Pre-Broadcast Webisodes as the New Marketing Tool

When the mystery series "Harper's Island" debuts on Thursday night, there’s more on the line than just another prime-time offering. CBS will be watching closely to see whether the web can serve as a new vehicle to create awareness for its broadcast shows -- even before they air.

"Harper's Island" is a 13-episode “close-ended” (think: '70s-style miniseries like "Roots" and "Shogun") murder mystery on which one character will be killed off each week, with the killer unveiled at the end. But for the last three weeks, the show's web companion, "Harper's Globe" has been running online, with four episodes already launched.

Unlike “Island,” “Globe” is a steamy "social show" that delves into the world of Robin Matthews (Melanie Merkosky), a minor character on the TV series.  It’s produced by EQAL, the team that generated the popular “lonelygirl15.”

It’s also more than just a web series. The website itself is an interative experience for fans -- it has daily content updates with characters from the show uploading videos and blogs and even a built-in social network that is already gaining some traction.

If it performs well, other networks may look to CBS' model as a way to grab hold of an untapped sector of viewers.

So far, it seems to be doing its part. Though EQAL doesn't reveal specific traffic figures, the company's already noticed a "huge amount of engagement on the site," including tens of thousands of comments and discussions about the programs, said Miles Beckett, co-founder and CEO of EQAL. The videos themselves, hosted by YouTube, have had more than 300,000 views.

"Harper’s Island,” of course, is not the first show to have a serious web component -- one that goes beyond just a video blog from a character or some extra deleted scenes.

The SciFi Channel's "Battlestar Galactica," which ended its successful run in March, offered the 10-part, original "Battlestar Galactica: The Face of the Enemy” before the third season of the show -- and the online series only further invigorated the viewership, said director Wayne Rose. “Heroes” has expanded on the television storyline with original graphic novels. (See other TV brand extensions on the web.)

But this is the first time webisodes have preceded the broadcast of the actual show and have been used as a key marketing tool, rather than just giving a bonus experience for a show’s already committed fans.

From the inception of  “Island," its creators knew the importance of an impassioned fan base: Both executive producer Jon Turteltaub and producer Dan Schotz worked on "Jericho." When that show was canceled, angered fans rallied behind the program on the web, coming together to send CBS thousands of pounds of peanuts to protest the network's decision -- a move that eventually got "Jericho" back on-air, if only for one more season.

(The peanuts were based on a brief line from the final episode, when the show’s hero Jake Green shouted "Nuts" to a rival town's offer of surrender -- repeating U.S. general Anthony C.

 

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