Quarterlife made its network television début last night, and unfortunately for NBC and show creators Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz it bombed in the ratings.
Quarterlife is the show about a bunch of twenty somethings, hence the title, being roughly a quarter of the way through their lives, which was made for the web.
The show initially aired on MySpace TV, making its debut in November to a swathe of positive reviews. It was then shown via its own website, and has now made its way to network television.
A Network Show On A Budget
The show from Zwick and Herskovitz, makers of Thirtysomething and My So-Called Life, was produced on a budget to make it viable for showing exclusively on the web, a budget which now the show is on network television looks ropey.
Due to the writers strike, the TV networks started scouring other mediums for material to fill the void, and a deal was done which saw the show get its NBC première last night.
Poor Ratings
TV by the Numbers have already posted the Nielson ratings for last night’s US television, and they show the first episode only got 3.6 million viewers, coming last in its time slot.
Quarterlife lost out to an ABC Primetime news special, and the ‘is it cancelled or not’ Jericho. There’s a question mark now over whether the series will find itself cancelled after just one solitary episode.
NBC Co-Chair Ben Silverman told The Hollywood Reporter:
“Quarterlife was so worth the try.”
“The web site traffic went up a huge amount and we continue to try new things and new models. It’s very inexpensive but we hoped for higher ratings.”
The Future For Web To TV Transfers?
The bigger question is: With the writers strike well and truly over, will the failure of Quarterlife to transfer successfully from the web to television mean the future of other shows hoping to make the jump are now in doubt?
We may be being a bit too premature, and hopefully given a chance, the show will pick up some viewers in the forthcoming weeks. Remember too that the show has already aired on the web, and MTV.
Conclusions
Maybe the subject matter, which deals with the Internet and young people, is just better suited to the web itself than network television?
As much as language and concepts such as blogging, and video bloggers is an everyday occurrence for those of us who live our lives on the web, most people will be limited to the occasional visit to MySpace and Facebook.
I think webisodes could be converted to network television successfully in the future, but maybe Quarterlife was the sacrificial cow which will allow others the route in.
