All posts by Aymar Jean Christian

  I’ve been writing about web video since 2009. I’m part of a tiny group of writers who have sustained interest in web television over the years, taking time to interview producers and write about their shows. (Liz Shannon Miller, one such critic, recently compiled a list of sites/publications that do it consistently). Televisual has [...]

It looks like the new television is here: a flexible, open industry more responsive to consumers and producers. Henry Jenkins’ textual poachers have become textual producers. Twenty years ago, audiences struggled to get power in production. Fans orchestrated large, coordinated campaigns to revive shows like Beauty and the Beast. Soon media companies started folding viewers into [...]

Soon after the Kickstarter campaign for Veronica Mars sparked a ton of conversations and debates, another woman-led project took the crowdfunding site by storm, raising over $60,000 soon after it launched. The team behind The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a YouTube-based adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, have already raised over $400,000 with three days to go by selling a DVD of the complete series. Funds from [...]

2013 will be a banner year for original web production. Amazon has been ordering pilots, multichannel networks have been raising money, YouTube series are scaling up, and Netflix’s slate of programs is the envy of every channel, save HBO. With House of Cards behind it, and Hemlock Grove coming up (along with series from the likes of [...]

How do you teach television today? There are a lot of ways. Here’s my attempt. This week I’ll start teaching “Contemporary Television” to introduce students to the complexities and contradictions of an industry that has changed rapidly over the last 30 years — and continues to do so. There so much television, and so much [...]

This post refers to a conversation on Henry Jenkins’ blog: part one, two, three, four. My visit to USC earlier this month for a work-in-progress talk on my manuscript sparked a couple of conversations. One with M2E head Christopher Smith about the state of web television, and another with Henry Jenkins on the broader implications [...]

Full post at USC. Earlier this month the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism presented a Research Seminar with Aymar Jean Christian, assistant professor of communication in the Media, Technology and Society program at Northwestern University. Christian discussed his tentatively titled manuscript, Off the Line: Independent Television and the Expansion of the Creative Economy, [...]

With Netflix dropping $4 million for each episode of House of Cards, YouTube is suddenly seeing a lot of well-heeled competition for original programming. Of course, through its premium channel initiative, Google’s network has been investing as well. Machinima, its most premium channel, recently inked a deal to incubate films with the likes of Ridley Scott. But YouTube didn’t grow into [...]

Over the next few weeks and months the Internet will get yet another web series, but this time I have a hand in it! I put on my producer hat and helped shepherd a new comedy, set for release this spring. She’s Out Of Order is a Philadelphia-set comedy about Tara Moseley, an arts and [...]

It’s easier to understand TV. Most people know who’s responsible for their favorite shows: did you all watch Scandal last night on ABC?! Online, it’s a bit trickier. Sure, most everything is on YouTube. But just because it’s on YouTube doesn’t mean it’s Google’s show. Usually it’s not. Web video has layers and layers networks and [...]