Quarterlife is an American web series, also briefly an NBC television series in 2008, created by Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick, the creators of Thirtysomething and Once and Again, and producers of My So-Called Life. The show is about a group of twenty-something artists who are coming of age in the digital generation.[1]
According to its official website, Quarterlife is the first Internet series to have been created alongside a social networking website, quarterlife.com.
The regular cast includes Bitsie Tulloch, Kevin Christy, Mike Faiola, Scott Michael Foster, Michelle Lombardo, Maїté Schwartz, and David Walton.
Contents |
| Quarterlife | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Comedy-drama |
| Created by | Marshall Herskovitz Edward Zwick |
| Developed by | Quarterlife, Inc. |
| Written by | Devon Gummersall Marshall Herskovitz Lucy Teitler Edward Zwick |
| Directed by | Marshall Herskovitz Eric Stoltz |
| Starring | Bitsie Tulloch Kevin Christy Mike Faiola Scott Michael Foster Michelle Lombardo Maїté Schwartz David Walton |
| Composer(s) | W. G. "Snuffy" Walden |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 1 |
| No. of episodes | 6 (List of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) | Marshall Herskovitz Edward Zwick Joshua Gummersall |
| Editor(s) | Jennifer Pulver |
| Cinematography | John O'Shaughnessy Nicole Hirsch Whitaker |
| Running time | Varies |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | NBC |
| Original run | February 26, 2008 – March 9, 2008 |
| External links | |
| Website | |
NBC announced on November 17, 2007, that the network had acquired the rights to air Quarterlife on broadcast television in early 2008, after the episodes have been broadcast on the Internet.[2][3] In February 2008, NBC announced that Quarterlife would premiere on Tuesday, February 26, 2008, with the show moving to Sunday nights immediately afterwards.[4] The show garnered dismal ratings for its first episode, approaching levels not seen on NBC since the XFL, and teen demographic and general household ratings lower than a Democratic presidential debate airing at the same time on sibling cable network MSNBC.[5] NBC announced that the series was canceled after airing only one episode.[6]
Its remaining episodes would air on its sibling channel Bravo following the NBC cancellation.[7] The show only had 3.1 million viewers in its debut—the worst in-season performance in the 10 p.m. hour by an NBC show in at least 17 years. The show also got pummeled in the adults 18-49 demographic, where it managed only a 1.6 rating.[6][8] The show aired on E! in Canada in simulcast, but all reference to the show has been removed from their website since the cancellation. Full episodes can still be viewed on the NBC and Fox sponsored video site Hulu.com.
Each part of the series premiered nearly simultaneously on MySpace and the official Quarterlife site. It garnered the third-highest views of any scripted series in Myspace history. In five months, total online views for the series—on Myspace, Quarterlife, and YouTube—were over 9 million. After the series was picked up by NBC, some of the hour-long episodes were made available on the NBC and Hulu websites. During this time, Herskowitz claimed the show accrued an average of 300k views per episode.[9]
The first season was released online in 36 parts, each approximately eight minutes, from November 2007 to March 2008. These were combined into six hour-long episodes for television.