Webtainment goes viral

DivyanshuDutta Roy

 

 

 

Earlier this month, video-sharing site YouTube was forced to overhaul their stat counter because a particular clip had been viewed over 2.14 billion times (2,147,483,647 to be exact), breaking its 32-bit integer counting mechanism.

The culprit? None other than the wildly popular Gangnam style music video of South Korean pop star Psy that became a rage, unlike any before it, in 2012, that counted US President Barack Obama and UN Secretary General among its fans.

The single biggest reason for the bizarre popularity of the K-pop number has been the internet. In fact, a little appreciation of the technology that is standing behind popular culture today makes the new age of distinctly unprecedented popularity enjoyed by content, seem second nature.

 

 

Off the beaten path

 

In 2009, a young IIT-graduate and media industry aspirant approached MTV, along with other networks, to pitch a show exclusively for the youth. With a pilot episode called Engineer’s Diary he went from door to door of old media establishments and though many of them claimed to like what he had, none had the gall to back it.

 

Having learnt the ropes of the trade working with Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan’s 2007 blockbuster Om Shanti Om, Arunabh Kumar gathered the courage to do it all himself and enlisted a few friends and acquaintances to launch The Viral Fever online.

 

Today his channels together have nearly a million subscribers on YouTube – almost double that of MTV India, his shows have become some of the most watched online in India and he said he runs India’s largest original online content network for the young.

 

“Internet is a brutally democratic medium. Old media companies no longer have a monopoly on what to show the audience. You can no longer make bad shows and expect that people will watch it,” he says.

 

“One of the major differences of the internet compared to other mediums is how the audience reacts to the content. They can share, comment and give feedback making the content much more immersive and forcing the producers to be much more on their toes,” he adds.

 

 

 

Small means, big success

 

“Another big advantage is the decreased cost of capital. You can shoot on these small Canon cameras, do the editing on your personal computer and put the video out there. The content becomes the true point of judgment then,” Arunabh said.

 

Eight years ago, when YouTube started gaining popularity, traditional media outlets hogged the remote. These had the content and so they had the most subscribers. But then as personal video became a reality and better DSLR cameras allowed any enthusiast with limited means to produce professional content, the original content scene on the internet exploded.

 

And that is nowhere more apparent than on Vimeo. YouTube’s much smaller competitor but a site that arguably offers a much superior class of content thanks to better curation and upload rules that restrict video trash.

 

Online mediums all want their own shows too, and they are well in the process of setting up their studios and commissioning content. The internet’s biggest names YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and Yahoo all have exclusive ownership of dramas and comedies you can stream.

 

The combined effect of newer technologies such as connected TVs, video streaming dingles and the explosion of content has meant that legacy television is inevitably showing its age.

 

Though there are few numbers of internet and TV viewership in India, in the US a Nielsen survey showed Americans between the ages of 18 and 49 – the target demographic for most major networks – are watching TV 45-60 minutes less per week than they did a year ago.

 

 

Tools of trade

 

With technology the workflow of entertainment has also changed. Collaborative working is much more easier and the tools of the trade from cameras to computers are much more powerful.

 

Even though he confessed he was an Apple fan, owning the full line from the smallest iPod to the largest iMac, Arunabh admitted that his production team uses Windows because it allowed a far more advanced scope of work and capabilities.

 

“Many of the guys at TVF are engineers. We are constantly experimenting with hardware and software – to enable us to work faster and create better visual effects, and such,” he said.

 

“Also the evolution is fantastic, earlier I remember being on set where the director needed access to a 120-page script, a shot breakdown, call sheets and more. Today, I just do all of that with my tablet,” Arunabh said.

 

 

 

Quality control

 

But the explosion of opportunities in distributing content has also meant an explosion in content being created – and not all of it is first-rate stuff.Almost 100 hours of it are uploaded to YouTube alone every minute and as any of us know grainy cat videos make most of it.

 

Abhijeet Bhatt, the host of an upcoming news-comedy show, said that in the very thing that is challenging the relevance of traditional mediums would also check the proliferation of substandard content.

 

“You can’t expect dumb click-baiting content to hold audience attention for a longer period of time. At the end of the day you can never forget that people out there are not stupid,” he said.

 

He aims to host a daily podcast and a weekly show where the usual funny bone meets the relevance and topicality of news. Currently under pilot trials on Facebook, his podcast and YouTube show called The Greater Fool aims to launch in January 2015 and offer content that takes quality seriously.

 

“We don’t want to make any compromises. We use the best indie production techniques and values and there is no reason why we shouldn’t be able to pull off something like this. We can be the HBO or Comedy Central of this age,” he said.