Even though NYTVF bills itself as independent TV festival, more and more legacy media companies are present at the festival. In the case of this year’s Digital Day, digital studios or digital programming units that are part of established TV networks, channels, and studios were well represented on all panels. The majority of panelists were from legacy media companies, including the digital branches of Comedy Central, the CW, Starz, and Universal. Others represented established players in digital distribution, including My Damn Channel and Vimeo. While the panel make-up depends on who is willing and available to appear, there seemed to be a clear trend toward including legacy media representatives at NYTVF.

The audience—or at least the imagined audience evoked by panelists—consisted of content creators trying to break into the industry. Panel discussions and questions centered on how to catch the attention of the companies represented by panelists and get a pitch meeting. The discussion thus did not center on how to create a web series that one would self-finance and distribute on a platform like YouTube, at least not in the long run. This focus struck me as different from much of the usual discourse around web series and the conversation at least year’s Digital Day, which included panels about Kickstarter or other ways of self-financing and featured creators like Adam Goldman (creator of web series like The Outs and Whatever This Is), not executives.

Another marked shift from previous years resided in the panelists’ description of preconditions an independent creator needs to meet in order to get a development deal. Executives emphasized that they are looking for two things: one, a fully fleshed out show that has a few episodes under its belt and an “established social following”- or, in other words, a guaranteed loyal audience. Ideally, you should also have a marketing strategy. Simply pitching a great idea is no longer enough. As David Katz (VP of Digital Media at Starz) put it, “bring that entire eco-system to me.” Listening to these preconditions made me wonder just how independent the digital TV landscape is; all of the talk of pitches and development deals echoed pilot season rather strongly- except merely having a pilot is not enough to get picked up by Starz or My Damn Channel. Moreover, the financial prospects don’t seem to be that promising, either. As Jed Weintrop (VP, Head of Production, Condé Nast Entertainment) pointed out: “Nobody gets rich here,” which was echoed by other panelists throughout the day.

Finally, the many callbacks to legacy media history surprised me. Perhaps it shouldn’t have. After all, one panel was called “Supply and Demand: Why Indie TV Will Be the New Indie Film.” Throughout all panels, executives evoked the history of film and cable TV to frame the current digital TV landscape. For example, Rob Barnett of My Damn Channel stated that digital TV was like “baby cable” and added that it feels like it’s “’80, ’81,” before the big players in cable had emerged. New Yorker columnist Adam Sternbergh described the discovery of exciting new digital content as “going to Sundance in 1988, ’89.”

Stray observations:

• Panelists identified Amazon, Netflix, and Hulu original programming as “television,” not “digital content.” To panelists, the dividing line was budget and programming length. Aimee Carlson (VP, Digital Development and Production, Universal Cable Productions) defined “digital content” as short form, low-budget, episodic video that premieres exclusively on digital platforms. The half-hour and hour-long programs on Amazon et al do not fall under this umbrella even though they are also made exclusively for digital distribution.
• Jennifer Titus (SVP, On Air Creative, CW Seed) pointed out that the average age of CW viewers for “linear” (i.e. primetime programming) is 38. For their digital content on CW Seed, the average age is 22.
• Another common piece of advice across panels: connect to specific audiences; don’t throw your product at a broad audience. Sam Toles (VP of Content Acquisitions and Business Development at Vimeo) was particularly adamant about this strategy. He stated that millennials aren’t engaging with traditional media/advertising, which is why “indie TV” creators need to connect with them in a targeted way. As a strategy for cutting through the noise of digital content, he advised attaching content to a specific audience already invested in the genre/topic and “seeding a clip across social media so they notice it and start sharing it.”

I have a new favorite video. It’s not a fanvid and it’s not a TV credit sequence, nor a clip from a classic movie musical, (these would be the usual suspects for me), and it’s not even the Veronica Mars self-reflexive Kickstarter video (that’s another post!) but rather three minutes of intimate, personal address, from a fictional character. So this is to say that this isn’t the type of video that normally sticks with me, but this one stopped me in my tracks and has proven to have lasting power.

