Q&A With Steve Stanford of Icebox
Let it be known that 2000 is the year of web animation. Cartoon sites featuring original animated series have been springing up all over the net like mushrooms. The reasons why seem obvious: cartoonists are able to create much more easily for the web using Flash then with more traditional pen and ink drawings. On the flipside, web surfers with slow and fast connections alike are able to enjoy a quality entertainment experience watching flash-enable cartoons, which don't suffer from the choppiness of streamed video. It's looking to be a huge market and now there's a new kid on the block that appears poised to leave the competition in the dust. Icebox.com (http://www.icebox.com) have a unique approach to providing online entertainment in that their staff is largely comprised of well-known Hollywood writers with proven track records. Icebox is counting on their staff creating original series that are not only successful online, but that can be then transitioned to the offline world.
Q: You guys just launched, right?
The official launch was June 7th.
Q: For those that may not know, can you give us an explanation of what Icebox is?
Sure. Icebox is an Internet entertainment site focusing upon animation created by the best writers in the entertainment industry. Those writers range from the creator of Seinfeld to the creators of Party of Five to the creator of The Critic to the creator of Ren and Stimpy to the creator of Dr. Katz, and lots of other executive producers from shows like The Simpsons, King of the Hill, the X-Files, and the top shows on television. So what we've really tried to do is bring high-quality storytelling to the web.
Q: It really does seem like you've got the most impressive roster of writers on the web. With a lot of Internet animation sites, they're using lesser-known writers that perhaps have been unable to crack into the mainstream media. I wonder if it's a challenge that your staff is used to working on big-money network-type properties, and now they're working on small-money web properties. Is that a difficult transition?
It's an interesting trade-off that they make because when they work on the big-money properties, what they get is big money, but what they have to do is conform to the traditional television model. But when they work with us, what they have is the creative freedom to try to do the "new" concepts that television might not do because they're risky. Not risky in a profane or obscene way, but it's not something that's ever been done before. So we really want to give them a place where they can come innovate and do groundbreaking program, instead of more derivative stuff.
Q: nd when you talk about your writers having the ability to work "unfiltered," what kinds of things are they free to do that they couldn't do before?
For instance, on television today there are very, very few time slots and those time slots are very valuable. And so when you develop for TV, typically the network will say something like "OK, it's Wednesday night and we need a show that's going to follow some other show." And so the creator has to create for that time slot, they know who their audience demographic is, they know what the lead-in audience looks like, and so they try to find something that is a companion to that. And they have a very preconceived notion of what can work because they only do things that have worked before. Consequently when you have a show like "Millionaire" that's very successful; every network tries to replicate that success. Now you've got "Survivor" and so everyone's trying to do a Survivor-type show.
The same thing happens with sitcoms, "Friends" is successful and so everyone tries to do "Friends". So the downside for writers when creating for traditional media is that everybody says "here's the target, shoot for the target." For us, the opportunity for us is that we don't have a target. We want you to do anything that you think is interesting and creative. What the writers are doing with us are the projects that they've wanted to do for many years, but the networks say "No, you can't do that" for whatever reason. What you see is that there are shows like "South Park" or "The Sopranos" that the networks would love to have today, but initially when they were at the idea stage, they would not have done. So that's the excitement for the writers. When we do a show on Icebox, if it's successful online, the likelihood that the show can go back to network television is significantly higher.
Q: You've described your site as "pilot incubator." That's probably a different goal than most other animation sites on the web. Can you explain?
Sure. There's basically two pieces to our business model. One is the network model and that is to create a destination for the audience to come on the web to find great entertainment. But the second is the studio side, and the studio creates not only for our network online, but the studio is also set up to take those concepts (the ones that work really well online) back to TV. Because we have all of these great writers who are in-demand from the major networks, it makes it an easy transition. That's because if the concept works, they don't have to go out and find someone to execute it for TV. If you look at shows like "The Simpsons" or "King of the Hill"--Matt Groening created the [Simpsons] characters and the basic story line, but they had to bring in Sam Simon to really make a TV show out of it. Likewise, King of the Hill. Mike Judge came up with the characters and the concept, but it wasn't until Greg Daniels really turned it into a show that it could go onto television.
We've got guys working for us who turn these concepts into shows, so the transition becomes very simple because people that they are working with are all network-approved show-runners and they are all in-demand from the traditional networks. So if we do have a successful concept, it's great for the networks because it gives them a much more efficient way to find new concepts. And it's great for the creator because it allows them to do the shows they want to do without a lot of people coming in and second-guessing their creative idea.
Q: Are you talking only about network TV? Because I'm think of certain Icebox shows like "Mr. Wong" or "Hard Drinkin' Lincoln" for example where the comedy is so edgy that I couldn't imagine seeing it on TV.
Some will not be network-appropriate. Some may be shows that could live on cable, and there will be some small percentage that probably can live off the web. But that's OK. We think that around 80% will be things that could go back to network.
Q: Has there been any network interest so far? I guess it's too soon to ask that question?
Hopefully within the next couple of weeks we'll have a couple. The one that people are really trying to make a deal with us right now is "Zombie College."
Q: I can't wait for the next episode of Zombie College! I watched every one of them in a row the first time I ever visited the Icebox site. It's really "top shelf." And speaking of which, you recently signed the original web animation guru himself, John Kricfalusi [of Ren and Stimpy fame]. Does that mean we get to see George Liquor go bar hopping with Hard Drinkin' Lincoln?
I'm not sure that there's going to be any cross-pollination. But John is one of the most talented living animators. Not only does he write, but he also does the animation and the voices. That's a style we haven't seen in a number of years. What we want to do is not only bring the George Liquor property over to Icebox, but we're also going to do three new series with John, and he will be exclusive to us with all of his web creativity for the next three years. So we're really excited about that.
