Big Media Experiments with New Content Online

The big networks might be apprehensive about mobile video. But media moguls such as former Disney chairman Michael Eisner and Steven Bochco (producer of the hit TV shows L.A. Law and Hill Street Blues) are jumping in and creating original online content for the regular Web, with projects such as Prom Queen that could serve as testing grounds for the switch to the third screen.

Since it takes $2 million or more to make a prime time show regardless of the medium–you can’t create something good for less money just because it’s online, after all–the media business is starting to experiment with shorts that costs as little as $10,000 to make.

As media columnist Steve Smith told me in an interview recently, this has all been tried before, back at the dawn of Web 1.0 in the late 1990′s. This time around, though, the technology is there for desktop video, even if it’s not quite there yet for cellphone video. Maybe some of these original series will take off and pave the way for exclusive cellphone content.

Media Moguls Make Their Move Online [BusinessWeek]

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