We’ve never been the biggest fans of ex-Disney CEO Michael Eisner, because he was the CEO that took the famous content business into broadcasting, which is now quite contradictory, and because whenever he backed a technology idea, such as DVD’s which expired after a day, or MovieBeam, it just cost Disney a lot of money.
So when we heard that he was behind a technology venture for the internet, we thought it best to warn our readers about it, because it’s sure to flop.
Eisner’s Tornante company has formed the company Vuguru as a studio which will make and distribute content for the Internet and emerging digital platforms. The first Vuguru production is called Prom Queen (for US consumption only we hope) and is a scripted, serialized mystery told over 80 episodes, each 90 seconds long.
So for emerging platforms, we read short form content, something that has always annoyed us at Faultline because it’s a misunderstanding. The way the short form content idea came about was because of paucity of the interface for smaller devices such as the mobile handset. People wouldn’t watch long form content not because they didn’t want to but because the resolution was awful. So it’s not because the device size has an innate weakness for longer form content, but somehow this has become a market truism. This has now been proved by survey after survey since the arrival of better video resolution on handsets.
We would also have thought US kids are too cynical these days to still invest their hopes and dreams in the transforming power of a single ‘last’ school night, the basis of so much video entertainment in past decades, and the choice of material perhaps suggests that Eisner is a least out of touch, if not out of ideas or his mind.
The first project is however fully sponsored, (by a bottled water supplier, a pomegranate juice and tea supplier and a florist). Videos on PromQueen.tv will be hosted by Veoh, with links to YouTube and ELLEgirl.com and other sites. We would expect it to disappear without trace.