Web television
Encyclopedia
Web television, also commonly referred to as web TV, not to be confused with WebTV, Internet television
Internet television
Internet television is the digital distribution of television content via the Internet...

 or catch up TV, is an emerging genre of digital entertainment that is distinct from traditional broadcast television. Delivered originally online via broadband and mobile networks, web television shows, or web series
Web series
A web series is a series of episodes released on the Internet or also by mobile or cellular phone, and part of the newly emerging medium called web television. A single instance of a web series program is called an episode .While the popularity of web series is continuing to rise, the concept...

, are short-form in nature (2–9 minutes per episode), episodic, and produced in seasons. Some notable series include Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is a 2008 musical tragicomedy miniseries in three acts, produced exclusively for Internet distribution. Filmed and set in Los Angeles, the show tells the story of Dr...

, The Guild
The Guild
The Guild is an American comedy web series created and written by Felicia Day, who also stars as Cyd Sherman . It premiered on YouTube on July 27, 2007. Subsequent webisodes premiered on Microsoft's Xbox Live Marketplace, Zune Marketplace, and MSN Video. The webisodes were later made available on...

, Prom Queen
Prom Queen (internet series)
Prom Queen is the first web television series produced by former Walt Disney CEO Michael Eisner's new production company Vuguru and the returning web television production company Big Fantastic, the creators of Sam Has 7 Friends...

, Homestar Runner
Homestar Runner
Homestar Runner is a Flash animated Internet cartoon. It mixes surreal humor with references to retro pop culture, notably video games, classic television, and popular music.The cartoons are nominally centered on the title character, Homestar Runner...

, Husbands
Husbands (web series)
Husbands is an American comedy web series starring Brad Bell, aka "Cheeks", Sean Hemeon and Alessandra Torresani. It is written by Jane Espenson, co-written by Brad Bell and directed by Jeff Greenstein. It is an 11-part web series, based on the classic premise of newlywed comedy.-Plot:The series...

 and others. Major web television networks include The WB.com, Hulu
Hulu
Hulu is a website and over-the-top subscription service offering ad-supported on-demand streaming video of TV shows, movies, webisodes and other new media, trailers, clips, and behind-the-scenes footage from NBC, Fox, ABC, and Obstacle on October 20th 2011 Nickelodeon and CBS and many other...

, MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....

, YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

, Newgrounds
Newgrounds
Newgrounds is an American entertainment and social media website. Founded on July 6, 1995 by Tom Fulp, the site primarily hosts Adobe Flash animations and games, but also features a music-oriented page, along with an art portal...

, Blip.tv
Blip.tv
The website Blip.tv is a platform for web series. The company offers a for the "best in original web series" and also offers a dashboard for producers of original web series to distribute and monetize their productions....

, and Crackle
Crackle
Crackle is a digital network and studio, featuring commercially supported streaming video content in Flash Video format. It is owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, and its content consists primarily of Sony's library of films and television shows...

. Major web television production companies include Next New Networks, Vuguru
Vuguru
Vuguru is an independent multi-platform studio founded by Tornante in March 2006. The studio's first project, "Prom Queen", consisted of 90-second shorts in 80 episodes and was distributed online, beginning in April 2007. A second project entitled "The All for Nots" was distributed online and on...

, Revision3, Deca
Deca
Deca- or deka- is a prefix in the metric system, also a numerical prefix, denoting a factor of ten. The term is derived from the Greek δέκα meaning "ten". Its symbol is the only SI prefix that uses more than one character....

, Generate LA-NY
Generate LA-NY
Generate is a Los Angeles-based entertainment studio that produces content for distribution across media, including the Internet, television, web television, film, video games, mobile devices and books. The company completed a $6 million Series A round of funding backed by Velocity Interactive...

, and Take180
Take180
Take180 is a web television company based in Los Angeles, CA, that was launched in 2008 as a wholly owned subsidiary of Disney. The company is responsible for shows such as My Alibi, In2ition, Electric Spoofaloo, My Date, ...

.

