story; they want that story to be there for them regardless of the broadcast cycle.

Other big changes are coming in how new original projects are proving themselves in the market before getting the on-air greenlight. YouTube celebrity Jason Silva had millions of followers before he launched Brain Games on National Geographic, and that show’s premiere hit a ratings record for the network. Similarly, the CW has an online network for testing new show concepts with their audiences on the web (CW Digital) before they move to the broadcast schedule, shows like Smokebomb’s Backpackers for example. Some of the biggest names in Hollywood are exploring this method, like Ridley Scott, who has partnered with Machinima to test pilots of new Sci-Fi properties on their online channel.

PB: What significant second-screen or transmedia trends will we see in 2014?

CB: One of the most exciting trends is that co-creation with the audience is beginning to find its own business models. Not every part of every program is well-suited to being interpreted or guided by the audience, but more and more programs are finding ways to integrate their audience and to even reward fans financially for their hard work.

Fans have always made fan fiction, original, unauthorized stories inside the story worlds of their favorite narratives. Now they have an opportunity to contribute to those worlds and see some profit from their work. Amazon’s Kindle Worlds allows fans to create novellas for a variety of intellectual properties that have signed on to the program, Gossip Girl and The Vampire Diaries, even the world of Kurt Vonnegut. It’s early days yet, and there’s plenty of growing to do, but it’s key to note that brands and creators are trying to find ways to reach out to their fans and give them ways to share.

Game producers Valve started user-generated marketplaces a few years back for the gaming world, which had some stellar results for their Team Fortress 2 [first-person shooter multiplayer game] community.  Another interesting way to co-create with their audience comes from CCP, the Iceland based company behind the MMO [massive multiplayer online game] juggernaut EVE Online. They have announced that they are turning their often-incredible player stories into a long-form television show. For a narrative world that has included years-long social cons and space battles thousands of individual players strong, that’s some compelling content.  They’ve also been turning submitted player stories into comics and have launched Dust 514, a which is directly connected to CCP’s MMO EveOnline, where player actions in one game affect the other.

In the United States, 2014 also marks the start of a new paradigm for crowdfunding, where we’ll start to see fundraising where crowd funding can be done for equity in projects in addition to merchandise. Kickstarter and Indiegogo have opened up a variety of options for new stories and new ideas to fundraise – and to reach out early to engage their audience – and aren’t going anywhere. But this will give even more options to find funding from non-traditional investors and to engage audiences early in the production process.

Valve is also entering the console market, their initial offering, the Steam Box is focusing on taking their popular PC marketplace Steam and creating a console that connects to televisions. This is entering the market at a time where the next generation of consoles, The Xbox One, Wii U and PlayStation 4 are all seeing the marketplace for social network integration, multiple device integration and multipurpose uses as key to their consoles’ growth.

All in all, none of these innovations work if the stories aren’t interesting and well made, being in this modern pervasive media landscape where everyone is competing for the same audience’s time, no matter what the platform, means that having a good story and presenting it well has never been more important.

Burns will participate in the panel discussion with Brian Seth Hurst, Jay Bennett, Steve Peters and Victoria Evans.