BTS w/B&PC Part 6
Click here for the other posts of ‘Behind the Scenes with Bee and PuppyCat’
Now that Bee and PuppyCat: Lazy in Space has dropped on Netflix, I thought I would share some of my recollections as to how this special series of Natasha Allegri’s came to be. –Fred Seibert
The road to Netflix was a long one.
Almost immediately after we dropped the “Bee and PuppyCat” series on Cartoon Hangover, we were thinking about the next one. The next PuppyCat, that is.
We knew the show was great, the audience did too. In fact, it had dramatically changed viewer base on the channel. Up until that point, Cartoon Hangover had been dominated by Bravest Warriors and young men. 30% of the fans seemed to be women. With Bee and PuppyCat it became 50/50. Expected I guess, but exciting nonetheless. (We programmers get off on such things.)
But, now what? A wildly popular show. Not too much money. Again. How come? Well, the thing about YouTube is that while it’s pretty much unique in sharing it’s advertising money with channels, 1) YouTube doesn’t charge that much for it’s ads (it’s too complicated to explain why, but the simple answer is that they goofed up at the beginning of their existence); 2) a scripted, fiction show like PuppyCat, popular as it is, doesn’t generate nearly the views that a low cost influencer video does, and 3) a show like Bee and PuppyCat is really expensive to produce even when every corner is cut. (See the Kickstarter.) Of course, we’ve got to give YT big props, they’re virtually the only site out there that actually *shares* it’s income, paltry as it is.
One way or another, we believed in Natasha and Bee and PuppyCat. Already, by the time the last episode posted on Cartoon Hangover, we had asked Natasha to start thinking about a new series, this time half hours, and map out a scripting plan.
At the same time we were finishing up the first series, as we were figuring out our next steps, I got a visit. Tom Pickett had led the team at Google that bought my online video company, Next New Networks in 2011. To my surprise, since I figured everyone at Google was a lifer, Tom filled me in on his new company, Ellation, and its plan with VRV to help programmers like Frederator launch independent subscription streaming channels. Later on in a meeting with his companion Arlen Marmel we found out it was “Bravest Warriors” and “Bee and PuppyCat,” among other Frederator productions, that was driving their interest. After some haggling, we figured out a deal that would let us produce new episodes of both shows on Cartoon Hangover Select, our new streaming service!
Score!
Above: “Bee and PuppyCat: Lazy in Space” rough draft title card for Netflix
More to come in BTS w/B&PC Part 6. Catch up here.