In 2008, the International Academy of Web Television
International Academy of Web Television
The International Academy of Web Television was founded in 2008 and is devoted to the advancement of the arts and sciences of web television production. In 2009, the IAWTV held the first Streamy Awards ceremony, an annual event created to recognize excellence in web television production. The...

 was founded with the mission to organize and support the community of web television creators, actors, producers and executives. It administers the selection of winners for the Streamy Awards
Streamy Awards
The Streamy Awards, popularly known as the Streamys, are presented annually by the International Academy of Web Television to recognize excellence in the arts and science of web television production, including directing, acting, producing, and writing. The formal ceremony at which the awards are...

.

1994 to 2000: Early pioneers

In 1995, New York advertising creative Scott Zakarin
Scott Zakarin
Scott Zakarin is an American writer, film producer and new media entertainment pioneer.-Career:In 1995, while directing commercials and early interactive television tests for the Fattal & Collins advertising agency, Zakarin became fascinated by the Internet. He spent time in chat rooms and quickly...

 convinced his employers Fattal and Collins to finance a website television drama along the lines of the contemporary television drama Melrose Place. The Spot
The Spot
The Spot, or thespot.com, was the second episodic online story , after an earlier experiment by AOL's QuantumLink Serial, and pioneered the underwriting of bandwidth and production costs by offering paid advertising banners on the web pages and product placement within the journal entries...

became the first episodic fiction website, the first web soap. Fattal and Collins asked their Vice President, Sheri Herman, to have the Spot financed by a round of venture capital as it was draining the resources of this boutique agency. In addition to bringing in 7 million is a first round capital led by Intel, Sheri Herman also brought in major advertisers including Visa and Apple to sponsor both The Spot and additional webisodes through the use of banner ads and product placement. This was the first time advertising was used to sponsor unique fictional content on the web. The Spot featured beautiful actors in a Santa Monica beach house called “The Spot”. The characters kept what would be later termed blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...

s, with movie clips and photos of their current activities. Viewers could post to the site and email the cast to offer advice and became part of the storyline. Audience opinion was used by the writers to shift the plot-lines around.

According to Zakarin, at its height the site received over 100,000 hits a day, a tremendous response for its time. The site earned one of the original Webby Awards. However, the site was still unable to generate sufficient revenue to support the series and three sister series, each of which attracted a significant following as well as outside competitors such as The East Village. Zakarin sold his interest in 1996 to investors who formed the American Cybercast and was later fired. (Zakarin produced another comic soap, Grape Jam before returning to broadcast media and film (notably producing the Shatner-Nimoy dialogue Mind Meld) before returning to the Internet with Soup of the Day and Roommates.) The Spot continued alongside other American Cybercast web series, notably the first sci-fi series Eon-4
Eon-4
EON-4 was the first sci-fi episodic website. The story, created by Rockne S. O'Bannon was based around the mysterious Groom Lake or Area 51 site as the point of contact with an alien race. Three explorers from earth, U.S. Navy Captain David M...

and The Pyramid, until the company fell into bankruptcy in 1997.

Another early series, Homicide: Second Shift
Homicide: Second Shift
Homicide: Second Shift was a pioneering Internet web series that tied into the TV series Homicide: Life on the Street. The web-show started 21 February 1997. The show featured detectives of the homicide squad that worked the second shift, after the television detectives went home for the day...

was a pioneering web series that tied into the broadcast television series Homicide: Life on the Street
Homicide: Life on the Street
Homicide: Life on the Street is an American police procedural television series chronicling the work of a fictional version of the Baltimore Homicide Unit. It ran for seven seasons on NBC from 1993 to 1999, and was succeeded by a TV movie, which also acted as the de-facto series finale...

. The web series started in 1997 and was ultimately canceled due to financial constraints and technological restrictions.

In 1999, Santa Monica based Television Internet premiered the eight-minute weekly series Muscle Beach. It was a sitcom, news and fitness program in one, viewable for free with the then brand new Microsoft Windows Media Player
Windows Media Player
Windows Media Player is a media player and media library application developed by Microsoft that is used for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as on Pocket PC and Windows Mobile-based devices...

. The series lasted three seasons.

Other early web television pioneers included Icebox.com
Icebox.com
icebox.com is a web television animation company founded in 1999 by Jonathan Collier, Howard Gordon, Rob LaZebnik, Scott Rupp and Tal Vigderson. The founders stated that the company was created to capitalize on the inherent "freedom of the medium" which they felt stifled creativity of writers due...

