Seeso was a gift to comedy nerds. But it was also an experiment in what not to do in streaming. wbstorey presents an oral history of NBCUniversal’s short-lived, extremely doomed comedy platform
Illustration: by Julie Greiner In June 2012, shortly after stepping down as president of IFC TV and Sundance Channel, then-45-year-old Evan Shapiro published a manifesto. It was an intervention for TV in the early days of the streaming wars, before your Pluses and Maxes and Quibis . Shapiro warned of the havoc millennial “cord-cutters” would wreak on content providers and included the results of an assignment he gave his students at NYU to draft up “the next big thing” for the TV industry.
“One version of the future was what we were calling ‘baby Netflixes.’” In December 2014, after launching a now-defunct cable channel from Participant Media called Pivot, Shapiro was on the lookout for a new opportunity. A friend at NBCU’s recruiting office told him they wanted to build something in the streaming space with a comedy bent, and he was hired as the company’s first-ever executive vice-president of NBCUniversal Digital Enterprises.
David Jargowsky : Evan was like, “Basically we’re going to live in a world where Hulu, Amazon, and Netflix become the ABC, NBC, and CBS of a streaming world. And what I want to do is I want to carve out a place where I can be the IFC-type programing platform that will still be able to make it. Now, what I need in order to do that is to create premium programming with interesting people that have audiences that will follow them to a place to watch the programming.
Purnell: I was at Comcast/NBCUniversal as part of a rotational program for post-MBAs. I started working on NBC News’ approach to younger audiences. When I first heard Evan’s name, they called him “the millennial whisperer.” I saw a couple of presentations he put together, and then someone mentioned that they were in the early stages of putting together what would be known as Seeso. I met with Evan and Ben [McLean, SVP, operations and strategy].
Jonah Ray : Dan was always very good. He had a great comedic mind, whereas Annamaria had this amazing ability to understand the heart of these characters in the show, which is a weird thing to say about a sketch show. But she really made sure it felt complete, like it felt of a piece. Purnell: Evan had a list on his wall. He had a whiteboard on his wall and had everything there we could think of. We had some weird Latin phrases at some point; it was kind of all over the place. And eventually we had what you could call a little NCAA tournament of names.
Seeso logo use guidance from an internal document. Photo: Seeso Tim Baltz : The name Seeso, when people drag on that, I’m like, Shut up. You have Netflix, you have Hulu, you have Crackle. The name doesn’t matter if it sticks around; staying power dictates that you’ll normalize it. But the font and the color of the font, I don’t know … that always gave me a bit of an uneasy feeling.
Purnell: NBC had, I think, just done a deal with Lorne Michaels, with Broadway Video, to get full ownership of SNL, so obviously that’s the crown jewel. Connor Ratliff : They had all of Alan Partridge, including super obscure stuff. They had a lot of British comedy that you can’t get anywhere. “We wanted to find things that didn’t feel like they belonged anywhere else in the current TV atmosphere.” River Butcher and Cameron Esposito’s Take My Wife, one of Seeso’s original series. Photo: Seeso Once The Office and Parks and Rec were off the table, the Seeso team was given more resources for original programming. As they built the platform’s library over the course of 2015, the programming team set out to find the right blend of comedic talent for original shows and specials.
Jargowsky: Evan did a really good job of looking at the comedy landscape and saying “Okay, well, podcasting is a bit like grassroots meritocracy. So if we look at these factions of people that are getting traction there, we can stitch together this audience quilt of people.” Harmon: Evan had that same eye and that same kind of shrewdness of like, “Let’s get into business with the smart people that don’t need a bunch of money. What they actually are craving is respect. I’ll give them that respect, and then I’ll get more bang for my buck from crazier people.”
Patrick Cotnoir : The launch was really exciting! We had all this original content ready to go. A lot of people felt like, This is something I would use. I want to do a good job. Dan Ahdoot : Anytime we told someone we’re on the show, we’d have to tell them what Seeso was and what they were trying to do and how to subscribe and all that stuff. So it was kind of like we were actors on the show, but also ambassadors for the new network.
“Make sure that this thing is so fun to make and so satisfying for us as creatives that it would warrant having done it and it never seeing the light of day.” Seeso’s The UCB Show. Photo: Seeso After a disappointing launch in January 2016, Seeso found some footing over the course of its first year, with the premieres of well-received series like Bajillion Dollar Propertie$, HarmonQuest, Debate Wars, Hidden America With Jonah Ray, and Take My Wife, arguably its biggest critical hit.
Shapiro: We met with Dan Harmon via teleconference to convince him to bring himself back to NBC after a not-great experience and make HarmonQuest with us. I convinced him to make it half live-action, and together we created something that is indelibly unique and will never be replicated. Shapiro thought of Johnny as a “moonshot” effort to broaden Seeso’s audience and make some prestige television. It was meant to premiere around the 55th anniversary of Carson’s takeover of The Tonight Show, now hosted by Jimmy Fallon. Those involved were banking on heavy cross-promotion on the program that never manifested. The platform would shutter before any episodes were released.
Sofillas: On Monday morning, a same-day 10 a.m. all-staff meeting popped up in my calendar as I was on my way to the office. My first thought was that it was to congratulate the group about the previous week’s premiere of There’s… Johnny! at the Tribeca Film Festival. It was a video conference, and they just came right out and said that Evan was leaving the company, stunning us all into silence. The meeting ended within five or so minutes — we just had nothing to say in response.
Shapiro: I had my fourth boss in two years. They had a lot of decisions to make on where the money and resources were going to be put. It was clear that there was a major disagreement on how I managed the programming budget versus how the corporate accounting department wanted me to manage it. Esposito: We could call Evan directly. I could text the head of the network. For how small that all felt, when it came time for the show to be sold, when Seeso was being shuttered, that was the first time I realized, Oh, we were only looking at one branch of a global conglomerate. Because NBCUniversal was our parent company, and even NBCUniversal has a parent company.
Esposito: It was really tough finishing the second season of Take My Wife. Then we didn’t have an answer about whether it would air anywhere for, I think, for eight months. And then I found out that Starz had interest in purchasing it. Shapiro: How does something that lasted two years have a legacy? I don’t know. I mean, the shows, I think, obviously are that legacy. But a lot of the strategy we used is now being baked into Peacock. So whatever happens there, for good or bad, will be part of that.
Ahdoot: It’s one thing if you’re a part of a project that gets out there and then the public says, “No, we don’t like it.” It’s another thing if you make an amazing project and people don’t know how to fucking find it.
日本 最新ニュース, 日本 見出し
Similar News:他のニュース ソースから収集した、これに似たニュース記事を読むこともできます。
NPR’s ‘How I Built This’ Strikes Licensing Deal With Amazon Music, Wondery (Exclusive)The podcast will stream exclusively on Amazon Music and Wondery+ for one week before going wide on all podcast platforms for free.
続きを読む »
U.S. lawmakers introduce bipartisan bill to address social media addictionU.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat, and Cynthia Lummis, a Republican, introduced a bill aimed at addressing addiction to social media platforms like Meta Platform's Facebook or Twitter .
続きを読む »
OnlyFans launches verified NFT profile picturesThe popular subscription platform OnlyFans, known for its adult content, will now let users post verified NFTs as profile pictures. The platform will
続きを読む »
Shiba Inu to Start Trading on One of Brazil's Top Crypto ExchangesFoxbit is the latest cryptocurrency trading platform to join Shiba Inu frenzy
続きを読む »
Microsoft Swears Call of Duty Won't Be Exclusive to XboxActivision/Blizzard games will be multi-platform 'into the future.'
続きを読む »