1990s In April 1995, "Global Village Idiots", an episode of the reality-based program
Rox on
public access cable television in
Bloomington, Indiana, was uploaded to the Internet, making
Rox the first show distributed via the web. The same year, Scott Zakarin created
The Spot, an
episodic online story that integrated photos, videos, and blogs into the storyline. Likened to
Melrose Place-on-the-Web,
The Spot featured a rotating cast of characters playing trendy twenty-somethings who rented rooms in a fabled
Santa Monica, California beach house called "The Spot".
The Spot earned Infoseek's "Cool Site of the Year," an award which later became the Webby. In January 1999,
Showtime licensed the animated sci-fi web series
WhirlGirl, making it the first independently produced web series licensed by a national television network. In February 1999, the show premiered simultaneously on Showtime and online. The character occasionally appeared on Showtime, for example, hosting a "Lethal Ladies" programming block, but spent most of her time online, appearing in 100 webisodes.
2000s As broadband bandwidth increased in speed and availability, delivering high-quality video over the Internet became a reality. In the early 2000s, the Japanese
anime industry began broadcasting
original net animation (ONA), a type of
original video animation (OVA) series, on the Internet. Early examples of the ONA series include
Infinite Ryvius: Illusion (2000),
Ajimu (2001), and
Mahou Yuugi (2001). After being put on hiatus in 2010, it returned in 2014. In 2002, Matt Jolly (better known as "Krinkels") released the first episode of
Madness Combat to
Newgrounds. The show is still ongoing, with the latest episode "Madness Combat 12: Contravention" released on
Twitch in September 2024. In 2003,
Microsoft launched MSN Video, offering
NBC-related content. Its web series,
Weird TV 2000, a spin-off of the syndicated television series
Weird TV, featured dozens of shorts, comedy sketches, and mini-documentaries produced exclusively for MSN Video. The video-sharing site YouTube was launched in early 2005, allowing users to share television programs. YouTube co-founder
Jawed Karim said the inspiration for YouTube first came from
Janet Jackson's role in the 2004
Super Bowl incident, when her breast was exposed during her performance, and later from the
2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Karim could not easily find video clips of either event online, which led to the idea of a video-sharing site. From 2003 to 2006, many independent web series gained significant popularity, most notably the science fiction series
Red vs. Blue by
Rooster Teeth. The series was distributed independently via online portals YouTube and
Revver, as well as the Rooster Teeth website, acquiring over 100 million social media views during its run. (Rooster Teeth would eventually create the computer-animated web series
RWBY in 2013.) In 2004, the adult-animated series
Salad Fingers was created, which amassed a cult following. The comedy show
The Burg, hailed as the internet's first sitcom and starring
Kelli Giddish and
Lindsey Broad, rapidly gained an audience and press attention before its creators signed a creation deal with
Michael Eisner. The drama
Sam Has 7 Friends, which ran in the summer and fall of 2006, was nominated for a
Daytime Emmy Award and was temporarily removed from the Internet when it was also acquired by Eisner. In 2004–2005, Spanish producer
Pedro Alonso Pablos recorded a series of video interviews featuring actors and directors such as
Guillermo del Toro,
Santiago Segura,
Álex de la Iglesia, and
Keanu Reeves, which were distributed through his own website.
lonelygirl15,
California Heaven, "The Burg", and
SamHas7Friends also gained popularity during this time, acquiring audiences in the millions. (Science fiction thriller
lonelygirl15 was so successful that it secured a sponsorship deal with
Neutrogena in 2007.) In 2004, Stewart St. John, executive producer and head writer of 1990s webisodies
The Spot, revived the brand for online audiences as
The Spot (2.0), with a new cast, and as a separate soap opera on
Sprint PCS Vision-enabled cell phones, creating the first American mobile phone series. St. John and partner Todd Fisher produced over 2,500 daily videos of the mobile soap, driving story lines across platforms to its web counterpart. In 2007, the creators of
lonelygirl15 followed up on the show's success with
KateModern, a
comedy-drama series that debuted on
social network Bebo, and took place in the same fictional universe as their previous show.
Big Fantastic created and produced the
soap opera Prom Queen, financed and distributed by Michael Eisner's production firm
Vuguru, and debuted the series on
MySpace. Vuguru partnered with
Mark Cuban's channel
HDNet to release
All-for-nots, a
mockumentary series by
The Burg creators Kathleen Grace and Thom Woodley, which debuted at the
SXSW Festival in 2008. These web series highlighted interactivity with the audience in addition to the narrative on relatively low budgets. In contrast, the eight-episode show
Sanctuary, starring actor/producer
Amanda Tapping, cost $4.3 million to produce. Both
Sanctuary and
Prom Queen were nominated for a
Daytime Emmy Award. Award-winning producer/director
Marshall Herskovitz created the drama
Quarterlife, which debuted on MySpace and was later distributed on
NBC. In 2008, major television studios began releasing web series, such as the
ABC comedy show
Squeegies, the NBC sci-fi show
Gemini Division, and the
Bravo reality series
The Malan Show.
Warner Bros. relaunched
The WB as an online network beginning with original mystery web series,
Sorority Forever, created and produced by
Big Fantastic and executive produced by
McG. Meanwhile,
MTV announced a new original web series created by
Craig Brewer,
$5 Cover, that brought together the
indie music world and new media expansion.
Joss Whedon created, produced, and self-financed musical comedy-drama ''
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog starring Neil Patrick Harris and Felicia Day. Big Fantastic wrote and produced Foreign Body'', a mystery web series that served as a prequel to
Robin Cook's novel of the same name. Beckett and Goodfried founded a new Internet studio, EQAL, and produced a spin-off of
lonelygirl15 titled
LG15: The Resistance. The mainstream press began to provide coverage. In the United Kingdom,
KateModern ended its run on
Bebo. Bebo also hosted a six-month-long reality travel show,
The Gap Year, produced by
Endemol UK, and produced an interactive sci-fi drama
Kirill for
MSN. During
MIPCOM in October 2008, MySpace announced plans for a second series and indicated that it was in talks with Australian cable network
Foxtel to distribute its first series on network television. Additionally, MySpace spoke of plans to produce versions of the
MySpace Road Tour reality series in other countries. The emerging potential for success in web video caught the attention of top entertainment executives in America, including former Disney executive Michael Eisner, then head of the Tornante Company. Torante's Vuguru subdivision partnered with Canadian media conglomerate
Rogers Media on October 26, securing plans to produce upwards of 30 new web shows a year. Rogers Media agreed to help fund and distribute Vuguru's upcoming productions, thereby solidifying a connection between old and new media. Web series could be distributed directly from the producers' websites, through streaming services, or via online video sharing websites. In 2009, the first web series festival was established, named the
Los Angeles Web Series Festival.
2010s In January 2010, the first episode of the
independent animation web series
Battle for Dream Island was released on
YouTube. Created by twin brothers Cary and Michael Huang, it is the first in a category of
game show genre
parodies featuring
anthropomorphic objects, a genre later called "object shows".
2020s ==Awards==