, Digital Entertainment Network
Digital Entertainment Network
Digital Entertainment Network was a multimedia and web television dot-com company.-Founding:Rector hired traditional media executives from Broadcast TV, Film, Commercials, Documentary and Cable to create a destination website featuring serialized "6 minute shows" on the internet.Launched in 1996,...

, Shockwave, Pop.com and cyberserial.com.

2000 to 2005: The birth of modern streaming

As broadband bandwidth began to increase, the reality of high quality video being delivered over the Internet became a reality. On the content delivery front, important players such as YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

, Vimeo
Vimeo
Vimeo is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos. It was founded by Zach Klein and Jake Lodwick in November 2004...

 and DailyMotion
Dailymotion
Dailymotion is a video sharing service website, headquartered in the 18th arrondissement, Paris, France. According to Comscore, Dailymotion is the second largest video site in the world after YouTube....

 launched their services. On the content production front, shows such as Rocket Boom make their first appearance, and post-dot-com bust video networks such as ManiaTV!
ManiaTV!
ManiaTV is a digital television network that produces, packages and distributes premium live celebrity TV shows for the 13-34 youth/young adult market. According to comScore, ManiaTV reaches over 10 million viewers each month. It was founded by Drew Massey....

, iSTATION TV and Ripe TV
Ripe TV
RipeTV was the first Television On Demand network to offer programming over multiple platforms . The network, which launched in 2002 by Ryan Magnussen, targeted an audience of 18-34 males, with mostly short-form content...

 launch. In 2003, The Spot executive producer and head writer Stewart St. John
Stewart St. John
Stewart St. John is an American filmmaker, writer, author, composer, director, producer of television, feature, online and mobile entertainment.-Television and film:...

 revives The Spot brand for online audiences with a new cast, and creates a separate mobile series to air on Sprint PCS Vision-enabled phones. St. John and partner Todd Fisher produce over 2500 daily mobile videos of the first American cell phone soap, driving story lines across platforms to the web counterpart, The Spot (2.0). By 2005, St. John-Fisher create and launch the first online half-hour scripted drama, California Heaven
California Heaven
California Heaven is the first scripted TV series produced for online audiences, making its debut on Monday, August 1 2005. It subsequently moved to Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. Pacific Time, launching a new episode each week. The series was originally put into production while discussions with AOL...

.

2006: Independent web series and early success

In mid-2006, several independent Web series began to achieve popularity, most notably lonelygirl15
Lonelygirl15
lonelygirl15 was an interactive web-based video series which began in June 2006 and ran through to August 1, 2008. Developed under the working title The Children of Anchor Cove, the show gained worldwide media attention when it was outed as fictional in September 2006.-Overview:lonelygirl15...

(created by Miles Beckett, Mesh Flinders
Mesh Flinders
Ramesh "Mesh" Flinders is a screenwriter who, along with Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried, is best known for creating the groundbreaking lonelygirl15 video series which received international attention during the summer months of 2006....

 and Greg Goodfried),Soup of the Day
Soup of the Day
Soup of the Day was a loosely scripted 2006 web series about a man dating three women at the same time. It consisted of 19 self-contained episodes, and was later released on DVD as a full-length movie.- Background :...

(Created by Scott Zakarin
Scott Zakarin
Scott Zakarin is an American writer, film producer and new media entertainment pioneer.-Career:In 1995, while directing commercials and early interactive television tests for the Fattal & Collins advertising agency, Zakarin became fascinated by the Internet. He spent time in chat rooms and quickly...

 and Rob Cesternino), California Heaven
California Heaven
California Heaven is the first scripted TV series produced for online audiences, making its debut on Monday, August 1 2005. It subsequently moved to Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. Pacific Time, launching a new episode each week. The series was originally put into production while discussions with AOL...

(created by Stewart St. John
Stewart St. John
Stewart St. John is an American filmmaker, writer, author, composer, director, producer of television, feature, online and mobile entertainment.-Television and film:...

 and Todd Fisher) and Sam Has 7 Friends (created by production company Big Fantastic
Big Fantastic
Big Fantastic, LLC is a production company located in Santa Monica, California which creates, develops and produces online video entertainment. The company is currently most known for their two popular web series Sam Has 7 Friends and Prom Queen...

