'Quarterlife' Moves from Online to Prime Time
Quarterlife began at ABC, moved to the Internet, and now will air on NBC with its first episode to premier tonight, making it the first prime-time drama pulled from the Web to TV.
The creators - Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick - originally pitched the show about a group of friends just out of college trying to make it in life, to ABC. When ABC rejected the show, the creators took it to online with 8-minute webisodes on its own channel on MySpaceTV and YouTube. The show has now been tweaked for a traditional hour-long drama format.
The creative duo are also behind the hit 90's show My So-Called Life and thirtysomething,. With their latest offering, the creators plan to capture a younger generation as well as experiment with a new way of making television.
Quaterlife started out to be an Internet-only show and now has this television component - is part of some, I think, hybrid process that will continue for the next few years. You're going to see things that have a life, you know, in both sorts of camps in some way, Herskovitz told the Houston Chronicle.
However, by TV standards, quarterlife hasn't captured a big Internet following, about 100,000 per airing on MySpace.com, plus a YouTube audience of up to 792,000 cumulative views of some webisodes. But those numbers are big for online.
It's great to have another scripted show while everyone else is in repeats. After tonight, NBC shifts the show to the Sunday slot now held by The Biggest Loser.
If we held 50 percent of (Loser's audience), we'd be happy. The expectation is it will take time to catch on.
As the first series of its kind, the show will be critically watched in order to see how new media transfers to old.
The lead role in the show is Dylan, portrayed by Bitsie Tulloch, whose overly honest video blog gets her into trouble with her friends. The rest of the circle includes Danny (David Walton) and Jed (Scott Michael Foster), as aspiring filmmakers and best friends. Their love interest is Debra (Michelle Lombardo). Lisa (Maite Schwartz), a bartender and an insecure actress along with Andy (Kevin Christy), a computer wizard that Danny and Jed make their films.
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