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Hollywood veteran Brian Robbins has a new production studio under construction and 35 shows in development. There’s a sitcom set in a high-school bathroom, a talk show modeled on “The View” but hosted by young Twitter celebrities and a series about an outlandish teen wrestling league.
Mr. Robbins, a producer and director known for Eddie Murphy movies and TV shows including “Smallville,” plans to produce 120 hours of teen programming this year, all of it destined exclusively for the Web.
Mr. Robbins is part of a teeming new ecosystem, as some of Hollywood’s biggest names—with support from Silicon Valley’s deepest pockets—are racing to create new shows, and in some cases, dozens of them, for the Web. A former NBC programming chief is launching three YouTube channels in the coming months. The creator of the CBS juggernaut “CSI” is filming a series of YouTube thrillers. Stars like Tom Hanks and Kevin Spacey are at work on new shows for Yahoo and Netflix.
For veterans of movie studios and TV networks, the Web beckons as a creative playground, unhindered by studio control and the threat of swift cancellation. Show creators often own the content they create for the Web, which means they’re free to spin off their concepts later for movies or traditional TV shows—and could stand to gain a bigger share of the profits if a project takes off. Perhaps most importantly, no one wants to be left behind in a shift that could represent the future of television.
Google, which owns YouTube, is paying an array of producers, from seasoned pros like Mr. Robbins to self-made Web stars, to create 100 new video “channels.” Google is giving each channel up to $5 million in funding, according to people familiar with the deals. The first channels began launching last month, and more will continue rolling out through the summer.
Hulu this week premiered its first scripted series, “Battleground,” about staffers backing an uphill Senate campaign in Wisconsin; it will be followed by an off-kilter travel show from “Dazed and Confused” director Richard Linklater. For the spring, Yahoo is developing “Electric City,” an animated series about a dystopian society of the future, co-produced by Mr. Hanks, who will also voice a character. Yahoo is already rolling out about 20 original shows each month, mostly short-form reality shows.
Yahoo’s programming choices are often driven by data, says Ross Levinsohn, the company’s executive vice president of the Americas. After tracking the torrent of clicks that news stories about wedding engagements routinely get, Yahoo commissioned “The Ultimate Proposal.” In each episode of the reality show, which Yahoo says has attracted 11 million total views since its premiere last October, a host “helps single people from all across America step up, take a knee and deliver the marriage proposal of a lifetime.”
Netflix is trying to lure monthly subscribers and brand itself as a home for boutique programs—as HBO once did—with series such as “Lilyhammer.” An offbeat drama about an American mobster (Steven Van Zandt) abroad in Norway, it launched earlier this month. Coming next to Netflix: “House of Cards,” a drama produced by David Fincher and starring Mr. Spacey as an ambitious politician, and a revival of the cult TV comedy “Arrested Development.”
Despite the influx of big-name talent, it’s always hard to predict what will catch fire online—a homemade video of a precocious pet or amateur singer can command the kind of viewer numbers that network executives only dream of. As a result, some of the TV veterans crossing into the Web are forming partnerships with self-made Web stars, hoping to leverage their expertise and fan bases.
YouTube hopes that official channels offering a steady flow of content and consistent quality will compel advertisers to spend more than they would on typical YouTube fare. In addition to the familiar pre-roll advertising that runs before a video, YouTube’s team is pursuing channel sponsorships and deals to create Web shows around products. Channel creators will receive a majority cut of any advertising revenue, but only after Google recoups its investment in the channel.
Google, YouTube, Yahoo, Hulu and other major media companies will present their new shows to advertisers in an April event similar to television’s traditional “upfront.”
The Web channels will be measured by a more direct set of data, including the view counter displayed under every video on YouTube. Each channel also displays a “subscribers” figure, the number of viewers who click a button to be notified by email when new videos go up.
YouTube is gathering metrics on the channels’ prospects before they even launch, said Robert Kyncl, Google’s global head of content. YouTube managers score each channel on factors such as long-term marketing plans and cross-promotion planned with other channels. These status reports are color-coded on a sort of spreadsheet. Looking at green, yellow and red flags on this “heat map,” Mr. Kyncl can track signs of trouble—literal red flags—across all 100 channels. If a channel fails to attract viewers, those color grades could eventually indicate when it’s time for YouTube to pull its support. “Once it’s all green and it’s still not working, then sometimes it’s just that the idea was not good. There will be cases like that,” Mr. Kyncl said.
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