MacFarlane scores a Web hit
Move over, Joss Whedon; Seth MacFarlane is looking like the new standard bearer in online entertainment (despite my negative review. Crow, meet mouth; mouth, crow). The YouTube numbers are pretty staggering: In less than 48 hours, "Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy" has racked up a monster 2.5 million streams, making it the most viewed channel on YouTube today.,
True, MacFarlane has been getting some promotional exposure for YouTube as "guest editor" and such, but that can't be the whole story; Metallica was YouTube's featured channel late last week, and hasn't racked up nearly half as many views in over double the same period. "Cavalcade" is going gangbusters on the subscriptions side, too, with over 40,000.
The growth is driven largely by one of the two videos first released, "Super Mario Saves the Princess," which at last count is outpacing the second, "A Dog on the $25,000 Pyramid," 1.78 million to 415,682. That's telling because both employ very different styles of humor, "Mario" being in a much cruder vein than "Pyramid," which I pointed out was a bizarre first choice for a video.
The views don't take into account, however, many streams "Cavalcade" has racked up on SethComedy.com or on the Google Content Network. For all I know, YouTube may be cannibalizing the more monetizable version of "Cavalcade" running on GCN. But that's not likely.
While Whedon got a lot of attention after "Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Blog" scored, it will be interesting to whether MacFarlane will encourage more current Hollywood pros to gamble on online video. It will also be interesting what, if any, adjustments MRC and Google make to "Cavalcade's" distribution strategy; is iTunes the next stop?
