Ironically, talking to JibJab's Gregg Spiridellis at the Banff World Television Festival made me wonder why anyone would bother creating television over digital video. His enthusiasm for his own business – what he calls a "new media comedy brand" — is infectious, and the Internet's ability to quickly develop innovative content, and measure and connect to their audience puts the television industry to shame.
"We hope to literally make JibJab a branded comedy network so that wherever you are, on your cell phone, obviously on the web, on IPTV, that JibJab is a place you can turn to for really well-produced, premium branded comedy," says the former investment banker who now straddles the creative and business line, running the company with his brother, Evan, who animates the original shorts Gregg writes.
From boom to bust to boom again
In an Internet start-up cliché, the brothers self-financed their new venture from a Brooklyn garage. This was 1999, and they created hit videos in the pre-YouTube era, lead a staff of 13, licensed their content, and rode the wave of the dot com boom ... until it went bust and all their clients went bankrupt. Undeterred, the brothers packed up for Los Angeles and a fresh start. After producing toys and books in addition to their animations, and even creating the Mr. Bananagrabber character on Arrested Development, things were starting to look up again. Then, suddenly, the JibJab brand launched into the cyber-stratosphere with the political satire "This Land."
An animated duet between caricatures of George W. Bush and John Kerry, "This Land" was released during the 2004 United States presidential campaign. "It was your typical five year overnight success story," laughs Spiridellis.
At the Festival panel he participated in, "Audience Wranging: How Are You Managing Your TV Audience," Spiridellis pointed out that the company had always taken advantage of the direct, one-to-one relationship possible on the web. They had long been collecting e-mail addresses of their viewers, so that when they released "This Land," 130,000 people had already opted in to receive information on new JibJab programming. Their 130,000 friends told their friends, and by the time JibJab released another political parody several months later, they had tallied 80 million streams of the videos.
Article comments
1 - Clint Johnson
The reason that "television" will survive, even as it translates to the Internet as a deliver medium, is that creating quality episodic drama is expensive and that can't change. There are only so many good writers, directors, actors and editors to go around and they command a premium for their services. And it doesn't work to have a good writer and a so so director working with adequate actors, they all have to be there to bolster each other.
Canadian television producers have bigger budgets than any online content producer and they still fail to deliver quality content because the good creators and talent have moved to the US where the money is.
The chances that you can get five good writer, a good director and a dozen good actors to work for next to nothing... it is so close to zero as to be indistinguishable.
And even if that 0.000000001% possibility panned out, you would be relegated to a very narrow selection of material that could be created with any semblance of production values.
Sanctuary is there with production values but that costs over half a million dollars per 15-18 minute episode... and as far as I can tell, they are paying the talent largely with participation in a financial venture that is almost certain to be a money losing proposition.
You need deep pockets to create quality episodic drama and that can't change.
2 - Diane Kristine
Yup, that's pretty much Spiridellis' point, that the current system is great for producing hour and half hour productions for broadcast, and that won't change - there'll always be a market for that, and a short video, which is what the web does best, doesn't compete with that.
However, he points out - and I've heard this over and over again from TV industry people - that the system is not set up to do cheaper, shorter, made-for-web content. It hurts JibJab and it hurts teh TV industry, who are desperate to use the Internet to engage and build audiences. The next round of union contracts will either help or hinder the process, but there's other work to be done too.