Gawker: valleywag, vuguru

Michael Eisner's $500,000 "Foreign Body" project doesn't even qualify as a bomb

Jackson West — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 15:00:00 EDT

"My interest is getting in there before they explode," Vuguru svengali Michael Eisner told a crowd at Digital Content Newfront last week, regarding his efforts in producing Web video. And based on the numbers for his production company's project Foreign Body, he's certainly achieved that. The show's audience peaked at 43,000, even after winning a coveted feature slot on YouTube. Breaking a feature-length story into scenes no longer than two minutes and putting advertising at both ends of those clips isn't exactly the way audiences want to watch advertorials for airport-bookstore novels. With all those Indian hotties in the cast, Eisner should probably take a tip from LisaNova and increase the cleavage in the show's thumbnails. After the jump, check out the first episode — so mysterious, it makes absolutely no sense.

These "dangerous Indian beauties" cost Michael Eisner $10,000 every two minutes

Nicholas Carlson — Wed, 28 May 2008 12:20:00 EDT

Michael Eisner spent $3,000 for every 90 seconds of footage for his series Prom Queen. His latest series Foreign Body, a promotional vehicle for a new Robin Cook novel, cost more than three times that for each episode. Find the first in the series embedded below. Of course, figures like that are low compared to what it costs to make content for film or TV, but the problem for Eisner is that despite his Web TV company's very Web-y name — Vuguru means "you are the guru of viewing," Eisner once told a reporter — it still hasn't made much money yet. Despite 15 million views, Eisner says he only made a couple thousand dollars on Prom Queen. The series sequel lost money.

Quarterlife's bad online-video bet

Mary Jane Irwin — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 20:00:54 EST

Hollywood, abetted by Internet pundits, has drawn the wrong lesson from the rise of YouTube: that the only way to make cash on the Internet is to offer bite-sized chunks of content. Hence Quarterlife, the microshow about 20-nothing artists. The only reason anyone cares about it is NBC picked it up for broadcast distribution, impressed by Quarterlife's 700,000-viewer debut, and will splice together 8-minute Web segments into six hour-long episodes that will air on broadcast TV this February. The only problem is that Quarterlife episodes, shown on YouTube and MySpace, are now averaging a mere 100,000 viewers.

That's nothing to sneeze at, but Quarterlife has been touted as the "first television-quality production for the Web," and 100,000 viewers would mean instant cancellation on broadcast TV. TV-level production values plus Internet-size audiences is a recipe for financial disaster.

But the real draw of YouTube isn't that the content is short; it's that it's easy to find and share. YouTube only implemented a 10-minute limit in an attempt to slow the flow of copyrighted content; users got around it by breaking up longer shows into 10-minute chunks. Plenty of people watch full-length shows online; indeed, that's one of the supposed draws of Hulu, NBC and News Corp.'s video joint venture.

The numbers are compelling. The number of people snagging free content off Pirate Bay has doubled to 8 million in the past year. According to SumoTorrent tracker, 50 percent of BitTorrent traffic is devoted to downloading television shows. And the audience viewing TV shows online is 25 percent more engaged with the show their couch-sitting counterparts.

The lesson: Web users can stomach full-length episodes. There's no reason to chop up narratives into bits for the sake of online attention spans. No, the real quandary is finding a big enough of an audience to support broadcast production values. Doing things the old way doesn't work: Eisner, the former Disney CEO, lost buckets of money on his "hit" Prom Queen, claiming it cost him $3,000 for every 90 seconds of footage.

Michael Eisner still good at losing money on the Internet

Nicholas Carlson — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 16:48:57 EST

Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner maintains Hollywood writers are stupid for striking over how much they should be compensated for Internet video. Over the weekend, he told the New York Times there isn't any money in Internet video. At least not any money in Internet video he has a hand in. "The shows that I made for [the Internet] cost like $3,000 for 90 seconds," Eisner explained, referring to his failed made-for-Internet efforts "Prom Queen" and "Prom Queen: Summer Heat." Of course, Eisner, whose exit from Disney was hastened by irate shareholders, is no stranger to failure.

Indeed, failure seems to follow him. It did when interviewer Deborah Soloman asked him to explain the name of his production company Vuguru. She said:

"To me it sounds like a drug, like Vioxx or Viagra.

Eisner responded:

If it reminds you of something that creates new strength, I guess that's O.K. In French, vous is second-person plural. Vuguru — you are the guru of viewing. It was just a made-up word.

As made-up as his observations about the business of online video. (Photo by AP/Mark Lennihan)

Michael Eisner, the Web 2.0 guru

Mary Jane Irwin — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 18:58:36 EDT

Michael Eisner, the former Disney CEO, is turning into a Web 2.0 demigod, claims BusinessWeek. Except it fails to prove any kind of new-media apotheosis whatsoever. Beyond a few cursory details about Eisner's portfolio of invesments — kid-friendly, just like Disney! — the majority of the piece details his interest in a potential acquisition of Topps, the trading-cards company. Somehow, in the perfervid imaginations of BusinessWeek editors, the right to print Star Wars and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trading cards and stickers transforms into "fodder for online shows." But never mind that.

What BusinessWeek should have focused on is Eisner's attempt to ride the MySpace wave with his Web-only production company Vuguru. Its first show, Prom Queen, which was distributed over the social network, is considered a mild success — landing sponsors like the Hairspray remake, Verizon, and Elle Girl. What would make sense is the exact opposite of what BusinessWeek proposes. Instead of ransacking trading-card licensees for online-video ideas, Eisner should think about using Topps to print trading cards for the MySpace set. We can't wait to see the Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe cards.