Steven Bochco Wants To Create A Scripted Series For the Net



Steven Bochco, the hard-boiled, ham-fisted creator of such varied fare as Hill Street Blues and, more disturbingly, Commander-in-Chief, wants to create an internet scripted series. According to paidcontent:

"Over the past two decades, Steven Bochco’s productions shared a network with programming like The Cosby Show and Cheers. Now, with Bochco’s first internet venture on Metacafe, which starts running today, his productions are going to be placed alongside videos with titles like Gorilla Prank and Russian Wedding Catfight.

"... Bochco also sat down with THR for a Q&A , saying that at some point he’d like to try producing a scripted series for the net, though he cautions: 'It’s a very different enterprise than that which you would pursue if you were doing it on a television template. It’s not as simple as saying, ‘I’ll take an hour television show, 10-hour TV show or whatever and split it up into little two-minute segments and just parcel them out in a serial fashion.’ First of all, the internet won’t support the kind of budget—one generally associated with making more complex, bigger stories—at least not at this time. So it’s a little tricky, but it’s very doable. It’s just that you have to really sit down and think that through. Anybody who thinks they can take an episode of CSI and chop it into 2 1⁄2-minute segments and put it out there and expect anyone to be interested is kidding themselves. By the way, I think it would be more likely to be done by a so-called amateur than by a production company or somebody like me because you really do have to do it on a shoestring. You can’t overproduce those kinds of things.”

The Full Story (Paidcontent)