Blown Off by Hollywood, Fark Does Web TV

As Farkers worldwide are well aware, Fark’s distinctive raunch flavor is now available in video form with the launch of FarkTV on the Super Deluxe network. With the “reading news off of computers while drinking beers” concept all tied up, FarkTV features a number of original Farkers and their amusing friends acting out on news gleaned from the site.

The spot about San Francisco’s new java blend “Meth Coffee” features someone complaining about being in ants and stripping to his skivvies. Get it?

More interesting is the “The Plain-text, non-Web-2.0 Story of FarkTV,” where they lay out in a nutshell what pushed them to stay online, instead of teaming up with a network or studio. Fark creator Drew Curtis explains,

It turns out that, in Hollywood, most executives have never heard of Fark. Probably because they’re busy. Busy people don’t have time to read Fark. Assistants of busy people apparently do have time to read Fark, however. For example, when Drew went to pitch a show idea to MTV, the executive said that he hadn’t heard of Fark, but just about everyone else in the office said that they’d not only heard of it, but that they visited the site HOURLY.

How do you convince talented people to start producing compelling content for distribution online? Not having another option is certainly one way. And if succesful, the creators of the show will reap the benefits over complete ownership of the content and control over how it’s produced. Sure, success online seems to happen as a happy accident, if at all — but hey, it worked for Ze Frank.