By Reese Alexander
LA Workplace Issues Examiner December 11, 2011
In 2010, legendary television producer Vin Di Bona decided to once again be a trailblazer by partnering with Bruce Gersh to defy the standard norm. They set out to build a company that works to integrate technology, content and creativity into the next generation of entertainment by forming FishBowl Worldwide Media. Vin recognized the power the media has in shaping our lives and that we all “live in a fishbowl” hence the name. No one can deny or ignore the impact the digital world has made on our society.
David Beebe is the Vice President, General Manager Digital Studio for FishBowl Worldwide Media. He started his career as a Communications Specialist in the United States Coast Guard. Prior to joining FishBowl to start the Digital Studio, Beebe was Vice President, Disney ABC Television Group Digital Studio, a group he formed. There he was responsible for the general management, creative development and physical production of digital programming, including derivative webisodes, original series and live shows for the Disney ABC Television Group’s broadcast and cable networks, including ABC Entertainment, ABC Daytime, ABC Family and SOAPnet. In this role, he strengthened relationships with advertisers to develop and produce branded entertainment and oversaw production of webisodes for Grey’s Anatomy, Cougar Town, Scrubs and Ugly Betty as well as the production of over 100 original digital series.
Why do you think so many companies who traditionally were not in the digital arena are now expanding into digital production? Recently Conde Nast announced they are getting into programming.
In part, I think they are seeing the higher engagement level and its following what their readers are doing. People are still reading those magazines but there are other ways to take
your readers from your magazine to a different platform and back and create that 360 eco-system. There is a need to do it so you have to. I think where the trick is and where companies get into trouble (and it’s very confusing) is the digital presence. Is the digital presence a marketing device or is it a revenue center? You even see that with network television. Is the website of a TV network there to promote what’s on the network that night or is it there to also make money by streaming episodes? You sort of see that friction exist in any network show environment.
To appeal to a digital production company is it preferred that one have an existing web show or just a concept to be delivered?
No, I don’t think that there is any perfect pre-qualification. Here production companies and in general it’s about getting yourself out there and meeting people. Once you make that contact and depending on what they’re looking for, it’s easier to get into a production company and pitch at a network and it’s much more casual. It doesn’t hurt you bringing me stuff if you’ve been doing it on the web, digital, film or TV and you bring in an existing audience and fan base with you. That helps; you’re bringing more to the table.
Is there a specific number or range in terms of page views a video garners before it comes to the attention of a production company? If so, what is the range or number?
I wouldn’t say there is a range or a number. For us and everyone in the industry it goes back to the quality of the content and what the creative is. If I’m digging around YouTube or some other site and I happen to find something that is so brilliant and I have to talk to these people and they have 10 views, I don’t care what the views are. Actually I prefer that they don’t have a lot views because that means I’m discovering new talent. It’s like the music industry, in terms of finding the new talent that is out there and no one has gotten their hands on them yet. That’s very competitive for all of us. So by the time something becomes so big 3, 4, and 5 agents, managers and production companies have already reached out to them. It’s either too late or you’re not sure what you’re walking into and usually the people are overwhelmed. They’re not prepared and they are questioning why all of these people calling them. Also, they have all of these agreements thrown at them, everyone’s promising them things and they’re kind of freaked out.
You see a major television show like “All My Children” with loyal fans shifting from network to digital. Will this continue to be the trend or do you think that it will be digital then to network because of costs, availability of ad dollars etc.?
I think there is a difference between day part programming and what not. There was a report I saw recently that showed that more people are on the internet during the day than those who are watching TV now. So I think if you look at daytime programming there are more opportunities for it whether it is soaps or cooking shows or whatever. Primetime is still very much trained. You’re going home, you’re disconnecting in a sense and you’re going to watch TV. Specific to all “All My Children” they obviously have a very engaging and vocal fan base and some of the actors including Cameron Mathison have signed on. I think it will be an interesting experiment to see if it works or not. With that said, it’s going to come down to distribution and where and when it is available. (Since this interview it was announced that plans for “All My Children” to continue as a web series has been suspended).
Talk about protecting your rights in terms of ownership over your content.
If you’re putting stuff on YouTube you’re kind of giving it to the world. You’re not explicitly giving away your rights but in a sense you’re putting your format out there without signing anything. So could anyone see it and kind of do it? I guess if someone did you could have some sort of claim if you have a show and you saw someone else develop it. On YouTube it’s hard to figure out how you would exactly protect that. I don’t think there is a way. There are traditional ways if it’s scripted by taking your script and registering it with the WGA (Writers Guild of America) and that kind of stuff, but there is so much stuff out there that is similar.
