Harper’s Globe

Matt poked his head into my office today and asked me to write a blog about how Harper’s Globe came to be.  It’s actually been over a year in the making, so it’s a little hard to recount the whole story in a short blog, but I’ll try!

Last spring, Greg and I were sitting at a diner in LA talking about the state of online content (yes, that’s all we do… really).  We had just raised a round of financing for our social entertainment company, EQAL, and we wanted to do something “big.”  We didn’t know what, just that it had to be something truly special.  We were coming off the success of lonelygirl15 and KateModern, the social shows we produced in the US and the UK, and we realized that the next logical step was TV.  “Let’s produce a show on the internet that’s connected to a TV show,” we said.  Cool idea, but at the time we had no clue how to do it.

Fast forward a few months, and we were in Carnegie Hall at the CBS Upfronts on CBS’s dime (thanks!), listening to Quincy Smith announce a partnership between CBS and EQAL to create brand extensions of their popular TV shows.  It was one of the most surreal moments of my life.  We had managed to work out a deal with CBS, and we spent the next few months meeting a variety of producers working on their TV shows.

Initially we spoke with Anthony Zuiker, the creator of the CSI franchise, about producing an online mystery tied to one of the CSI shows.  Although we didn’t end up producing a social show for CSI, we did become good friends with Anthony and we’re actually working with him on his multiplatform novel, Level 26.  We met with a variety of other producers, but felt an immediate connection with Jon Turteltaub, and his show, Harper’s Island.

We met with Jon and his team, Dan Shotz, Karim Zreik, and Ari Schlossberg, and pitched them the idea of a young college student traveling to the island to create a digital archive and community website for the island newspaper, the Harper’s Globe. They loved the idea and we spent the next few months assembling a team of people to execute on the vision.

We knew that the entire project would fall apart without an incredible Executive Producer to guide it.  Frankly, we lucked out and were able to convince Matt Seigel to leave his career as a feature film producer and head-up the production.  Simply put, Matt kicked ass.  Without his insane hard work, this project would never have become a reality.  Matt, Greg, and I worked together to build the team, but that’s another story…