Networks try TV ‘minisodes’

Jerry Seinfeld announced several months ago that he would be returning to prime time on NBC in a series of one-minute episodes to promote his “Bee Movie.” But he didn’t know what to call them.

“Minisodes? TV juniors? Tiny-tainment?” the comedian quipped with his usual deadpan.

What about featurettes? Microseries? Pods?

These are all terms that have been bandied about by broadcast and cable executives to describe their brand of bite-size shows – story-driven shorts usually no more than a minute long.

Shorter attention spans and the rise of digital video recorders have made viewers more adept at commercial avoidance.

So “breaking up commercial pods with compelling content is a way to … keep viewers from drifting, which has an effect not just on the programs’ ratings but on the network’s bottom line,” says John Rash of the Minneapolis-based advertising agency Campbell Mithun.

The fledgling CW network last fall moved from 30-second to 10-second spots – dubbed “cwickies” – along with “content wraps,” the network’s ad-driven minishows.

“The content wrap was basically an attempt to marry entertainment with messaging in the right environment – sort of more storytelling in maybe two or three minutes in length,” says Bill Morningstar, the CW’s executive vice president of national sales.

The content wraps went over well with marketers, so the network moved forward this fall with its half-hour program “CW Now” (Sundays, 7 p.m., KSKN-22 in Spokane), with advertiser brands integrated into the show.

Wal-Mart sponsored the first episode featuring three segments on the release of “Halo 3,” the hot video game available at its stores.

“What we are trying to do with a lot of this different messaging, whether it’s long form or short form, is find new ways to break through and engage the consumer,” Morningstar says.

The Seinfeld minisodes airing on NBC this month to promote his upcoming animated “Bee Movie” are sponsored by Ford Motor Co.

The 20 self-contained spots, each about 90 seconds, promise a behind-the-scenes glimpse of production of the film in which Seinfeld voices an embittered bee.

“When you see them, they’re not just commercials for the ‘Bee Movie’ (even though) he’s talking about the making of the ‘Bee Movie,’ ” says Marc Graboff, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment and Universal Media Studios.

“He’s so Seinfeldian in it, you know, that it’s just great.”

And with Nielsen Media Research, the television ratings service, now rating commercials, “we want to make sure there’s something there now that the audience wants to see,” says Graboff.

The Seinfeld snippets, which will also run on NBC.com, are part of NBC’s plan to boost commercials as entertainment – what they’re calling “pod innovation,” says Barbara Blangiardi, an NBC executive whose job includes “content innovation.”

Sci Fi Channel is using its seven-week run of its two-minute “Battlestar Galactica: Razor” minisodes as an on-air promotional push.

The channel is hoping to pull in viewers for the special two-hour extended episode of “Battlestar Galactica,” premiering Nov. 24.

“This is an opportunity to tell stories that don’t need to be part of the actual show itself,” says Dave Howe, general manager of Sci Fi Channel, “and it’s a great way to create a promotional vehicle to lead into the two-hour event, so it sets it up as a kind of bigger event.”

But creatively “it’s an awkward format – at least it is for me and my writers,” says “Battlestar” executive producer Ronald D. Moore.

“When we write hour episodes, we have trouble cramming everything in,” he says. “The two-minute format forces you into sort of an abbreviated kind of idea of what a story is.

“I mean, it’s just one of these sort of things that people are flailing about right now to find different ways to pull viewers in,” Moore continues.

“But long term I don’t know how long you’re going to see these little minisodes, webisodes, what’sasodes. … I don’t know if they have a long-term sort of future.”

Short-form programming is likely to be most effective “when it involves the very content that the viewers tuned into view in the first place,” says advertising executive Rash.

“The reason why ‘Heroes’ works so well on a multimedia platform is not because of the platforms themselves, but because the show is good and the characters are compelling,” he says.

Great stories and beloved characters are the thrust behind the Sony Pictures Television Minisode Network, available on MySpace.

The site, which is sponsored by Honda, features TV shows from the Sony library – “Diff’rent Strokes,” “Fantasy Island,” “The Partridge Family” – that have been reduced to 3- to 5-minute featurettes.

“It’s about choice,” says Lisa Dubbe-Herbert, who heads the Minisode Network. “That’s the whole difference here … and I think that’s what the generation that’s coming up has shown everybody is: Let me choose how I want to enjoy my medium.”

Now if they only knew what to call them.