It crept out with very little publicity and in a completely new form- a webseries sponsored by Fosters lager- but nevertheless he's here; Alan Partridge, one of the great comic creations of the last twenty years, is back with some new material. The Guardian had an article on Monday all about the background to Fosters sponsoring the webseries and the kinds of budget involved. It is a really interesting case study of media in the online age and the changing distribution models that this has brought about. Apparently, Fosters paid the production costs, which were still similar to those for making a TV show, even though it has more limited camera use and the single set of the radio studio.The first episode has over half a million hits on YouTube with later episodes currently on around 150,000 and even though a new comedy on Channel 4 would expect to be seen by 1.5m to 2m viewers, this is still seen as a success. The aim is to resell the programme to a conventional broadcaster after the internet airing is complete and then to sell it overseas and put it out on DVD. So Partridge for the web- of course there are loads of clips from all the old series and all kinds of one-offs on youtube and the Alan Partridge app is one of the most popular on the iPhone, even though it just consists of a whole load of his banal catchphrases.
People have them begun to make mash-ups of his work. Example of David Gauntlett's creativity??
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