This is the first of a series of “monolo7ues” attached to the web series Squaresville. Squaresville tells the story Zelda and Esther, two teenage girls longing for adventure in suburbia, feeling trapped by their small town and its small expectations. The series unfolds in vignettes about Zelda and Esther, eventually expanding to include other characters and their personal navigation of teenage/high school life. This video, coming to us at the beginning of season two of Squaresville, is the first instance where Zelda seemingly speaks directly to us in an intimate address. Perhaps it is this increased level of intimacy that draws me in. I have a feeling I’m going to watch this until I “burn it out” as Zelda says in the video, until “the magic fade(s) away,” until the video and “whatever it is about me that loves” this video “grow apart” and we don’t “understand each other anymore…”

I’m quoting from the video because that’s what the video about—it’s about our intimate dance with media, the elusive, ephemeral relationship we have with media, specifically in the case of this clip, with music. In it Zelda tells us about her favorite song, as she’s lying on the floor listening to it, and contemplates its temporary but intense power over her, or her shared power with it, her communion with it.

Perhaps as compelling to me as the video itself is the viewer response it garnered on YouTube. Commenter after commenter replied (and continue to do so) sharing their favorite song of the moment, the song they’re most likely to burn out soon. Some of them comment on the video clip as a representation, others don’t, some address Zelda playfully as if she were real, others address the actress who plays Zelda, Mary Kate Wiles, who speaks to the audience as herself in the video’s closing moments. Strangely, very few offer interpretation of their favored songs, rather content to just share in the collectively compiled list.

There’s a comfort and an ease in this collective list compiling that I find striking, especially within the interface of YouTube so infamous for its flame wars and thumbs up versus thumbs down level of discourse. Though this video’s use of film language may establish a more intimate feel than the series’ regular installments, Squaresville as a series has strategically worked to create a rapport with its viewers, establishing a sense of shared culture on shared platforms. In the closing moments of each episode, the actors entreat viewers to “Stay Square” and “Fight the Robots.” Squaresville also features #fanartfriday, where it retumbls fan art posted on Tumblr, thus encouraging and highlighting viewer participation and contribution on the same platform in a seemingly decentered flow of creativity. (Here’s a beautiful piece posted for fanartfriday featuring “Fell in Love with a Song.) Indeed, the Squaresville producers post the transcripts of the monolo7ues (including “Fell in Love with a Song”) and encourage viewers to share their own interpretations as mashups and artwork or as “response videos” on YouTube.

In a moment when television and film producers seek to recreate the web/audience relationship in the image of the broadcast TV industry (see Melanie Kohnen’s piece on Husbands,) web series like Squaresville strive to differentiate themselves by positioning themselves as within and part of the intimate-public space of a collective creative culture. In this case, it has resulted in a representation of fannish investment in media that is emotive yet not trapped in a stereotypical representation of incoherent fangirl squee. I don’t mean to further debase or to disavow fangirl squee, but there’s a quiet intimacy to this video that’s captivating, and makes me hit play day after day. That pile of papers that needs grading can wait another two minutes, fifty seconds.

One example of this “ad-as-content” strategy is Ford’s “Escape My Life” web series.  Debuting in September 2012, “Escape My Life” is an 8-episode series (available on YouTube, Hulu, and other online venues) featuring comedians Natasha Leggero and Jo Lo Truglio.  In the series, Leggero plays Skylar, a Hollywood costume designer who desperately needs a new car.  On the advice of a friend, she decides to take part in a marketing program (ostensibly sanctioned by Ford) in which Hollywood types can get a new Ford Escape for free.  (The friend calls it “Product placement in real life.”)  In the suspicious-looking office of the program head, she signs a sheaf of papers without reading them, and happily drives her new Escape home – only to be confronted with socially maladjusted Barry (Truglio) upon arrival.  You see, it appears that by signing that stack of papers she didn’t read, she agreed to let Barry go with her everywhere to show her how to use the Escape’s features, and to (eventually) document and blog about his experiences with Skylar and the SUV.  Hijinks ensue as the two try to live with one another throughout the series.

What’s interesting about “Escape My Life” is that the series ultimately spends only a small portion of its time on the Escape itself.  Each episode features one or two brief mentions of the SUV’s features – from the Sync system to the roomy interior to the hands-free foot-activated gate lift – and each concludes with a 15-second ad highlighting those features.  Aside from that, however, the SUV operates as a backdrop for the action more than the star of the series.  According to Ford, this was, in fact, the primary motivation behind the series.  In a press release, Ford’s Digital Marketing manager Brock Winger claims, “We are not talking at them, we are showing them the Escape and how it is used in daily life.”

