The social network announced today it had secured the exclusive
international distribution rights for Quarterlife, a new
series from Emmy award-winning producers Marshall Herskovitz and
Edward Zwick.
MySpace Australia spokesman Darain Faraz said the deal was just
the first of many shows it planned to offer through MySpace TV, which up until now has
consisted mainly of user-submitted clips.
He said within the next few weeks the site would announce a
number of “local content sharing deals” with Australian content
providers.
“We are on the verge of announcing some fairly huge stuff,” he
said.
MySpace has 3.8 million registered Australian users but its
growth rate now lags well behind Facebook’s, which earlier
this year surpassed 200,000 Australian users.
But where Facebook’s expansion is now being driven by
third-party applications, which have rapidly expanded the
functionality of the site, MySpace is looking to hold on to its
users through new features such as MySpace TV and Instant
Messenger.
Quarterlife, which will premier in seven languages on
MySpace’s global sites on November 11, delves into the lives of six
people in their 20s and charts their “coming of age as a part of
the digital generation”.
The show was unashamedly written to appeal to today’s tech-savvy
youth - the central character, a young woman named Dylan, is a
blogger whose video diary divulges a few too many of her friends’
closest secrets.
It purports to be a “truthful depiction of the way young people
speak, work, think, love, argue and express themselves”.
To that end, Herskovitz and Zwick - the force behind My
So-Called Life, thirtysomething, Legends of the
Fall and Blood Diamond - will invite their audience to
participate in the ongoing development of the series “through
writing and video submissions”.
There will be 36 episodes in total and the producers plan to
create a mini social network around the show through a website, quarterlife.com. It will also
have its own profile page on MySpace, which MySpace says will
include bonus content such as character profiles, behind-the-scenes
video footage and storyline secrets.
Herskovitz and Zwick said the fact Quarterlife was an
independent project meant they had full “creative autonomy”, which
isn’t always possible when producing shows for traditional TV
networks.
“For better or worse, Quarterlife is truly our own
vision,” Herskovitz said.
The Quarterlife concept was originally conceived three
years ago as a TV pilot called “%26#188; life”, developed for the US
network ABC. The project was axed due to “creative differences”
between the producers and ABC, after which the script was
completely rewritten for an internet audience.
“When Emmy award-winning producers come to MySpace TV - you know
this is reaching a whole new level,” Myspace CEO Chris DeWolfe said
in a statement.
In the US, MySpace has already dabbled extensively in digital
broadcasting, securing the rights to a number of smaller series and
short clips including the web series Prom Queen, a
teen-oriented serial drama made by a US studio owned by former
Disney boss Michael Eisner.
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