). These series were distributed independently, often using online video portals YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

 and Revver
Revver
Revver is a video sharing website that hosts user-generated content. Revver attaches advertising to user-submitted video clips and originally offered to share ad revenue with the video creators. Videos could be displayed, downloaded and shared across the web in either Apple QuickTime or FLV format...

. All series acquired audiences in the millions, with lonelygirl15
Lonelygirl15
lonelygirl15 was an interactive web-based video series which began in June 2006 and ran through to August 1, 2008. Developed under the working title The Children of Anchor Cove, the show gained worldwide media attention when it was outed as fictional in September 2006.-Overview:lonelygirl15...

receiving over 100 million views during its 26-month run. The series was so successful that it secured a sponsorship with Neutrogena
Neutrogena
Neutrogena is an American brand of premium-priced skin care, hair care and cosmetics, that is headquartered at Los Angeles, California. According to product advertising at their website, Neutrogena products are distributed in more than 70 countries....

. Soup of the Day
Soup of the Day
Soup of the Day was a loosely scripted 2006 web series about a man dating three women at the same time. It consisted of 19 self-contained episodes, and was later released on DVD as a full-length movie.- Background :...

was later re-crafted and edited as a feature length film, making it the first web series distributed for DVD by a major distribution company, Echo Bridge Entertainment. Sam Has 7 Friends was nominated for an Emmy
Daytime Emmy Award
The Daytime Emmy Awards are awards presented by the New York-based National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the Los Angeles-based Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in recognition of excellence in American daytime television programming...

 and temporarily removed from the Internet when it was acquired by Michael Eisner
Michael Eisner
Michael Dammann Eisner is an American businessman. He was the chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company from 1984 until 2005.-Early life:...

.
March 2006 also saw the debut of Goodnight Burbank (created and produced by Hayden Black
Hayden Black
Hayden Black is an English comedian and writer best known for critical and commercial comedy Internet hits Goodnight Burbank and Abigail’s Teen Diary.-Life and career:...

) as a "webisodic" series. The original series was named one of iTunes best podcasts of 2006.

2007: Expansion, interactivity and social networking

In 2007, Beckett and Goodfried followed up their lonelygirl15
Lonelygirl15
lonelygirl15 was an interactive web-based video series which began in June 2006 and ran through to August 1, 2008. Developed under the working title The Children of Anchor Cove, the show gained worldwide media attention when it was outed as fictional in September 2006.-Overview:lonelygirl15...

success with KateModern
KateModern
KateModern was the sister series of lonelygirl15. The series, which was announced on July 16, 2007, began filming on July 9 and the first video, Fight and Flight, was released on July 16. The show is produced by EQAL in partnership with Bebo...

, a series which debuted on social networking website Bebo
Bebo
Bebo is a social networking website launched in July 2005. It is currently owned and operated by Criterion Capital Partners after taking over from AOL in June 2010....

, and took place in the same fictional universe as lonelygirl15
Lonelygirl15
lonelygirl15 was an interactive web-based video series which began in June 2006 and ran through to August 1, 2008. Developed under the working title The Children of Anchor Cove, the show gained worldwide media attention when it was outed as fictional in September 2006.-Overview:lonelygirl15...

. Big Fantastic
Big Fantastic
Big Fantastic, LLC is a production company located in Santa Monica, California which creates, develops and produces online video entertainment. The company is currently most known for their two popular web series Sam Has 7 Friends and Prom Queen...

 created and produced Prom Queen
Prom Queen (internet series)
Prom Queen is the first web television series produced by former Walt Disney CEO Michael Eisner's new production company Vuguru and the returning web television production company Big Fantastic, the creators of Sam Has 7 Friends...

, which was financed and distributed by Michael Eisner
Michael Eisner
Michael Dammann Eisner is an American businessman. He was the chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company from 1984 until 2005.-Early life:...