But I argue that it’s more complicated than that.  There is absolutely no denying that the series functions as an advertisement for the Escape, and I certainly don’t think that any audience member would be fooled into thinking otherwise.  But perhaps that’s simply part of its charm.  As Fast Company’s Joe Berkowitz notes, the series is particularly notable for the fact that it functions as a meta-commentary on marketing itself, as the drama centers around Ford’s deployment of a new “real-life product placement” marketing campaign.  In his analysis, Berkowitz contends, “In acknowledging how annoying it is when you’re forced to watch an ad that’s trying not to be an ad, the ad-based show becomes instantly more accessible.”

Compared to a traditional ad campaign, the series might not seem a major success – the first episode has been viewed around 240,000 times on YouTube, with the rest averaging 30,000-40,000 views.  Even a weak cable channel has far more viewers.  But the difference, of course, is that those who came to watch “Escape My Life” online sought it out, were thus more likely to watch it closely, and probably left with a higher degree of brand message recall than the average viewer of a 30-second spot.  (Certainly I now know much more about the features of the Ford Escape than I did before watching the series, and I rather enjoyed myself while consuming the ads, too!)  As Ford’s Winger notes, “The series reaches out to consumers where they are at in their media consumption behaviors – we are not interrupting them and forcing them to go somewhere else or stop what they are doing in order to watch and enjoy the content.”  And this, I contend, is key to the “ad-as-content” strategy: as audiences migrate away from live TV viewing and advertisers become increasingly concerned about how to get their messages out, series like “Escape My Life,” which invite viewers to engage more directly and deeply with a brand (while being entertained!), might just be the wave of the future.

The events of the season premiere allow Husbands to engage in a multi-layered critique of queer visibility in American culture. On the most obvious level, the episode offers a blunt attack on what frequently passes as acceptance of LGBT culture. As Brady’s agent Wes puts it, “Acceptable gays are overweight, over forty, overly professional with their lovers in public.” Cheeks refuses to feed into this veneer of acceptance. While the arguments arising out of Brady and Cheeks’ conversation have the subtlety of a sledgehammer, they are nevertheless an important commentary on the state of queer visibility on network television. After all, many gay and lesbian characters fit into tightly defined cultural norms: they are white, wealthy, professional, and live in monogamous relationships whose intimate aspects remain largely invisible.

Husbands takes a stance against this narrow definition of queer visibility (a stance that Espenson and Bell have discussed in a number of interviews). While Husbands offers a verbal critique of this definition, a visual critique remains largely absent so far. For a variety of reasons, it seems unlikely that we will see Brady and Cheeks get down and dirty in future episodes (e.g. Husbands‘ distribution via YouTube requires the series to abide by YouTube’s TOS, which prohibits explicit sexual imagery). Beyond the issue of depicting same-sex intimacy, Husbands does not really challenge the current norms of queer visibility. Brady and Cheeks are white, out-and-proud professionals in a committed relationship. As such, they inhabit the type of queer visibility that television has promoted as default mode of LGBT representation in programs such as Brothers & Sisters, Glee, and the upcoming The New Normal.

This overlap between Husbands and network TV is particularly interesting considering that the series also uses Brady and Cheeks’ diverging ideas about how to represent their relationship as means to articulate differences between traditional TV and web series. The crux of the argument between Brady and Cheeks in the season premiere comes down to Cheeks’ uncensored use of social media, including Instagram and Twitter. Via tweets, Cheeks constructs a picture of his marriage that diverges from Brady’s carefully constructed public image—an image managed by Brady’s agent. Considering Espenson and Bell’s embrace of Web-based media production, it is easy to read Cheeks as representative of web series while Brady embodies the conventions of traditional TV production.

From this point of view, Brady and Cheeks’ conversation about which public image of their marriage to project is also a rumination on who produces these images and to what end. Various statements by Espenson illustrate that she and Bell consider their web series a departure from and challenge to the TV industry. Explaining her interest in Web-based TV, Espenson emphasizes “[s]peed and maneuverability–being able to be very hands-on, without having to guess what the powers above me might want”; regarding the possibilities of LGBT representation, she explains that “[w]e wanted to do content that was a little spicier, a little intriguing, something you can’t get everywhere else and online is totally the place to do it.” Espenson and Bell’s emphasis on independence beyond the reach of network notes echoes in Cheeks’ insistence on using social media to connect directly to his fans, regardless of the “notes” sent by Brady’s agent. Whether Web series, including Husbands, are always as independent or provocative is up for debate, but the articulation of this critique via Brady and Cheeks’ debate about queer visibility is intriguing.