When I say we are looking for cooking shows from people we develop about 50% of our stuff in-house and we spend the other 50% percent buying ideas from people or co-developing it. We’ll say we need cooking shows and people will come in with the same idea that we’ve heard already 3 or 4 times. There may be little differences in them but they’re going on what’s in pop culture. It seems that when I say cooking show but I don’t want a cooking show where you’re just learning something or just cook something, I want something different; all of a sudden I’ll get 3-4 people with ideas about cooking shows for college students because college students don’t have any money and they want to know how to cook fast. That wouldn’t be a protectable format or idea, because everyone is sort of thinking that. The thing with digital is that it is harder to protect stuff.
In terms of pitching I would say things happen. Get everything in writing. The great thing about here at FishBowl Media being almost 2 years old and built on the infrastructure of Vin Di Bona Productions and 22 years is that Vin has been in the business a very long time and he’s very well respected. So people know that when they’re pitching with us or dealing with us that we’re not here to take their ideas. In that case we’re different. If you’re dealing with a production company that you’re not quite sure who they are, or if they are new and if something sounds too good to be true, definitely get whatever form that you need to protect yourself.
Google announced that they will be investing $100 million dollars in new professional YouTube channels. Many think that what made YouTube organic Hollywood will ruin the down home approach for the average Joe. What are your thoughts?
I don’t think it’s a bad thing. You’re still going to have independent people out there producing things, mixed with professional people all within the same environment. So if anything, it’ll help these new producers and independent producers kind of make their stuff better in a way by seeing what other productions and more independent professional people are doing in the industry. I don’t think it will change, it will make things better. There’s enough room for everybody. The internet is big enough for everyone to play in. It’s not like there is only one site to go to. I think the deals will get interesting, to see how they will be structured or how they are going to be making money. That could potentially help the independent producer out there. It’s like film, if you compare it to when Hollywood came into it. There are still independent companies out there making small films doing the circuit, the festivals and those films are getting picked up and bought by big Hollywood distributors.
You also have the animated series “The Potts” about a family willing to do anything for their 15 minutes of fame. This seems to resonate with some other real life families’ ala “The Balloon Boy” and “The Lohans.” Why do you think viewers will connect?
“The Potts” I talk about what people are looking to buy and what they’re doing on the internet. What people are buying right now and what people are watching now is unscripted stuff, unscripted lifestyle programming. That doesn’t mean that scripted isn’t going to work or animation or gaming so we want to kind of be involved with all of it. So we said we want to be involved in animation so that’s where “The Potts” came from and it’s in partnership with Todd Goldman and Chuck Tatham from “How I Met Your Mother” and we brought on Dave Coulier and Richard Kind as members of the pot. There are some other great names attached to it. It’s a comedy about a family that spends their life trying to become stars for their 15 minutes of fame.
What types of digital ideas resonate with FishBowl Media?
We’re looking at everything across the board. There’s not just one type of content. We’re not the game show company or the reality competition company. We have our hands in everything. We’re looking for everything across the board, obviously going back to great creative.
What people are buying is unscripted. People are buying scripted if you look at sites like Hulu, and all the portal sites, people love when names come attached with them. That’s why you have the big celebrity names attached to them. They’re producing them, writing them and starring in them or whatever. It doesn’t mean that it’s going to be a hit by any means. I think today because we’re so new at this bringing in a project with great creative and a great production company behind it that has a reputation helps in attaching celebrities with a big following to it. It helps get views but it helps sort of sell it to advertisers. Advertisers love being associated with those names. It goes back to there are a hundred things we want to develop but we know that no one’s going to buy them. We’re always trying innovative things by looking at other models outside of the portal, not just your traditional television model that you’d sell to distributors.
We have that library so we’re looking at ways to monetize our library on other platforms including mobile. We’re building gaming apps with our content. We launched the mobile application for “AFV” (America’s Funniest Home Videos) ourselves. The reason we did it is because we’ve seen a trend in the market place where people are doing these things on their smart phones and with these great camera phones they’re starting to capture a video via their phone. So we wanted to build an app where you can capture a video via your phone and while you upload you can watch some of our videos from our library on YouTube and send your video to us through a submission form to the show.
