Undoubtedly, social media is a powerful force. It can be used as a way to spread breaking news, organize political protests or energize campaigns, and, of course, to promote various brands and individuals. But can social media help a TV pilot ascend from reject bin to series pickup? Jessica Chaffin and Jamie Denbo — the stars and creators of Ronna and Beverly — sure hope so.
The duo is already getting tons of attention for their sitcom; The Wall Street Journal and Mediaite both feature write-ups about the show and its creators' quest to use social media to put the show on Showtime's schedule. Thus far the two actresses have succeeded in getting Showtime to air the pilot twice and drum up some media coverage in the process.
Social Media Takes Aim at Prime Time
Ronna and Beverly is a sitcom about two fifty-something Bostonian yentas who have authored a self help book, You'll Do A Little Better Next Time: A Guide to Marriage & Remarriage for Jewish Singles. Born out of an Upright Citizens Brigade sketch that thirty-somethings Chaffin and Denbo created three years ago, Ronna and Beverly is kind of a mixture of Kath & Kim and Absolutely Fabulous. Showtime commissioned a pilot in 2008, but declined to pick up the show this past spring (Showtime actually declined to take any pilots to series, instead focusing on its existing roster of shows like Dexter, Weeds and Nurse Jackie).
However, Showtime ended up saying it would air the pilot before the end of 2009 for "tax purposes." Denbo and Chaffin then did what any self-respecting L.A. comedian would do: They took their cause to their famous friends and to Twitter. Soon, individuals like Diablo Cody, Mindy Kaling, Rainn Wilson and Joel Stein took to tweeting pleas to their followers, instructing them to DVR and watch the show. Considering that some of these individuals have more than a million followers, it was a good way to try to spread the word. The pilot aired on December 22 and again at midnight last night.
The hope is that the online buzz will translate into offline viewers.
Risky Proposition
As exciting as it is to frame the Ronna and Beverly campaign as potentially groundbreaking — after all, it would be a great coda to the story to say that a grassroots social media campaign got a show pickup — we'd be remiss if we didn't point out that this is still a risky proposition, and one that has failed more than once before.
Although social media and online campaigns have had an impact on many other mediums, television has remained an elusive nut to crack. Campaigns to get followers to tune into television premieres have consistently failed (or failed to sustain themselves after the initial flurry is over) and online-specific campaigns to take a show to the small screen have been equally unsuccessful.
In 2005, Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence — as well as Scrubs and Family Guy writers Neil Goldman and Garrett Donovan — created a pilot for what was then The WB network called Nobody's Watching. The WB declined to pick up the show, but undeterred, the pilot was leaked to YouTube in June 2006.
The show became a YouTube sensation, with coverage across industry magazines, The New York Times and other outlets. In fact, the initial buzz was so strong that there seemed to be promise and confirmation that the show would get picked up by NBC. Despite additional webisodes, plans for a full pickup never actually materialized and the actors and writers all moved on to other projects.
Likewise, when TV veterans Marshall Herkovitz and Edward Zwick's TV show Quarterlife — which was developed alongside a social networking site of the same name — couldn't get network pickup in 2007, it aired on YouTube and MySpace instead. Despite relatively high totals for the webisodes, when NBC actually picked up the show in February 2008, the ratings were the worst for that time-period on the network in more than 17 years.
The Outcome and the Future
Ronna and Beverly won't necessarily meet the same fate as Nobody's Watching or Quarterlife, but even if the show does fail to get pickup, the attempt to use social media to try to create or inform an audience won't be in vain.
For Jessica Chaffin and Jamie Denbo, the exposure — online and off — can only be positive. Furthermore, lessons learned about cultivating online communities and spreading the word can be used in future projects as well.
What do you think of social media's potential role in shaping or impacting television programming?
Tags: ronna and beverly, Showtime, television, tv, twitter
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