If you haven’t caught it, 31: The Series is a horror web series that is 31 episodes released over 31 days and each one is 31 seconds long.
Here’s the first one, released March 31:
First of all, it’s a good show. I’d probably watch it, even if it doesn’t have a gimmick to it.
But it does, and I’m going to be watching it’s numbers very carefully.
For a show that’s all over the web series community pipelines, on twitter and various blogs, their views for yesterday’s first episode much be disappointing. At the time of this article, it is 265 views. For one day, and a brand new series, that’s not bad. But for a series that is promoting itself as so time sensitive, I can’t imagine that’s the day 1 numbers they were hoping for. I dunno, maybe I’m wrong. (They also have zero comments. Seems a little odd to me.)
Many shows only find their stride a week, or a month, after the episode is released. These guys are going to be pumping them out every day. And while I’m sure it will build, I’m curious to see how the watching patterns work out. Will episode one continue to rapidly balloon as people catch up? Will people not watch if they’ve come in the middle? Will they watch individual episodes?
These are all questions that we have been grappling with on Tights and Fights: Ashes, with releasing multiple episodes over a week. The big difference is, we’re still releasing new episodes for months, but 31 will be over and done with by May.
I have a feeling that they’re kinda shooting themselves in the foot by making their show a “micro TV show” by which I mean small episodes, small release schedule, small series time span. More and more I’m coming to realize that web series don’t have to live by TV release rules of “watch it now or miss out.” People constantly discover old series, who cares if it came out three years ago – if they’ve never heard of it it might as well of came out today. This is vastly different from, say movies, because for the most part we have heard of many movies, and if you come across it in the movie section on Netflix you kinda feel like its old news, because you know it is 3 years old, because you had to sit through commercial after commercial three years ago.
As was mentioned on The Watch List post for the second episode, I wonder if people who discover the show after it is done its 31 day run will feel like there’s less reason to watch it. The creators have put so much hype into the schedule, that those who find it in June will have their attention drawn to the fact that it was released in April. Maybe the creators will revamp all their material to focus it more on the 15 minute short film they’ll end with.
I had breakfast with a guy named Alex today, and we were talking about promotion. And here’s the thing, promoting a web series is really, really hard. I have a suspicion that the creators of 31 are discovering that. And speaking of promotion, be careful about saying other people are calling you a “phenom” on a blog post that clearly has your name on it.
Like I said, I’ll be watching this show very carefully, and you should too. It is a good show worth watching for its own sake, but I also think it will be a case study in release schedules – will it work? Will people tune in because it is one short episode every day for a month? Will it continue to find views after the month is up?
It’s almost more suspenseful than the show!
