NBC Puts Webisodes on Schedule, Embraces UGC
NBC is pulling out all the digital stops for its upcoming summer and fall seasons. Alongside the official unveiling of its oldteevee programming lineup, NBC announced an upcoming online series and said it has renewed webisodes for hit shows and is expanding its use of user-generated content.
Fears, Secrets and Desires is the peacock’s exclusive new original series. Think of it as a video version of PostSecret. Viewers can submit their fear, secret or desire and NBC will select certain posts to be creatively interpreted for an anthology series produced by NBC and featuring Hollywood talent (whatever that means anymore). Submissions start this spring, with the series set to debut in October.
Update: PostSecret Fans in Uproar over NBC Show.
NBC will be featuring two other original online series as well.
Gemini Division is a live-action/motion-capture sci-fi series starring Rosario Dawson (of Death Proof) as an NYPD homicide cop thrust into a seamy biotech underworld filled with genetically engineered life forms called Simulants. Salon Confessions is a docu-series about a Vegas hair salon that will feature real stylists and real clients and will debut in Spring 2009.
NBC is also expanding online support for its hits shows. Both The Office and Heroes will get another season of webisodes, and 30 Rock is inviting fans to submit video. Lots of video. The show will offer character Jack Donaghy’s Online Business Courses and ask viewers to upload videos on business advice, as well as upload skit ideas for the fictitious The Girly Show and submit video tours of their office.
Given the new terms of the networks’ deal with the writers, it’s no surprise that NBC is relying so heavily on UGC (hello, 17 days for free!). Still it’s nice to see the network move beyond just repurposing the video online.
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I’m sorry, what did you say about Heros?
I need a little more information please.
From the press release:
“Season 3 of “Heroes 360″ expands the “Heroes” universe further with webisodes, online manhunts for the villains, the addition of more micro sites that allow the users to uncover more of the “Heroes” universe, wireless iTV interactivity and the ability to view the graphic novel on mobile platforms.”
One hopes that you at least contacted PostSecret before you decided to copy their idea…
funtime42….just to clarify that would be NBC, not NewTeeVee, taking the PostSecret idea and turning it into a video show.
Don’t you pay people enough money that they could come up with ORIGINAL ideas instead of blatantly stealing from a website?
Wow, can anyone say copyright infringement? Hope Post Secret ok’ed this.
I agree with the above comments about asking postsecret for permission. Postsecret has helped a lot of people. The project itself, the community it has created, and also through supporting and promoting resources for depressed and suicidal people. It would be a real shame to see a work of love like this co-opted by a large corporation just to turn a profit. The tone of the show is also important- I am afraid that in the hands of a major TV network it will turn from something beautiful into cheap, for-profit, sensationalistic voyeurism.
It is also incredibly brazen to mention postsecret in the description, capitalizing on the good name that the project has built up over a number of years in order to promote an unrelated product.
I love Heroes, but the fact that NBC is doing this is making me think twice about buying any more DVDs.
NBC did not mention PostSecret in description of the new show, and we can’t assert where the idea for “Fears Secrets and Desires” came from… but we have a good guess as to what “inspired” it. ;)
And NBC has the nerve to call “Fears, Secrets and Desires” an NBC Web Original. It’s not an original, it’s a blatant rip off that’s going to pander to the lowest common denominator. It won’t be Post Secret- it will be Jerry Springer. NBC, for shame. Post Secret should sue.
“Fears, Secrets and Desires is the peacock’s exclusive new original series. Think of it as a video version of PostSecret.”
I can’t figure out how this is supposed to be so original. Even if NBC hasn’t named PostSecret as their “inspiration,” the fact that a third party can write those two sentences, the latter completely contradicting the one before it, shows that the new show is anything but original.