Made-For-Internet TV Show “Quarterlife” Bombs on Network Television
What goes up must come down.
The expectations for “Quarterlife,” the first web-based series to receive a network broadcast, were monstrous heading into Tuesday night. The NBC show premiered at 10pm EST and received the worst ratings for that slot in at least 20 years, according to Neilsen Media Research.
“Quarterlife” was created for the Internet by Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick. the producers of “My So-Called Life” and “thirtysomething,” The show has circulated around popular video-sharing sites like myspace and youtube for the past three months, packaged in episodes of seven to nine minutes. It details the lives of six twentysomething friends and their angsty struggles with life. By web standards, the show has proved a remarkable success- drawing in tens of thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands of viewers each week. However, network TV is a different beast with drastically different standards.
Tuesday’s broadcast received an average of 3.1 million viewers and a rating of 1.3 among the audience from 18-49 - the lowest in NBC history since Nielsen started measuring TV viewing by age in 1987. By comparison, the usual Tuesday 10pm show, “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” typically brought in 12 million viewers and a 4.5 rating.
NBC’s plan was to take the show’s 36 “webisodes” and turn them into a 6 episode season. But now there are doubts that NBC will even air the second episode. NBC Entertainment co-chairman Ben Silverman said on Wednesday that the series didn’t live up to expectations, but was “so worth the try.” Translation: it was cheaper than a Czech prostitute.
I don’t think that “Quarterlife”’s flop means the death of the Internet to TV crossover, but it certainly will be looming in the minds of network execs for at least the immediate future. At the same time, however, I personally don’t believe the flop was due to inferior production value or any other Internet stigma. Rather, the show just kinda sucks – lukewarm plot, clichéd characters, and abysmal acting. Check it out for yourself here.
More discussion on other Internet series phenomenon next week.
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