To embrace the digital future, major studios would love to be able to merely add an inexpensive interactive component to their tried-and-true entertainment vehicles and enlist established stars to lure Webheads to their sites.
Once there, surfers would be bombarded with previews, cross-promotional messages and links to on-line stores. When bandwidth capacity finally reaches warp speed, consumers will be able to download new video releases, records and live performances with the touch of a button.
Sounds simple.
“It’s not that easy,” counters Cindy Margolis, who is rarely introduced these days without the designation “The World’s Most Downloaded Woman” (for the fourth straight year). “It will take some savvy to be a success, especially now that everyone and their mother is doing it. A lot of celebrity sites aren’t making it.
“On Yahoo, I was up against Ricky Martin, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, and I got 15 times more hits . . . mainly because my site was interactive and their’s was just a picture.”
With Margolis’ undeniable physical charms, most observers would assume that all she would need to succeed in the voyeur-friendly web would be a sexy picture — just like Ricky, Leo and Brad.
But they would be wrong.
Besides a revolving array of cheesecake photographs — no nudity, just classic pin-up poses — the 32-year-old San Fernando Valley native and self-described “nice Jewish girl” offers advice, happily solicits e-mail, peddles merchandise and plugs upcoming appearances on TV shows (“Jag,” “Suddenly Susan”), in movies (“Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me”), on the Net (Eruptor.com has signed her on for an advice show aimed at boys and young men) and at calendar and poster signings.
This fall, she’s getting her own syndicated talk-variety show, which is targeted at the same demographic that stays up late for the television version of the “Howard Stern Radio Show” and “Saturday Night Live.”
“I’ll ask my cyberbuddies what they want to see,” says Margolis, who was feverishly signing autographs in King World’s booth at the recent National Association of Television Program Executives convention. “I want them to be at my Web site 23 hours that day, and watching the show the 24th.”
Twenty-three hours might be wishful thinking, even for this self-made Internet tycoon, who started out posing for greeting cards and recently has been featured in Forbes, People, Playboy, TV Guide and Details. Clearly she is on the bookmark list of a lot of surfers (40 percent of whom are women).
Her secret to maintaining a fan base estimated at 60 million users is pretty basic really, but one Hollywood has yet to adopt.
“You always want to stay in the forefront of the technology, because your fans want all the bells and whistles . . . the flash, animation and music that wasn’t available a month or six months ago,” Margolis explains. “Being the first so-called celebrity to have a Web site, I always want to stay on the edge. People who come to my site expect the best.”
While Margolis is starting to make a loud splash in the mainstream media — her show is being syndicated by the same company responsible for “Hollywood Squares,” on which she appeared last month — the equally vivacious Kiki Stockhammer labors in relative obscurity.
“I’ve been involved in the computer-video business for 10 years,” says Stockhammer, who hosts “Kiki at Midnight.” “I’m an executive who has evolved into an entertainment personality, and I’ve been talking about the democratization of television for years. Last year, with the launch of our show on the www.play.com network, we were finally able to do that, and it’s been tremendously exciting.
“On the one hand, I’ve had my executive hat on, and have been evangelizing about this cool new technology to people to make them understand how it can work for them. On the other hand, I’m living it by hosting my own show, which I also write.”
The fledgling medium, she asserts, is exciting because it’s only now beginning to evolve into Internet television.
“Many of these people here at NATPE want to know if they’ll enjoy watching television from their computer, but that’s really not where we’re going,” she continues. “As a medium, television is going to be what it is and stay that way. But, when you add the Internet, it becomes interactive, global and free.
“As technology changes and bandwidth increases, we’ll be able to watch video that looks good. The reason my show is called `Kiki at Midnight,’ is that it’s always midnight somewhere in the world, and my fans include bored students in Britain and sportswriters from Brazil, whose e-mail has popped up live, right in front of me during the show.”
“Kiki at Midnight” is unscripted, but, like Jay Leno, she will do bits and get out of the studio–which, using Play technology, is about as big as most people’s dining rooms.
“In one show, I was the Griddle Goddess, and the theme became pancakes . . . the amount of e-mail blew the screen out, because everyone had a comment about how I was making them,” the bubbly redhead recalled. “We’ve had on modern witches and kids talking about Pokemon. Another thing we did was camp out at the Chinese Theater in L.A., before the `Star Trek’ prequel came out, and Keanu Reeves just happened to drive up on his motorcycle.”
If some of the home-grown shows on her network look as if they’re regurgitations of television, she pleads with viewers to be patient.
“We’re still inventing content in anticipation of what the new shows are going to look like, taking advantage of interactivity,” allows Stockhammer, whose business card labels her a “chief technology evangelist.”
“We don’t know what the new medium will look like, or even what it will be called.”
