Felicia Day: Mogul In The Making | Hacker News Reader

Felicia Day: Mogul In The Making

blogs.forbes.com

104 pointsugh15 comments

So, an article about how Felicia Day is well positioned as a figure in online entertainment, and they don't even mention Dr. Horrible?

My understanding is that Whedon embarked upon that after seeing the success of The Guild, and talking to Day about online distribution. (Obviously the writer's strike had a lot to do with it too...)

I was surprised myself.

Also, the article makes it out like she gave up on television and to some degree acting, but she's in a guest arc on Eureka right now.

Otherwise, the article IS pretty interesting.

That fact (and the Dr. Horrible ignore) probably wouldn't fit the narrative the articles author was going for. It also doesn't give credit to Felicia Day's pragmatism and judgement. I am not a fan of how Forbes does a lot of their articles.

Except it specifically said this had replaced acting as primary income, not replaced it entirely. It probably didn't do enough to highlight the fact she still does some gigs, though. Nor the fact most of the tv work she DOES do seems to be driven by people who like her work on the Guild and so they reach out to her, instead of the usual going out for a casting call, which should have fit the narrative of the ways it has further empowered her to move forward.

most of the tv work she DOES do seems to be driven by people who like her work on the Guild and so they reach out to her

Or else they know she has a huge online following, and throwing her into a few episodes will give 'em an extra half a million viewers from the "lonely geek" demographic?

To be fair that's still liking her work, just her work of luring in those extra half million viewers as hardcore fans.

Your understanding is correct: it was the success of The Guild and the timing of the writer's strike that inspired Joss to make his own thing.

By the way, if anyone here has managed to not watch Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog, I can't recommend it enough. I also recommend The Guild, though if you only have time to watch one web series than the three ~15 minute episodes of Dr. Horrible are where you need to start.

What's interesting to me about stories like this is that with content creators can deliver their art/entertainment without the middlemen and actually make good money doing it to the point that they don't need traditional broadcast formats. It's the democratization of media that is a cliche but sometimes actually true.

This is starting to happen in the podcasting world as well. Comic Jimmy Pardo charges $20/season for his "Never Not Funny" audio podcast in lieu of advertising. While I don't believe he's divulged his numbers, I'm pretty sure it's in the tens of thousands, which is a good hunk of change considering his costs to produce the show.

i suspect never not funny passed 6 figure revenue as an enterprise (subscriptions, shirts, back episode sales, etc). he dropped some clues in an episode once before quickly changing the subject.

I do hope this kind of thing doesn't become the new standard. Episodes of "The Guild" and most other online series clock in at 10 minutes and under. At that length, it seems (from present examples) like the stories pretty much have to be fluff.

i'd point out that he mentions two examples, the average the guild episode clocking in at 10 minutes, the average never not funny episode clocking in at 1h 30m.

I feel the word "Mogul" is misleading.

Not to take anything away from Felicia, her success is inspiring, but the message seems to be about how content creators on the Internet can produce great content with only a fanbase of a couple tens of thousands of people and still succeed financially.

It goes directly against the TV idea where shows have to go head to head and spend millions of dollars to amass at least a few million viewers and only a few can succeed.

I was never really familiar with who Felicia Day was until I saw her on Kevin Pollak's Chat Show (link: http://www.kevinpollakschatshow.com/archive/?cat=197)

After that 2 hour interview, I realized she was an extremely smart, forward thinking woman who is going to do amazing things. And clearly, she is.

just had to stop and say that forbes.com's layout is hilariously awful. the content starts after 500px.

Only 500px?

My 13-inch MacBook (1280*800) doesn't even show the bottommost pixels of the headline.

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