When Josh Schwartz, the creator of the popular teen dramas “The O.C.” and “Gossip Girl,” looked at his ratings, he noticed something.
Though “Gossip Girl” has only about 2 million viewers on the CW network, its cultural impact has been much larger — proven most recently by the show’s stars landing on the cover of Rolling Stone and an offhand mention by President Barack Obama.
Schwartz, 32, realized kids must be watching his show elsewhere: on video-on-demand, on iTunes and, especially, on the Internet.
“So I felt like, well, let’s cut out the middle man and do something directly for the Internet,” Schwartz said in a recent interview.
The result: “Rockville, CA,” a new Web series on TheWB.com, the online revival of the defunct TV network.
Created by Schwartz with his taste-making music supervisor Alexandra Patsavas, the show has a 20-episode season with new installments (about 5 minutes long) posted every Tuesday.
The show’s setting also finds another industry in flux: music.
Years ago, Schwartz conceived of a show called “Wall to Wall Records,” set in a music store. But since nobody goes to record stores and buys hard copies of albums anymore, it was clearly dated.
So Schwartz moved the setting to a rock club. Live music, after all, is just about the only steady business in music these days.
The music business, Schwartz said, “has so fundamentally changed now, over the last eight years, that it felt (like) the story of the music industry was a very different one.”
“Rockville” is shot in a real Los Angeles music venue and stars Andrew West as a music nerd who seemingly attends the club every night. Deb, an A&R scout for a record label played by Alexandra Chando, also frequently drops in.
‘An indie rock opera’
Schwartz and Patsavas are known for aggressively using music in their programs to set a tone and to lend hipness to them. A guest appearance by Death Cab for Cutie on “The O.C.” gave a jolt to their popularity.
Each episode of “Rockville” includes a guest appearance by a band, including the Kaiser Chiefs, Lykke Li, Bishop Allen and Anya Marina, among others. Alongside each episode is extra video of the acts and links to their official sites.
Schwartz and Patsavas like to call it “an indie rock opera.”
Such placement (at least on television) has become an important new revenue stream for bands seeing record sales dwindle.
In the first episode, Hunter (the kind of hyper-verbose character that typically stars in a Schwartz show) gives a brief speech about seeing a promising band become swallowed up in the hype cycle of the blogosphere. He also directly refers to a band — Clap Your Hands Say Yeah — that experienced such a roller-coaster ride.
Says Hunter: “Viola, the band gets signed to a label where it will now, no doubt, produce an over-hyped, overproduced EP and before you can clap your hands say yeah, the blogosphere — which proclaimed them the next great — will take even more pleasure in being disappointed.”
If “Rockville” truly reflected today’s music industry, there should perhaps be a character based on a TV producer looking for soundtrack material. Schwartz notes you can spot him in a few band shots.
With both music and television in transition, “Rockville” is a curious way station.
“My feeling is TV today, that’s not where we’re going to be in a few years,” said Schwartz. “I don’t know if Web series as they are now are where we’re going to be, but we’re certainly moving toward where the future is going to be.”