No surprise here. Keep in mind, though, that these web TV creators aren’t newbs looking for a break. They’re Old Pros with a lot to lose if they alienate the Hands That Have Previously Fed them.
In other words, we believe them when they say:
‘Husbands,’ ‘Burning Love,’ ‘Chosen’ Creators Praise No-Network Freedom Of Web TV
by the Deadline Team
During a morning producers panel at TCA that focused on the brave new world of web television, a handful of pros held court to talk about all of the ways the Internet is changing the content game and taking the programming monopoly away from the living room. The five included Jane Espenson and Jeff Greenstein, producers of the Internet sensation Husbands (along with many network series); Mike Rosenstein and Stuart Cornfeld, exec producers of the web reality dating spoof Burning Love; and Ryan Lewis, exec producer of the web series Chosen.
The beauty of fledgling form, all agreed, was how freeing the medium is in releasing writers and producers from the tyranny of their network overlords. “We are answerable only to ourselves,” boasted Greenstein, whose credits include Desperate Housewives, Friends andWill & Grace. “Yet we hold ourselves to the same standard as we’re held to when we’re doing network shows. We work really hard on the jokes and research and the look of the show. We try to make it as polished as possible. It’s completely on us if it’s good or bad, and that’s exhilarating after 20 years of receiving network notes.”
Espenson agrees that the lack of notes is revelatory in itself. And yet she insists that the work involved, the writing, the production values, all are the same as if she were producing for regular TV. “We want it to have precisely the look and style of a traditional sitcom,” Espenson said. “More and more, television is not a word for a box that sits in your living room but simply a word for filmed entertainment that you enjoy.”
Indeed, Greenstein repeatedly emphasized that doing programming for the web isn’t about producing it on the cheap but in some ways the opposite, particularly when possible crowdfunding Kickstarter money is at stake (as it was forHusbands)…