As one of the pioneering first members of Warner Bros. Online, I had the opportunity to help promote some of the first TV shows on the Internet. Starting out with the website for the TV show EXTRA, then Rosie O’Donnell and Babylon 5, those initial websites help create a multi-million dollar branch of the entertainment giant.  Of course, in 2001, things came crashing down a bit, but those initial websites would set the standard for promoting television shows on the web.

Or would they?

Babylon 5

Before the Internet was in full swing, there was AOL.  And before Warner Bros. Online there was Hollywood Online. As the TV show Babylon 5 was coming into production in 1992-1993, the marketing department at Warner Bros. was busy with one of the first fan-related marketing on the Internet for the science fiction show. The studio turned to Hollywood Online to create digital trading cards (GIF files) of various cast, characters and ships.  These were released at various times to the major Internet avenues (AOL, The Lurker’s Guide, GEnie, Prodigy, etc).  When the TV show EXTRA was given its own AOL area, WB took the marketing in-house and created the very first “Internet marketing” department which would later become Warner Bros. Online.

Shortly thereafter Babylon 5 became a series, and they did promotions through EXTRA, but in 1995 they decided to give Babylon 5 its own keyword and area on AOL – and that’s where I came in.

babylon5.com main screen

I am not going to focus on AOL, but rather the web.  The website took its look and feel from the AOL side, and used image maps on the main “pylons” to navigate throughout the site.  Later I wrote a random image rotator that made it look like the site was updated/changed even when it wasn’t.

The site featured photos, episode guides, chat area, message boards, bios of the cast, character sheets, the Babylon 5 FAQ, links to fan sites, interviews, virtual tours, and more.  My main focus, at least initially, was using my knowledge as a fan to keep people coming back to the site daily – or even more frequently.  Programming schedules were conceived, and I spent a great amount of time producing content for the site.  It became more and more popular and even won the Digital Hollywood Award for Best Science Fiction site, beating out the Sci-Fi channel website.  In fact, the website helped aid the series getting renewed by helping with an Internet fan mail campaign that is credited with saving the series for another 2 seasons.

The point is, there were hundreds of pages, thousands of photos, tons of information – enough to whet the insatiable appetite of the fans. It was a challenge to keep up with The Lurkers Guide, a fan site I also contributed to,but we had one thing going for us – direct access to all assets of publicity and the cast/crew themselves.

Now let’s take a look at TV show websites today…

Falling Skies

I wandered over to TNT’s website for the new Noah Wylie TV show Falling Skies and found it to be similar with what I have been seeing the past couple of years. Instead of the in-depth pages, there are a few key points.  First, like so many official web sites these days, the entire focus of the website is not about information, or virtual tours, photos, etc. – it is about viewing the latest episode online.

So many TV show websites today are put together for the sole purpose of merely letting people view the episode online.  More often than not, the bandwidth is very limited as well, resulting in less than optimal viewing.  There are bios (albeit brief) and the episode guide is something to be desired.  Whereas I would spend an hour or two written up episode synopses after writing down notes during the show, now the “episode guide” on most websites consists of 2-3 sentences written by a marketing department.  Sometimes they are even shorter.

Character bios are one paragraph.  There are no photos to “download”, no wallpapers to download and put on your computer…  there might be an iPhone app for the show, but those are usually nothing more than a promotional photo with a link to the official site.

Now, before the hate mail starts, I realize there is a more flashy official website than the one on TNT’s website. But it suffers from some of the same problems.  Yes there is a little bit more information, but there could be so much more.

Why doesn’t anybody care anymore?

So the question I have been asking myself is: why aren’t TV websites as informative as they used to be?

One of the reasons is obviously money.  Where once departments could afford to have one or even two producers (not to mention artists, etc) on each TV show, now they have to bang out official website after official website, and the easiest thing to change each week is the latest episode.  There simply is not the budget for putting people full-time onto one specific TV show site these days.  At Warner Bros. we pretty much had one person on Rosie, one on Babylon 5, one on Friends, one on EXTRA, etc.  Later towards the end of 2000, we all got merged where we were working on a variety of projects, and that was a sign of things to come.

Second, there are better avenues for information than the official website for actual information.  With wikipedia and comprehensive websites, the only thing the official website does have going for it are he full episodes, clips, and behind-the-scenes extras.  If you want to find out the details of an episode, wikipedia or google will point you in the direction of detailed analysis of the episode you are looking for.

People just don’t look towards a TV show’s official website for anything other than the latest episode these days. There are far too many other more comprehensive and detailed fan sites out there that the official site can’t compete with.

So what do the studios have to do?

Well, they don’t have to do anything.  But if they want to capture their audience’s attention and keep them coming back more than once a week for the new episode (and keep advertisers happy) then studios need to get back to the basics and roll out new, original content that only they can produce.  Virtual tours, interviews with the cast and crew, production updates, downloadable scripts (ok, the Wrtier’s Guild may have something to say about that…) special live webcasts, whatever it can to continually produce original material to put out on the website.

In fact, this could be as much of a “production” as the actual show!

Why should they want to compete?  Good question – maybe they don’t. But maybe advertisers are noticing the trend that all traffic to the site comes the day after the episode airs when people come to view the latest episode on the website.  Making your advertisers happy makes the studio execs happy.

Spending the time on good, quality content for the fans will be rewarded if the studio will invest the time.  Studios need to leverage the most valuable asset they have over the average fansites – access to the actual show, and build content and community to further the brand, entice advertisers, and maybe… just maybe, give the show a couple more years thanks to fan support.

But, then again, maybe people just want to watch the latest episode.