Joss Whedon talks about the Business of TV

On monday I was lucky enough to attend a charity screening of Joss Whedon's "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" which was followed by a Q & A between Joss and Ira Glass (NPR's "This American Life"). During the event I took a couple of videos with my camera and have posted them below. In this first clip Joss talks about the difficulties that the networks are facing and the ways in which the current business model is changing:

I think the most interesting/most crucial point that Joss makes in the clip is that "the way people are entertained is changing". This is especially true in regard to internet content. So much of what people watch and how people spend their time is on the internet, and that is something that network television is going to have to accept, stop complaining about, and find new ways to please advertisers while still producing shows that people want to watch.

In this next clip Joss talks about using the internet to produce your own show/content without the financial support of a studio and the challenges that come with that:

I agree 100% with what Joss said about people not being ready to produce full length shows and movie just for with internet without the help of a studio or network. At this point for content like that to work it would need to have a big-name creator or actor attached to it. There isn't really any indie television shows the way there are in movies. I think the television business model is so structured that it almost makes it impossible for content like Dr. Horrible or The Guild, which is a YouTube short-form series, to find an audience. However, I do think that this is the direction that the business is moving in; it might be 10 or 25 years away but I think, especially with the rise of niche cable networks, that the business model is slowly evolving and that broadcast networks are losing more and more viewers each year to cable and the internet.