One reality show using the Internet to best advantage is Pioneer Quest.

The current site for Pioneer Quest – which puts two couples in the shoes of pioneers on the Manitoba prairie and tracks them for a year — was launched to coincide with the show’s initial air date in November 2000. Features and functions have been phased in since, with input from Winnipeg prodco Credo Entertainment and broadcaster Alliance Atlantis as well as Web company Ecentricarts.

The site (//pioneer.history.ca/splash.cfm) includes streaming video, photographs of the pioneers going about their daily chores, diary entries from the pioneers themselves, historical material on the experiences of real pioneers and such minor details as recipes the pioneers are using and the temperature at the homestead that day.

Jamie Brown, series executive producer, formerly with Credo and now CEO and executive producer at Frantic, says the initial bare-bones site was expanded partly because of the series’ occasional air schedule.

"One of the reasons we wanted to have a great Internet site is that the show is broadcast relatively infrequently. In reruns we’ll be able to run it as eight one-hours over eight weeks and be able to get the same continuity. It was my feeling that I wanted the show to be an as-it-happened kind of event. I wanted people to go to the Internet and be able to find out more. And the educational component was huge," says Brown.

"Like most shows, we had a pittance in the budget for the site and AAC [History broadcasts Pioneer Quest now and Life has second-window rights] said, ‘Why don’t we invest in this and flesh it out and make it better?’

"It’s very expensive to have a website updated as often as ours. It’s been very interesting for me that this super website makes heavy demand on content. They want great content, which of course is what you want for the series.

"What I have learned is that you should dedicate specific resources for content for the site that in many cases is separate from the program. We work really hard to get great content; at first we thought we would give them outtakes [for the site], but when you have a rough assembly everything’s [a maybe for airing]."

The site, which had a million page views in February alone, aims to place the experiences of the modern-day pioneers in context, says the man behind the site, Michel Blondeau of Ecentricarts.

"It’s a number of different means to understand what they’re going through. It’s an insight into a personal journey they are taking.

"The website brings an opportunity to reflect on the minutiae. We can tell a story in 45 minutes [on television] but those are broad strokes. The Web allows us to ruminate."

The site includes didactic information about 1875, including accounts from actual pioneers of the era. "What we tried to do was conceptualize their experience: these are real people who were settlers at the time. Here’s what people went through in the summer of 1875; here’s someone’s actual words. If someone wants to spend a good deal of time they’re going to get a good deal of context."

Also included on the site are essays intended "to be informally educational. There’s a broad deal of content. It’s written for grades 8 or 9, to give them a backdrop. Rather than just [cover] the realtime experience we needed to contextualize it that much more."

Already, Brown says, AAC, the owner and developer of the site, is "talking about developing an interactive CD-ROM. They’ve been pushing from the beginning to make the site educational and informational, a learning tool to make people understand this better."

Perhaps even more important for a show with broadcast dates separated by months is the role the site plays in updating the audience on the events still being filmed.

"When the TV show is documentary about a real event you have 20/20 hindsight: the website is in realtime. The website is a bridge to the present. And in the interim they visited the site where we updated twice weekly on what was happening," says Blondeau.

The estimated 56,000 unique visitors – who generally stay for 6.5 minutes – are quite a crowd.

"They tend to be quite loyal and quite verbose. [The premise of Pioneer Quest is] a concept that’s quite romantic for many Canadians, the struggle that’s part of our history. This TV show managed to capture that through the voice of four people. They’re contemporary, but they’re four pioneers." *

-//pioneer.history.ca/splash.cfm