There was something missing from the TV industry's sales extravaganza
But there was something missing among the round of TV upfront presentations, during which networks try and sell advertisers on their new crop of upcoming shows: lots of projects spun out of digital media companies.
Nearly every major digital media upstart wants to get into the TV business, whether that means licensing an idea, collaborating on a project, or acting like a studio and producing a TV series.
Consider all the recent alliances and investments between traditional media giants and digital upstarts:
- NBCUniversal has invested in both Vox Media and BuzzFeed
- Turner has pumped money into Mashable and Refinery29.
- Those deals were fostered in part because big TV companies were ostensibly hoping to borrow some of their supposed ability to connect with linear-TV-avoiding millennials.
Generally speaking, TV money is better than digital ad money, so it's natural for web companies, particularly venture-backed firms looking to justify their valuations, to want to venture into TV. Getting on TV is also a great legitimizer in the media world.
Thus, it's noteworthy that so few major networks have announced digital-publishing-born TV projects. To be fair, TV gestation periods are long, and some of these companies say they have many potential TV series waiting in the wings.
Still, traditional TV companies desperately need to figure out how to connect with younger audiences, and their affiliations with digital native publishers were enacted with the promise of borrowing some of these companies' "we get millennials" magic.
For web publishers, they would seem to need TV's to help accelerate their revenue growth. Being on TV should theoretically open them up to a much broader set of advertisers and let them sell content to a wider group of distributors.
Here's what the various big web publishers are up to on TV: