What makes a webseries

Beverlywood, a New Media show, will likely be categorized as a ‘webseries’...

...by many viewers online. That’s understandable, since the term webseries might have become outdated even before most people know what it means. Loosely defined, a webseries is any serial or episodic production for the web, though usually scripted. That means ‘lonelygrl15’, ‘The Guild’, and ‘We Need Girlfriends’ qualify, while how-tos like ‘Ask a Ninja’ do not. ‘Dr Horrible’ doesn’t qualify simply on being a non-recurring online show. A webisode is the building block of a series, and they are typically 2-4 minutes long and quite numerous compared to TV episodes.

Also called a webshow, a webseries usually utilizes portal sites like metacafe and revver which are open for all submissions, or sited like atomfilms which select content. Some projects may have a site of their own, and Beverlywood falls into this category, along with it’s own online community at bwspace.com. It is that distinction, along with it’s television-like production schedule, that makes Beverlywood what it is. New Media refers generally to all kinds of online content. A New Media show, however, is something on par with network or cable production but intended for online consumption.

WebTV is another hard to peg term, referring at times to hardware devices and at times to sites like hulu which offer TV shows online. Surely as technological evolution resolves when television and the browser may meet, this term will be clarified. Until then, it may continue to be used interchangeably with webseries as well.

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