Creator of 'NYPD Blue' headed for video sharing
Steven Bochco, the creator of blockbuster TV shows such as L.A. Law and NYPD Blue, will help produce content for video sharing site Metacafe.
Bochco has also agreed to become a strategic advisor for the company, Metacafe said in a statement Wednesday.
At a time when most of the video-sharing sites offer many of the same homemade movies, some companies are trying to one-up the competition by providing a higher grade of entertainment.
San Francisco-based Guba offers downloadable movies from Sony Pictures. Grouper, acquired last summer by Sony, recently began allowing users to choose from a hundred movie clips from the studio's library to embed in their blogs or MySpace pages.
Metacafe is among the companies, which include Google and Revver, that have recently begun compensating top videographers. The thinking there is that the most talented clip makers will draw the largest audiences.
Few of the people making videos for online sharing can boast the resume of Bochco. But in a show-business career that has spanned 40 years, Bochco isn't known for short-form productions.
Will this be challenging enough?
"I have spent my career figuring out how to tell stories that are appropriate to a given audience," Bochco said in a statement. "Online video is a fresh and exciting platform on which to experiment with new and contemporary ways of telling stories."
