Prom Queen Makes The Business Case For Low-Budget Internet Video
Jun 19th, 2007 | By James Lewin | Category: Internet TV, Streaming Video, Video, Video Podcasts, Vlogs 
The modest success of Prom Queen, a teen drama serialized on MySpace, is demonstrating the economics of low-budget Internet video. The show, which mixes standard teen mystery fare with a dash of lonelygirl15, is the first production of Vuguru, former Disney CEO Michael Eisner’s new studio.
“Prom Queen” was designed to test the business model as much as the content. The budget for the show was between $100,000 and $150,000 — high for an Internet production but minuscule compared with the budgets Eisner handled at Disney. And financially, it worked. Although Eisner declined to say exactly how much the show earned, he did note that “on our first venture we did not lose money. This is not what we expected. We committed to it with no anticipation of any revenue.”
Based on the success of Prom Queen, Eisner has several additional shows in the works.
Man, oh man — imitation *is* the sincerest form of flattery. Eisner and his company are *not* the first ones out of the gate with compelling low-cost video content distributed on the Web — just the ones with the biggest budget.
If a story about a prom queen doesn’t do anything for you, do a search for “Port City PD.” If you like cop shows, trust me, you’ll like PCPD.