Web TV is Local: Expanding Value Outside Hollywood Through Indie Production

• In Event: The Scaled Impacts of Digital Distribution

Abstract

As television production has expanded over the 2000s, so have sites of pilot production. Motivated by tax credits, more TV studios are shooting outside Hollywood, with dramas produced from Canada to Chicago, reality television across the South and black programming in Atlanta. But the expanded geography has not expanded "good work.” In response, entrepreneurial independent producers have been using digital distribution to create their own stories about their cities and communities, with great success. This paper examines the production of indie TV in Chicago, focusing on tello films, a subscription web TV network for lesbians employing communities of producers it hopes will connect to fans: improv comedians, queer women and people of color. In this market digital distribution offers local indie producers the chance to capitalize on undervalued creative resources (precarious labor pools) to market to communities underserved by executives in Los Angeles (fans marginalized by race, gender and sexuality).

Author

• Aymar Jean Christian, Northwestern U