Q: Let me ask you for a moment, when people hear about your site they may think about DEN.net, not necessarily because the sites are very similar but because of the "Hollywood aspect." What's your opinion about what happened over there, and what you guys may be doing differently to avoid some of the problems that they ran into?
I think there were four or five things that happened there that not only won't happen here but I don't think will happen other places in the online content industry. I think they took all of the "bad" of Hollywood with them when they started the company. They had people with million dollar salaries and things like that, which is just kind of crazy. We could pay half of our staff in total for that kind of money. We don't have anybody that makes anywhere near that. Their top six executives had big, big, big salaries. Those top six executives' salaries are about equal to half of our annual operating budget. So I think thing #1 is that we're much more prudent in spending our money. Thing #2 is, we have an asset and that's all of the relationships with all of the writers that we have. Thing #3 is that we're building a catalog of intellectual property rights, all of which will have value. Whether that value is online, on television, in movies, these aren't concepts that are created by college students. These are concepts that are created by professional writers. And so think that our chance of success is very high. With DEN of course there were other management issues, and shenanigans. I really hope people don't equate what happened there with the industry as a whole.
Q: I wanted to hear your perspective because without clarification, I wonder if people might make those kinds of incorrect assumptions. It was my understanding that another problem with the DEN.net model was that they brought a "Hollywood perspective" on how to produce the shows themselves, and that was a stumbling block. Can you address how you guys handle production?
We work with a variety of outsource resources as well as our own in-house production facility. Our company is just under 100 people, most of them are on the production side. We really focus on how to do the shows in the most efficient manner possible. One of the reasons we're doing animation is because economically, it makes sense. We also don't have the cost of streaming associated with video. So, everything we do is about minimizing costs, and to bring sponsors into the online experience so we can underwrite the network so that our development studio (our incubator of off-line content) gets paid for by sponsors in the online world.
Q: So the goal is to have the site self-supporting, and to create profitable properties for the off-line world?
Today the goal is that the site be self-supporting. So the off-line stuff should just be gravy. That's not what drives our business model day-to-day.
Q: What are your plans for the future? You said that right now the costs for video are too prohibitive. Do you plan to move in that direction, once you get some sponsors?
Well, there are four reasons why we do animation. One is the cost issue. Second is that it's the only quality entertainment experience you can deliver on the web to the largest audience today. If you're a 56K modem user, it's really hard to do streaming video, because if you're trying to do comedy, and you're losing packets, you kind of lose the joke. It doesn't work very well. Third is that there's a pretty high rate of success of short animation to successful series or feature film. Whether it's The Simpsons that started off as a 90-second short on the Tracey Ullman show, or Beavis and Butthead that was a short from the Spike and Mike's Twisted Animation Festival. Or South Park which was a short Christmas card that they had done. All of those things transitioned very well back to traditional media. And finally, it's a great storyteller's medium. It's great for the writers because it gives them complete control over the experience they're creating. So, it's worked very well for the creators we've been working with.
Q: Before we wrap can I ask you about audience gauging. It's been said that the Internet is a kind of the Neilsens dream-come-true. Can you describe a little bit the opportunities?
Sure, the great thing is that you really can measure what people do, what shows they're watching. One of the things that doesn't exist today, that really does need to exist on the web, is a way to measure show viewing. The MediaMetrixes of the world and the PCData's don't really count that. They count aggregate site traffic. Nobody has taken it that next step to try and really measure how many people watch Zombie College relative to some other show on the web, for instance. We collect that information, but there needs to be an independent third party that collects that for all the different sites so you can have a real apples to apples measurement between the shows so sponsors can understand what kind of value they're getting out there. The great thing is that it's completely measurable.
Q: Do you have personal favorites on the site?
Well they are all so different. When we put the site up we all had our predictions about the things that would be a hit, and what we found is that some do a little better than other traffic-wise, we've developed fanatical following of all the different things that we have on the site today. Since June 7th when we launched, we're really just starting to drive traffic to the site. We're just starting to spend money to buy banners and to do other things to drive traffic to the site. So we thing we're just getting to a large enough sample that we can make sense of who likes which ones are the most popular.
Q: I'd think that word-of-mouth would be biggest advertisement for you.
It is by far. That's the best thing about entertainment. You don't have to continually drive people there, like movies or like TV shows. We're hoping that our audience becomes our biggest marketing group.
Q: I've sure been telling people to check out Zombie College.
I appreciate it.
Q: Well you're quite welcome.
The new episodes aren't scheduled to come back on until the end of summer...
Q: September I saw??
Yeah, but I'm making a big play to try to move that forward.
Q: Since this story will probably be, for many people, an introduction to Icebox, I wonder if there's anything you'd like to mention?
The key things to really know about us are that the primary focus is on the creative and we want to give the creators the freedom to do really interesting, original shows that hopefully will provide our audience with things that they want to watch, as opposed to the same old stuff. We think that's very important. And from a business standpoint, it's about bringing new efficiency to the creation of high-quality intellectual property, both offline and online. If you look at what a traditional broadcast network spends to develop a new show, every year they spend over 100 million dollars to come up with typically five or six new shows, one of which makes it to next year. So it's highly inefficient. We'll spend a tiny fraction of that doing 30-50 new series each year, and we think we can have an even greater success ratio than they do with things that actually transition back to traditional media.
Q: Well myself, and plenty of other animation lovers, will be watching the site for new additions.
We'll get the new Zombie College episodes up as soon as possible.