's nascent online studio Vuguru
Vuguru
Vuguru is an independent multi-platform studio founded by Tornante in March 2006. The studio's first project, "Prom Queen", consisted of 90-second shorts in 80 episodes and was distributed online, beginning in April 2007. A second project entitled "The All for Nots" was distributed online and on...

, and debuted on social networking site MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....

. These web serials highlighted interactivity with the audience in addition to the narrative story, and were again produced on relatively low budgets. In contrast, the web series Sanctuary
Sanctuary (web series)
Sanctuary is a Canadian science fiction-fantasy television series, created by Damian Kindler. The show is an expansion of an eight-webisode series that was released at no cost through the Internet in early 2007. Seeing the success of the web series, Syfy decided to pick up the series for a more...

, starring actress/producer Amanda Tapping
Amanda Tapping
Amanda Tapping is an English-born Canadian actress, producer and director. She is best known for portraying Samantha Carter in the Canadian-American military science fiction television series Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis...

, cost $4.3 Million to produce. Both Sanctuary
Sanctuary (web series)
Sanctuary is a Canadian science fiction-fantasy television series, created by Damian Kindler. The show is an expansion of an eight-webisode series that was released at no cost through the Internet in early 2007. Seeing the success of the web series, Syfy decided to pick up the series for a more...

and Prom Queen
Prom Queen (internet series)
Prom Queen is the first web television series produced by former Walt Disney CEO Michael Eisner's new production company Vuguru and the returning web television production company Big Fantastic, the creators of Sam Has 7 Friends...

were nominated for an Emmy
Daytime Emmy Award
The Daytime Emmy Awards are awards presented by the New York-based National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the Los Angeles-based Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in recognition of excellence in American daytime television programming...

. Award-winning producer/director Marshall Herskovitz
Marshall Herskovitz
Marshall Schreiber Herskovitz is an American film director, writer and producer, and currently the President Emeritus of the Producers Guild of America. Among his productions are Traffic, The Last Samurai, Blood Diamond, and I Am Sam. Herskovitz has directed two feature films, Jack the Bear and...

 created the web series Quarterlife
Quarterlife
Quarterlife is an American web series, also briefly an NBC television series, created by Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, the creators of Thirtysomething and Once and Again, and producers of My So-Called Life...

, which debuted on MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....

 and was later distributed on NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

. Meanwhile, IronSink produced Roommates, the second original series hosted by Social Networking site MySpace, Roommates ran for two seasons, was sponsored by companies such as Ford, and was known for its sophisticated use of product placement. Felicia Day
Felicia Day
Kathryn Felicia Day is an American actress, known for her work as "Vi" on the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and for parts in movies such as Bring It On Again and June, as well as the Internet musical, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog...

 created and stars in the independent comedy web series The Guild
The Guild (web series)
The Guild is an American comedy web series created and written by Felicia Day, who also stars as Cyd Sherman . It premiered on YouTube on July 27, 2007. Subsequent webisodes premiered on Microsoft's Xbox Live Marketplace, Zune Marketplace, and MSN Video. The webisodes were later made available on...

, which won the 2007 YouTube Video Award
YouTube Awards
The YouTube Awards are awards given out as formalizedic or comedy genres, as voted by the YouTube community. The awards were organized in 2007 to "call out some of the most popular videos and let the users choose which ones deserve some additional recognition"...

 for Best Series.

2008: Hollywood takes notice

2008 saw the Internet grow as a marketing tool and outlet for independent creators to display their works. Web television series continued to improve in quality, rivaling shows on network television. The concept of watching programming online was becoming less foreign to viewers, and creativity boomed. Series produced by Independent producers gained popularity and ushered in a new age of programming, proving that web television was a legitimate medium, and that web series would be more than a passing fad. The major networks and studios took notice of the trend, and began to debut their own original series. ABC started the year with the comedy web series "Squeegies," created by Handsome Donkey and produced by digital studio Stage 9. NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

 debuted Gemini Division
Gemini Division
Gemini Division is an American science fiction series of five-to-seven minute long episodes created by Electric Farm Entertainment which went into production in March 2008. Based on an original story by Brent Friedman the online series was developed by Joshua Stern. The show currently airs on...

