The recent traffic numbers for Big Shot Live (as reported by NewTeeVee) highlight an interesting (and somewhat compelling) approach to bridging the gap between TV and online video. According the company, six weeks after launch the site is doing 750K uniques and over 15 million page views per month. The site is produced by Madison Road Entertainment and is promoted by relationships with ~200 local CBS stations around the country.
The site works like this… Contestants across seven talent categories (Modeling, Singing, Dancing, Acting, TV Host, Comedy, and Sports) create profiles on the site and then upload their audition videos. Viewers in the community then vote on a winner for one category each day (so once a week for each category), and the winner is flown out to Hollywood where they are given a real life shot at fame and fortune – private coaching and auditions in front of a real Hollywood big wigs. The whole Hollywood experience is, naturally, captured and displayed back on the site for the community to see.
This is pretty gimmicky, but you can’t argue with the fact that creates an engaging user experience – that is, if you can activate a robust community around it. So how have they created this community? Through their relationships with ~200 local CBS stations. These local stations are telling their viewers about the Big Shot Live contests and their very own shot at Hollywood. This certainly affirms the site’s legitimacy to both contributors and viewers before a user is actually Acquired – making the conversion to Activation and then Addiction that much easier (the three As of engagement).
Madison Road Entertainment also just announced that is was going to spin off Big Shot Live as a separate company and raise $5M-$10M of private capital to launch its independent operations. The site itself could certainly use some investment, as the UI is fairly cluttered and clunky today. With regard to the business prospects… With Madison Road Entertainment producing, CBS, Entertainment Tonight and US Weekly promoting, FanRocket powering the website, I can only guess what the business economics are for Big Shot Live. But if they can get the business model to work, this becomes an interesting new approach to professional (or semi professional) online video content.
We are seeing lots of new models emerge these days, and this is certainly one of the more interesting trends going on in the digital media world today: creating engaging and differentiated video content that can attract a loyal following, while keeping the cost to produce this content low enough that online monetization can support the business model. There are a number of companies pursuing this opportunity in a number of different ways today. Some of the more interesting and notable examples of this have been: FunnyOrDie, MyDamnChannel, RooftopComedy, National Banana, Black20, Prom Queen, Operator11 and the site most similar to Big Shot Live seems to be Got Cast. It will be interesting to watch this new era of video content creation and distribution develop and see what model(s) emerge as successful / economically sustainable…
This is really interesting, i ask my self why some online tv sites charge when most of them are free…