The season two premiere of Husbands ends on a provocative note. A brief post-credit scene features recognizable TV figures Tricia Helfer and Dichen Lachman lounging in skimpy clothes and discussing their boyfriends before having sex (off-screen). The staging recalls a set-up aimed at the straight male gaze and the scene draws on the “experimenting in college” trope. In contrast to the overt critique in the earlier conversation between Brady and Cheeks, this scene is presented without any introduction. Rather, it relies on the viewer’s ability to recall that the Helfer/Lachman scene was playing on a TV in the background during the episode. Presumably, this extra scene critiques mainstream representations of sexuality by pointing out that faux-lesbian sex is acceptable on TV whereas Brady and Cheeks’ marriage and sex life are not.

While I agree with this critique, I wonder if the lack of framing undermines the provocation issued by this extra scene. Another aspect that undoes the critique for me is that the “plot” of this scene relies on in-jokes about the characters these actresses played in Battlestar Galactica and Dollhouse: “My boyfriend back home thinks college is gonna turn me into a sex robot,” Helfer’s character remarks. Lachman’s character replies, “Tell me about it. Mine thinks it’s going to turn me into a brainwashed sex doll.” Does the in-joke outweigh and deflect the critique? Or could we see it as a critical commentary on what types of roles are available to women, especially in genre programs? I would like to think so, but, as with the earlier critique of queer visibility, I am not sure it pushes far enough.

In an interview with The LA Times, Matlin describes the show as “a deaf/hearing version of “Little People, Big World.” Entertainment Weekly takes up this comparison, and takes the opportunity to knock the “cloying, artificial product-placed problems” of family shows currently airing on TLC (The Little Couple, 19 Kids and Counting, and others as well as Little People, Big World and Jon and Kate Plus 8). But My Deaf Family, as seen in the pilot, could provide a much more informative, nuanced, and emotionally resonant look at the daily life of Americans in extraordinaroy circumstances.

Matlin has long been a spokesperson for the importance of captioning, on behalf of the National Association for the Deaf and other organizations, and My Deaf Family is available with closed captioning, in addition to the subtitles that appear on the screen during signed conversations. This makes airing My Deaf Family on YouTube a welcome complement to Google and YouTube’s efforts to promote automated captioning of videos, which I tried out in its initial stages last fall. Google’s policy blog covered Matlin’s series, and the YouTube blog posted full (captioned) video of her talk at Google headquarters as well as statistics about the show’s success on YouTube, where it has over 87,000 views.

Working with Matlin and My Deaf Family is a potentially powerful collaboration for Google/YouTube as they attempt to make autocaptioning a reality and accessibility a priority. In his history of closed-captioned television, Greg Downey found that captioning became a priority to the US government only once the beneficiaries of captioning were understood to be not only the deaf/hard of hearing audiences, but students and immigrants learning English, part of a long history of mainstream benefits leading to much-delayed improvements for people with disabilities. In the digital realm, though, captions already have mainstream value – textual versions of multimedia content are useful in search engine optimization, in improving search engine algorithms, in translating material, and in providing transcripts of events to be used by bloggers with a quick turnaround time. The advantage of incorporating My Deaf Family is that captioning and accessibility can be tied to entertainment, and gain a cache as not necessarily a technical or niche feature, but as compelling topics in their own right, that could extend the range of entertainment options we have available.

Finally, I would suggest that Matlin could similarly benefit from YouTube. Only the 9-minute pilot has been fully finished, as Matlin still hopes for television distribution and financing, seeing YouTube as a promotional vehicle for her show. Yet, in taking the show to YouTube, Matlin told the Times

“YouTube is akin to having my own network. After a small initial outlay, I am putting the show out there myself for all to see, hoping that the reaction will be great and that sponsors and networks will see that the show can work.”

This is exactly the logic that has allowed a number of web series to take to the internet and create interesting, innovative content that might not find a home on television – The Guild, Odd Jobs, Auto-Tune the News – or that supplement television in interesting ways – Valemont, The Office: Subtle Sexuality, The Secret Life of Scientists. The Streamy awards, “honoring excellence in original web television programming and those who create it,” are now in their second year, and have already recognized several of these series, bringing them additional attention, viewers, and financial opportunities. Whether it’s increased broadband speeds, mobile video technologies, media spreadability, social networking sites, something else or a combination thereof, we’re moving beyond the struggles of Quarterlife, and allowing My Deaf Family to develop online, in adorable 9-minute chunks like this pilot, might ultimately be what allows it to succeed on its own terms, presenting deaf culture to a wide audience.