, a science fiction series starring Rosario Dawson
Rosario Dawson
Rosario Isabel Dawson is an American actress, singer, and writer. She has appeared in films such as Kids, Men in Black II, 25th Hour, Sin City, Clerks II, Rent, Death Proof, The Rundown, Eagle Eye, Alexander, Seven Pounds, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief and Unstoppable.-Early...

, produced and created by Electric Farm Entertainment (the creators of the cult web series Afterworld
Afterworld (Sci-Fi Show)
Afterworld is a computer-animated American science fiction television series created by writer Brent V. Friedman and artist/filmmaker Michael DeCourcey....

). Warner Brothers relaunched The WB
The WB Television Network
The WB Television Network is a former television network in the United States that was launched on January 11, 1995 as a joint venture between Warner Bros. and Tribune Broadcasting. On January 24, 2006, CBS Corporation and Warner Bros...

 as an online network with the debut of their first original web series, "Sorority Forever
Sorority Forever
Sorority Forever is a web television series created and produced by web production company Big Fantastic, the creators of SamHas7Friends and Prom Queen. Film director McG is an executive producer of the show...

", created and produced by Big Fantastic
Big Fantastic
Big Fantastic, LLC is a production company located in Santa Monica, California which creates, develops and produces online video entertainment. The company is currently most known for their two popular web series Sam Has 7 Friends and Prom Queen...

 and executive produced by McG
McG
Joseph McGinty Nichol , better known as McG, is an American director and producer of film and television, as well as a former record producer....

. With the rise of studio based web series, MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....

 announced a new original series created by renowned filmmaker Craig Brewer
Craig Brewer
Craig Brewer is an American film director and screenwriter. His 2005 movie Hustle & Flow won the Audience Award at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and achieved commercial success, along with an Academy Award for Best Original Song, "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp".- Life and career :Hustle & Flow...

 to combine the indie music world and new media expansion.

Pre-established creative talents also started producing high profile original web series in 2008. Joss Whedon
Joss Whedon
Joseph Hill "Joss" Whedon is an American screenwriter, executive producer, director, comic book writer, occasional composer and actor, founder of Mutant Enemy Productions and co-creator of Bellwether Pictures...

 created, produced and self-financed Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is a 2008 musical tragicomedy miniseries in three acts, produced exclusively for Internet distribution. Filmed and set in Los Angeles, the show tells the story of Dr...

starring Neil Patrick Harris
Neil Patrick Harris
Neil Patrick Harris is an American actor, singer, director, and magician.Prominent roles of his career include the title role in Doogie Howser, M.D., Colonel Carl Jenkins in Starship Troopers, the womanizing Barney Stinson in How I Met Your Mother, a fictionalized version of himself in the Harold...

 and Felicia Day
Felicia Day
Kathryn Felicia Day is an American actress, known for her work as "Vi" on the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and for parts in movies such as Bring It On Again and June, as well as the Internet musical, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog...

. Big Fantastic
Big Fantastic
Big Fantastic, LLC is a production company located in Santa Monica, California which creates, develops and produces online video entertainment. The company is currently most known for their two popular web series Sam Has 7 Friends and Prom Queen...

 wrote and produced Foreign Body
Foreign Body (internet series)
Foreign Body was a 2008 webseries coproduced by former Walt Disney CEO Michael Eisner's production company Vuguru, former Walt Disney executives Dominique Bourse's and Pierre Sissmann's production company Cyber Group Studios and the internet series production company Big Fantastic, the creators of...

, a mystery web series that served as a prequel to Robin Cook
Robin Cook
Robert Finlayson Cook was a British Labour Party politician, who was the Member of Parliament for Livingston from 1983 until his death, and notably served in the Cabinet as Foreign Secretary from 1997 to 2001....

's novel of the same name. Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried founded a new Internet studio, EQAL, and produced a spin-off from "lonelygirl15
Lonelygirl15
lonelygirl15 was an interactive web-based video series which began in June 2006 and ran through to August 1, 2008. Developed under the working title The Children of Anchor Cove, the show gained worldwide media attention when it was outed as fictional in September 2006.-Overview:lonelygirl15...

"
entitled "LG15: The Resistance
LG15: The Resistance
LG15: The Resistance was a web television series produced by EQAL that took place within the LG15 Universe. The series was first announced on July 4, 2008 via the official behind-the-scenes LG15 blog, Inside...

