Interview with Marshall Herskovitz

Hollywood does not seem to be “particularly on top of the changes [posed by the Internet].”

“I have a feeling that the corporate structure as it manifests itself in Hollywood is too rigidified.”

TV will stay more profitable than the Internet for at least the next 5 years. “It’s going to take a while to get a business model for broadband that makes sense. People truly do not understand the extent to which new media is not a business. It’s remarkably not a business. I’m speaking from painful experience.”

“The highest average [of serialized video on the Internet] is ours – [quarterlife had] 300,000 unique visitors. No scripted video has ever done better. The moment of convergence is where you can create serialized video for 1 million viewers per episode. I don’t think we’re that far off from that. But no one knows how to do it. No one knows how to market that show.”

Quarterlife cost “around $500,000 per episode.”

“Advertising is the petroleum that fuels the television business. […] What’s beneath all these discussions is a deep anxiety over the power and reach of advertising today, and whether it’s worth it. I don’t know if corporations know what to do instead of advertising. And advertising doesn’t want its omnipotence destroyed.”

“The question of the Internet being the great democratizer may be on its way out. Because although it is still cheap to create and distribute stuff on internet, it’s not cheap to market on the Internet. And that may be where big companies win as well, because they’ll have money to promote on the Internet.”

The Wrap ~ Lessons From Life on the Internet (23.02.2009)