College Humor Goes Main Stream
College humor represents the earliest, successful crop of video sites. Gone are the days of ifilm or ebaums world, but CollegeHumor survives. No longer content to serve up mundane virals of drinking mishaps , they moved into creating their own content. As taste on the web has changed, so has college humor. Finally, thier sketches have grown into a full blown Tv show. Could this be the ideal life cycle for all future web start-ups?* Should I set my tivo for TechCrunch Tv on CNBC? LifeHacker on Discovery? Obviously, CollegeHumor isn’t the first to launch onto old media, and they wont be the last. However, unlike TMZ, CollegeHumor is sctipting their own material, and not just reporting on it, and that seems to be a unique occurrence.
Did you guys see it last night? Of course not. You don’t watch MTV! Though it wasn’t immediately apparent, you can watch the show here. Regardless of whether you saw (or liked) the show, it begs the question: why wouldn’t I just watch this on the Internet? There were a lot of new sketches mixed in with the old, and that’s fine. But REALLY, this is just a longer version of Hardly Working, right? If your fan base is already online, and already watching your sketches in droves on your website, why would you make a longer show that broadcasts on a different box that shows you essentially the same programming?
I’ll admit, I’m looking at this too simplistically. MTV commands a much higher ad rate and has a much larger reach than college humor. It was a smart decision for them, and I can’t blame them for sticking to what works. But soon, a site like CollegeHumor, with it’s reach, specific demographics and spectacular brand loyalty, will be a hotter ticket than MTV. The children of today aren’t bothering to switch on the TV. If they can get what they want when they want it in the way they’re used to (online), then why would they? We talk about television convergence like it’s going to be the panacea of online video, but it’s a short term play. In ten years Collegehumor’s customers aren’t going to care about their MTV show, because they didn’t watch it. They watched Fred (over and over). And they don’t care about TV anyway, because in college, they wont even have one.
As someone who loves college humor’s originals and watches too much TV I will say that this will get me watching more than I normally would, as I tend to ritually watch TV via DVR (eg The Daily show/The Office/Any and all sports and don’t miss an Episode/broadcast) as opposed to only sporadically watching even my favorite web series– maybe the only thing I ever checked daily was Ze Frank. I think the difference is mostly my own rituals regarding TV vs. new media and the Longtail vs. Mass consumption issue in that there is so little I like on TV (but the things I like are great and Ive stayed with them over a long period of time) while there’s way too much stuff that intrigues me on the web to ever consume all of it so I drift from thing to thing sporadically, and never stay with one web series or blog ritually for more than a month or so. In fact, though I say I love College Humor, I realize that I haven’t watched one of their videos in several months; this can’t be said for the TV shows I mentioned. Maybe this is purely a matter of how and where I consume these mediums (ie the TV requires less work to digest it when I’m have free time and am usually tired) but with more and more content in “digestible” form via things like the ps3 (just started watching Hulu + streaming netflix stuff using PlayOn Media Server)this will soon no longer be an issue. And yes College Humor’s brand may be sufficient in and of itself for the way people will ingest media in the future, when it’s just as easy to watch 10 videos in a row on my tv, or one randomly on my laptop or at work. But right now I think there is something, to be said though for providing a easily digestible 30 minute chunk that sits on my DVR, that I can watch regularly instead of doing a college humor procrastination marathon every 6 months when I randomly catch a facebook post of one of their videos and remember… ‘hey, that’s right, I love college humor.’ Clearly the former is better for their brand.
As for now. I am def. adding this to my DVR sched.