TV Angel

Network executives like Jeff Zucker, President and CEO of NBC Universal, may desperately want to put the digital genie back in the bottle. But it ain’t gonna happen.In a recent speech Zucker said, “Almost everywhere you turn, traditional business models in Hollywood are under pressure. And their replacements are not necessarily ready for prime time.”

Hmm, that’s interesting because internet based series quarterlife just landed smack dab in the middle of the NBC prime time line-up. quarterlife is an original series produced for the internet which aired last year on MySpaceTV and quarterlife.com. If that isn’t enough ‘e-cred,’ the series stars Bitsie Tulloch, known to her internet fans as YouTube phenomenon lonelygirl15. 

The show was created and written by Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, who also created My So-Called Life, Once and Again, and thirtysomething. In a familiar theme from the creative pair, the show follows a group of people, this time twenty-somethings, coping with life’s slings and arrows, as chronicled by the lead character’s video blog. Herskovitz and Zwick are part of a trend, recently reported on in the Christian Science Monitor, of big nam Hollywood writers taking advantage of the independence afford by the internet.

 quarterlife is set to premiere Tuesday, February 26th, at 10pm, after which it will move to its regular time slot on Sundays at 8pm. NBC.com somewhat pretentiously touts the show as, “the first network-quality series that was produced first for the internet.”

So to review: quarterlife was produced for the internet, it aired on the internet, is stars an actress first seen on the internet, and the story is told via an internet blog, and now it’s on NBC…Nope, new media just isn’t ready for prime time.