Firebrand Put Out (of its Misery)
The commercials-as-content site Firebrand will be shut down, The New York Times reports, as major investors decided to stop funding the project.
The site launched in November and was backed by companies including NBC, Microsoft, and Ion Television, which carried a televised version of the show. An NBC spokesperson declined to provide The Times with a specific reason why the site was being shuttered (maybe because it was a bad idea?) or how much was spent, though one of Firebrand’s heads predicted at one point that it would shell out $30 million by the time the show started on Ion.
Firebrand is still up and running commercials for now. So if you’re dying to watch an ad, head over there before the final plug is pulled. Can the infomercials-as-content site Honeyshed’s demise be far behind?
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Does anyone know whether Firebrand was using an ‘off the shelf’ video player? I found it pretty slick.
GT on March 4th, 2008 at 6:50 pm - Permalink
THANK GOD!
neovids on March 4th, 2008 at 8:27 pm - Permalink
@GT,
I’m not sure if it was off the shelf, but I did notice when I visited the site yesterday that the controls didn’t pop up, which was annoying because there was an autoplay when you loaded the page.
Chris Albrecht on March 5th, 2008 at 6:04 am - Permalink
Yeah, I would love to know who designed their interface – it is very slick. anyone have any idea / how to find out?
it is too bad they spent so much $$$ – 30M – wow! I wonder how much went to the site design?
Jetson Davis on March 5th, 2008 at 7:06 am - Permalink
[...] NewTeeVee: “Can the infomercials-as-content site Honeyshed’s demise be far behind?” [...]
Firebrand = FAIL « MyMediaMusings on March 5th, 2008 at 8:16 am - Permalink
Honestly, I didn’t think the concept was all that bad. There was some pretty awesome creative featured in there. If nothing else, it was inspiring to wannabe commercial makers.
Mark Schoneveld on March 5th, 2008 at 8:58 am - Permalink
[...] The internet is not an inert platform. A web site isn’t a dumb end point of distribution. Existing Pay TV and advertising models are defunct. Well, you can try and re-create them or put a new spin on them, but your days are numbered. [...]
De-generate « Gordon Mattey’s Blog on March 5th, 2008 at 4:08 pm - Permalink