MySpace TV pilots = decline of UGC
Following the success of Prom Queen, MySpace is looking to screen more professional shows. The site already has two in the pipe, with Mark Burnett's Independent scheduled for Spring 2008 and Vuguru's The All-for-Nots, scheduled for sometime next year.
Why host a casting call for professional shows? Because not only do professional vids get viewers, they also -- unlike user-generated content -- sell ads in a predictable manner. Advertisers are still uncomfortable with associating themselves with UGC, the popularity and content of which is hard to predict.
When UGC first hit the scene, the widespread prediction -- mostly by Silicon Valley bloggers, mind you -- was that the form would replace to a large degree professional content online. And while there have been several UGC hits, only a select few amateurs have legitimately made a star turn. What's happened instead is that the UGC aesthetic has influenced professional television, film, and online video. Consider the styles of the handcam-ish Prom Queen, or J.J. Abrams' new film Cloverfield. Hell, consider the YouTube debates.
Our shifting attitudes toward UGC vids complements a similar attitude toward, for example, crowdsourced journalism. The pie-in-the-sky attitude toward citizen journalism used to be that amateurs would create on their own a wholly viable journalism product. But as we've seen in the last few years -- the closing of Dan Gilmor's Bayosphere, the failure of Backfence, etc. -- amateurs aren't interested in creating a new form. Rather, it seems that citizen journalists work best in concert with professionals.
This is a gross simplification, with several caveats and exceptions, but in general I think what we're seeing lately is a more rational attitude toward the incorporation and financing of UGC.
