Woo the audience, win revenue: Vidfest panel shares secrets of success

At the heart of every new media project is the desire to make money. In a session on building "active audiences" at Vidfest in Vancouver on June 16, three successful case studies in turning audience loyalty into revenue were outlined. Calgary’s Chris Turner, author of Planet Simpson and owner of the planetsimpson.com website, explained how a Fox Broadcasting Co. cartoon that premiered as a series in December 1989 has come to be the phenomenon that it is. Simpsons creator Matt Groening built layer upon layer of quirky pop culture references and in-jokes into each episode, making the show a rich viewing experience for anyone with a VCR. For instance, at the end of one episode, a fictitious news program "publishes" a list of 34 corrections that scroll by in a little under two seconds. In short order, said Turner, loyal fans who had recorded the show replayed the episode in slow motion, transcribed all 34 jokes, and posted them online. However, with such slavish devotion often comes scathing criticism when the show is perceived to be "selling out" or losing its focus, Turner noted. "Over the years, this has become a more and more symbiotic relationship , and not an entirely comfortable one," he said. Nevertheless, Fox allows the myriad Simpsons fansites to continue, marking a departure from the broadcaster’s usual policy of "sending cease-and-desist orders to 15-year-olds" for their fansites, Turner said. And, it’s been that kind of contagious enthusiasm among Simpsons devotees that has spurred sales of Turner’s book. Tara Ariano, co-creator of the Television Without Pity (TWP) website, recently entered into an exclusive ad brokering agreement with Yahoo Inc.: the Sunnyvale CA-based Internet portal is now the exclusive advertising agent for the site. That’s a long way from TWP’s roots in another site – Dawsonswrap.com, designed for fans of Dawsons Creek to get together and knock the cheesiness of the show – and even further still from its flirt with bankruptcy in 2002. Ariano’s site has almost created a fandom within a fandom: many users now have their favourite sharp-tongued reviewers that they follow throughout the site’s pages. A while ago, two factions disagreeing on whether a show was good or bad even bought competing banner ads on TWP and duked it out through advertising. But despite the Yahoo coup – and surviving years in the online TV fandom business – Ariano is self-effacing about her deal-making savvy. "What you need to know about Television Without Pity is it was founded by two English majors and a university dropout, so we’re complete frauds as far as business acumen goes," she said. But it was the story of Dave Wishnowski, creator of the ProWrestlingX website, that perhaps most poignantly illustrated the potential of connecting with fans. When the groundbreaking World Wrestling Federation morphed into the decidedly more corporate World Wrestling Entertainment Inc., many wrestling fans turned away from the sport’s mainstream in disgust, looking for authenticity in smaller leagues. "If you’re a wrestling fan, only being able to watch the WWF is like if you’re a movie fan only being able to watch White Chicks," Wishnowski said. The calibre of wrestling games being made for consoles several years ago was also mediocre, Wishnowski said, a state of affairs that prompted him to start his own wrestling game development project after being taunted by a younger fan to try doing it himself. Just one problem: Wishnowski’s background and training is as a music teacher, not a game developer. However, he persisted in the belief that his love for wrestling would make things happen, and launched ProWrestlingX. Wishnowski said the site was a clarion call for all wrestling fans feeling disenfranchised by the big-business attitude toward wrestling and games based on the sport. He posted the overall idea for the game on the site alongside a request for donations and $10 pre-sales, and the fans responded – dramatically. "We actually stopped the pre-sales because we didn’t have the infrastructure – we just threw up…a Paypal account and it went nuts," Wishnowski recounted. "Then, we started getting calls from people saying, ‘Well, how much is the full game going to cost? Can I give you the full amount now?’" Armed with a new round of funding from the Telefilm Canada New Media Fund awarded in February, Wishnowski and the ProWrestlingX development team have moved into a new – if rather cramped – studio in Burnaby BC, and work is well underway on the graphics engine that will power the game. Wishnowski says the product should be shipping within a year. "I don’t know another game developer who’s never developed a game who could get this level of support by basically saying, ‘Trust us – we can do this,’" he said.

Woo the audience, win revenue: Vidfest panel shares secrets of success

News | 06/26/2006 4:00 am EDT

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