We’re talking to a lot of out of home markets and distributors about streaming video like those in airports. The thing about our library is that with our content you don’t need sound,
you can just watch. You can get the guy on the skateboard going down the ramp falling; visually you understand and you’re laughing. There are a lot of ways to get out of that
traditional model of how you monetize this. It just goes back to my point of producing content that is very specific to the platform that it is going on. So if it’s mobile, its comedy,
its short, 25-30 seconds.
What’s next for David Beebe and your goal at FishBowl Media?
I think the reason I came here is because I worked for Bruce Gersh who had run the company at ABC before. I had a great job at ABC running the digital studio with Albert Chang who headed up digital media. I built that team from the ground up and built it out 7 years ago. There were no editors, no producers, no writers and no real production equipment. They said,“Oh by the way we want to do video, we want to put full episodes online, we want to do original and figure it out.” Over 7 years (with the luxury of a very large company) I built out a digital studio to hire everyone and put all the processes in place, choose all the equipment and put the strategy in place. So in a sense it was like being a studio head. You’re responsible for development, production, the marketing, the PR, the strategy and the long range financial planning and everything. I think that was very unique to have that in a corporation like Disney ABC to be given that freedom.
At the end of the day after 7 years in a sense it was built, it was running great and it was time to challenge myself and do something new. We were doing a ton of derivative content and we did all of the scripted webisodes of our shows that we had online like “Scrubs,” “Ugly Betty” and “Lost” and all of those. We were the first to market so many things there. With webisodes, we were the first to put full episodes online and the first to do scripted webisodes and then live programming. Over the years we started doing live stuff from “The Emmys” and “The Country Music Awards” and last year we won the Emmy for our Oscars live experience on Oscar.com. It was a huge undertaking. I wanted to get into doing original programming and that was the opportunity here at FishBowl Worldwide Media to develop content that is truly original and that kind of followed that traditional development process, and that wasn’t derivative of traditional television programming.
I think the great thing here is that we have that freedom and luxury to experiment and be innovative and try everything we can. Some stuff will work great like “Ultimate Proposal” and some things that we think are going to be brilliant are not going to work. Hopefully, we have more hits. We’re smart about what we’re doing and understanding what people want to watch. Then we’ll be successful. We’ve got great people here and it’s not just digital. We’ve got a television group, headed up by Susan Levison, that has had success this year with selling scripted and unscripted programming at Fox, MTV, NBC, Discovery and other places. We have a great Business Affairs team here headed up by Susan Brooks. It’s a great bunch of people that bring 20-plus years of experience individually to make a great company.
How was the transition going from a large corporate environment to a smaller boutique company?
It goes back to the type of person that you are. To be successful in digital you have to be entrepreneurial and be street smart and able to network and keep knocking down doors. That goes back to people’s personalities because you can be the most creative person in the world, but if you don’t have those social skills or that entrepreneurial drive it’s probably not going to work out. You’re going to excel where you have that big support network. FishBowl is about 40 people now, so I knew what I was walking into. I knew I was not going to have the big support network and if I wanted to be comfortable I could sit back and relax where I was. I still have so much more I want to do and I have so much energy, it’s different. I don’t have as big of a resource of people to do what I want to do but on the flip side I enjoy that.
As far as running digital, I’m running digital programming and digital products. I manage the licensing group here, but I’m also involved in the marketing and PR and I manage the
website and the Twitter and Facebook. Where at ABC Disney it’s a very large corporation and people have certain roles and responsibilities and if you cross the paths someone will tell you. Here it’s great because I do things until someone says something and then it’s like okay, no one said anything.
I love being at a small company now but who knows 3, 4, 5 years from now I may want to go back to an opportunity to run a large studio. Of course I’m going to love that opportunity too. So while we’re all out there learning the digital space, the more you can be involved in knowing how things operate across the board and understand it and you can help shape it then why not jump in and take that risk.
We love getting the word out there and the publicity and have people or talent submit to us. For example people are now submitting to us on “U-Proposal.”
To learn more about FishBowl Worldwide Media, upcoming projects or submit your videos for “U-Proposal” or “Cute Win Fail” visit their website www.fbwmedia.com. To follow on Twitter www.Twitter.com/FishBowlWMedia or www.Twitter.com/DavidBeebe and Facebook www.Facebook.com/fbwmedia.
