Web series

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Web-series
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A web series (also known as webseries, short-form series, and web show) is a series of short

video sharing websites and apps, such as YouTube and Vimeo,[3] and can be watched on devices such as desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones, and Internet-connected television sets. They can also be released on social media platforms.[5] Because of the nature of the Internet, a web series may be interactive.[6] Web series are classified as new media
.

Web series are different from

optioned for television.[3][12][13]

As of 2021,[update] a number of awards have been established to celebrate excellence in web series, like the

Emmy Awards[14][4][15] and the Canadian Screen Awards. There are also several web series festivals, most notably in Los Angeles and Vancouver.[16][17]

History

1990s

In April 1995, "Global Village Idiots", an episode of the Bloomington, Indiana-based public access program Rox, was uploaded to the Internet, making Rox the first series distributed via the web.[18] The same year, Scott Zakarin created The Spot, an episodic online story which integrated photos, videos, and blogs into the storyline. Likened to Melrose Place-on-the-Web, The Spot featured a rotating cast of characters playing trendy twenty-somethings who rented rooms in a fabled Santa Monica, California beach house called "The Spot".[19][20] The Spot earned the title of Infoseek's "Cool Site of the Year," an award which later became the Webby.[21][22]

In January 1999, Showtime licensed the animated sci-fi web series WhirlGirl, making it the first independently produced web series licensed by a national television network. In February 1999, the series premiered simultaneously on Showtime and online. [23] The character occasionally appeared on Showtime, for example hosting a "Lethal Ladies" programming block, but spent most of her time online, appearing in 100 webisodes.[24]

2000s

As broadband bandwidth began to increase in speed and availability, delivering high-quality video over the Internet became a reality. In the early 2000s, the Japanese

Sprint PCS Vision-enabled phones.[28]
St. John and partner Todd Fisher produced over 2,500 daily videos of the first American mobile phone soap, driving story lines across platforms to the web counterpart, The Spot (2.0).

The same year,

video-sharing site YouTube was launched in early 2005, allowing users to share television programs.[29] YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim said the inspiration for YouTube first came from Janet Jackson's role in the 2004 Super Bowl incident, when her breast was exposed during her performance, and later from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Karim could not easily find video clips of either event online, which led to the idea of a video sharing site.[30]

From 2003 to 2006, many independent web series began to garner and achieve significant popularity, most notably the series known as

MySpace and was later distributed on NBC.[39] In 2009, the first web series festival was established, called the Los Angeles Web Series Festival.[40]

In 2008, major television studios began releasing web series, such as the

Kirill, a drama for MSN
.

During MipCom, in October 2008,

Rogers Media on October 26, securing plans to produce upwards of 30 new web shows a year. Rogers Media agreed to help fund and distribute Vuguru's upcoming productions, thereby solidifying a connection between old and new media.[53]

Production and distribution

The rise in the popularity of the Internet and improvements the accessibility and affordability of high speed broadband and streaming video technology meant that producing and distributing a web series became a feasible alternative to "traditional" series production, which was formerly mostly done for

broadcast
and cable TV. In comparison with traditional TV series production, web series are less expensive to produce. This has allowed a wider range of creators to develop web series. As well, since web series are made available online, instead of being aired at a single preset time to specific regions, they enable producers to reach a potentially global audience who can access the shows 24 hours a day and seven days a week, at the time of their choosing. Moreover, in the 2010s, the rising affordability of tablets and smartphones and the rising ownership rates of these devices in industrialized nations means that web series are available to a wider range of potential viewers, including commuters, travelers, and other people who are on the go.

The emerging potential for success in web video has caught the eye of some of the top entertainment executives in America, including former

Rogers Media will help fund and distribute Vuguru's upcoming productions, solidifying a connection between traditional media and new media such as web series.[53] Web series can be distributed directly from the producers' websites, through streaming services or via online video sharing websites .[54]

Web 2.0

A number of web series incorporate interactive

social networking
websites for the promotion of their web series and seek new viewers. As well, some producers monitor social media and networking comments as a way to obtain fan feedback on their shows. A web series is simply a series of web videos, usually in serial form, posted on the Internet, that first appeared in the late 1990s and gained popularity in the early to mid-2000s. In this new digital millennium, a web series can reach a wide international audience just by making a quick and cleverly produced video. A web series can consist of an ensemble cast who create their own online characters to tell a story over the Internet. Some shows may use special computer-generated technology to create a virtual world filled with interactive interfaces and visual effects.

Awards

The Webby Awards, established in 1995, and the Indie Series Awards, established in 2009, recognize top web series in the comedy, drama, and reality TV categories. In 2009, the International Academy of Web Television was founded with the mission to organize and support the community of streaming television creators, actors, producers and executives.[55] It administered the selection of winners for the Streamy Awards, (which awards streaming television and web series content,) in 2009 and 2010. Due to poor reception and execution from the 2010 Streamy Awards, the IAWTV decided to halt its production of the award ceremony.[56] The IAWTV followed this decision by forming their own award presentation, the IAWTV Awards.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Quibi, a mobile app for short-form streaming that partitioned original content and full-length TV series into segments of 10 minutes or less each, attracted talent from prestige television and film studios. The platform shut down six months after it was launched.[10][11]

References

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Further reading