". 2008 also saw the birth of dedicated media coverage of the web television space with organizations like GigaOm's NewTeeVee and Tubefilter News profiling content, creators, and personalities. Mainstream press and their digital shingles got into the game as well. In the UK, KateModern
KateModern
KateModern was the sister series of lonelygirl15. The series, which was announced on July 16, 2007, began filming on July 9 and the first video, Fight and Flight, was released on July 16. The show is produced by EQAL in partnership with Bebo...

 came to an end on Bebo
Bebo
Bebo is a social networking website launched in July 2005. It is currently owned and operated by Criterion Capital Partners after taking over from AOL in June 2010....

, with the website also hosting a six month long reality/travel show, The Gap Year. This was produced by Endemol
Endemol
Endemol is an international television production and distribution company based in the Netherlands, with subsidiaries and joint ventures in 23 countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Mexico, Spain, Italy, Germany, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Dominican Republic, Poland,...

 UK, who also made Kirill
Kirill (online drama)
Kirill is an online science fiction drama. It was commissioned by MSN and produced by Endemol Digital Studios and Pure Grass Films. Episodes are four minutes long and were released twice a week on the internet. The main episodes are narrated by a character, played by David...

, a drama for MSN
MSN
MSN is a collection of Internet sites and services provided by Microsoft. The Microsoft Network debuted as an online service and Internet service provider on August 24, 1995, to coincide with the release of the Windows 95 operating system.The range of services offered by MSN has changed since its...

.

2008 also saw Australia emerge as a leading territory for online series. Most notable was the made for MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....

 series the MySpace Road Tour
MySpace Road Tour
The MySpace Road Tour is an original online reality format created and produced for MySpace Australia by production company FremantleMedia...

 produced by FremantleMedia
FremantleMedia
FremantleMedia, Ltd. is the content and production division of Bertelsmann's RTL Group, Europe's second largest TV, radio, and production company...

 Australia. The first series ran from July to October 2008 proved immensely popular with the MySpace audience and the show received a great deal of positive press. During MipCom in October 2008 MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....

 announced plans for a second series and indicated that it was in talks with cable network Foxtel
Foxtel
Foxtel is an Australian pay television company, operating cable, direct broadcast satellite television and IPTV services. It was formed in 1995 through a joint venture established between Telstra and News Corporation....

 to distribute series 1 on television. Additionally MySpace
MySpace
Myspace is a social networking service owned by Specific Media LLC and pop star Justin Timberlake. Myspace launched in August 2003 and is headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. In August 2011, Myspace had 33.1 million unique U.S. visitors....

 has spoken of their plans to produce other versions of the MySpace Road Tour
MySpace Road Tour
The MySpace Road Tour is an original online reality format created and produced for MySpace Australia by production company FremantleMedia...

 in other countries.

2009: The rise of web TV programming

2008 saw the rise of web television as vibrant medium distinct from traditional television programming. The 2009 formation of the International Academy of Web Television
International Academy of Web Television
The International Academy of Web Television was founded in 2008 and is devoted to the advancement of the arts and sciences of web television production. In 2009, the IAWTV held the first Streamy Awards ceremony, an annual event created to recognize excellence in web television production. The...

 was followed by creation of the first awards program for the web television industry, called the Streamy Awards
Streamy Awards
The Streamy Awards, popularly known as the Streamys, are presented annually by the International Academy of Web Television to recognize excellence in the arts and science of web television production, including directing, acting, producing, and writing. The formal ceremony at which the awards are...

.

The emerging potential for success in web video has caught the eye of some of the top entertainment executives in America, including former Disney executive and current head of the Tornante Company, Michael Eisner. Eisner's Vuguru subdivision of Tornante partnered with Canadian media conglomerate Rogers Media on October 26, 2009, securing plans to produce upwards of 30 new web shows a year. Rogers Media will help fund and distribute Vuguru's upcoming productions, thereby solidifying a direct connection between old and new media.

2010-2011 Web shows sell to TV

In the last eighteen months a number of web shows have been picked up for TV, including Childrens’ Hospital, Sanctuary and Goodnight Burbank

Production and distribution

The rise in the popularity of the Internet and improvements in streaming video technology mean that producing and distributing a web series is relatively cheap by traditional standards and allows producers to reach a potentially global audience who can access the shows 24 hours a day.

Methods used for distributing web television series

  • Streaming
    Streaming media
    Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider.The term "presented" is used in this article in a general sense that includes audio or video playback. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather...

     from a single or multiple websites.
  • Downloadable media, in the form of video podcasts or individual files

Technologies used in the distribution of web television

  • Dirac
    Dirac (codec)
    Dirac is an open and royalty-free video compression format, specification and system developed by BBC Research at the BBC. Schrödinger and dirac-research are open and royalty-free software implementations of Dirac...

  • HTTP
  • RSS
    RSS (file format)
    RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format...

  • RSS enclosure
    RSS enclosure
    RSS enclosures are a way of attaching multimedia content to RSS feeds by providing the URL of a file associated with an entry, such as an MP3 file to a music recommendation or a photo to a diary entry. Unlike e-mail attachments, enclosures are merely hyperlinks to files, the actual file data is not...

  • RTSP
  • SMIL
    Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language
    SMIL , the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language, is a W3C recommended XML markup language for describing multimedia presentations. It defines markup for timing, layout, animations, visual transitions, and media embedding, among other things...

  • WTVML
    WTVML
    - Worldwide TV Mark-up Language :See also waptvWTVML is an XML based content format designed to allow web site operators to easily develop and deploy Interactive TV services, typically it reduces the time taken for web site operators to create a TV Site, and results in the Site being deployable on...


See also

  • Content delivery network
    Content Delivery Network
    A content delivery network or content distribution network is a system of computers containing copies of data placed at various nodes of a network....

  • Internet television
    Internet television
    Internet television is the digital distribution of television content via the Internet...

  • IPTV
    IPTV
    Internet Protocol television is a system through which television services are delivered using the Internet protocol suite over a packet-switched network such as the Internet, instead of being delivered through traditional terrestrial, satellite signal, and cable television formats.IPTV services...

  • Interactive television
    Interactive television
    Interactive television describes a number of techniques that allow viewers to interact with television content as they view it.- Definitions :...

  • List of Web television series
  • NewTeeVee
  • Protection of Broadcasts and Broadcasting Organizations Treaty
    Protection of Broadcasts and Broadcasting Organizations Treaty
    The WIPO Protection of Broadcasts and Broadcasting Organizations Treaty or the Broadcast Treaty is a treaty designed to afford broadcasters some control and copyright-like control over the content of their broadcasts...

  • Streamy Awards
    Streamy Awards
    The Streamy Awards, popularly known as the Streamys, are presented annually by the International Academy of Web Television to recognize excellence in the arts and science of web television production, including directing, acting, producing, and writing. The formal ceremony at which the awards are...

  • Smart TV
    Smart TV
    Smart TV, which is also sometimes referred to as "Connected TV" or "Hybrid TV", , is the phrase used to describe the current trend of integration of the internet and Web 2.0 features into modern television sets and set-top boxes, as well as the technological convergence between computers and these...

  • Television network
    Television network
    A television network is a telecommunications network for distribution of television program content, whereby a central operation provides programming to many television stations or pay TV providers. Until the mid-1980s, television programming in most countries of the world was dominated by a small...

  • Tubefilter
    Tubefilter
    Tubefilter, Inc. is a privately held company based in Los Angeles, California that operates media properties focusing on the online entertainment industry. Tubefilter is best known for Tubefilter News, a blog targeted at the producers and distributors of web television content where the best in...

  • Web series
    Web series
    A web series is a series of episodes released on the Internet or also by mobile or cellular phone, and part of the newly emerging medium called web television. A single instance of a web series program is called an episode .While the popularity of web series is continuing to rise, the concept...

  • Web-to-TV
    Web-to-TV
    A Web-to-TV installation uses a variety of third-party components, typically built around a PC capable of running a browser and the most popular codecs and a home network....

  • Webcast
    Webcast
    A webcast is a media presentation distributed over the Internet using streaming media technology to distribute a single content source to many simultaneous listeners/viewers. A webcast may either be distributed live or on demand...

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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