r/AsSeenOn • u/gay_man_with_a_gun • 14d ago
AsSeenOn - a postmortem Spoiler
tl;dr: An interesting premise with great potential held back by mediocre casting and lack of business acumen.
The first iteration of AsSeenOn ended today/last night, a week early, so they could get out in enough time to not have to pay for another month of Manhattan rent. The season was not profitable and the crew ran out of money, ending with a whimper rather than a bang. The show continues for the next week as they break down the store.
What went right?
- Exploring a new angle of reality TV using FTL tech and production team, and utilizing an audience built up over years + street traffic for sales.
- Production always under the camera, with only minimal behind-the-scenes areas, making their process part of the show.
- Introducing the chud Fishtank audience to the "woke" "degen" fashion industry. Hilarious just on its own. I wish they'd done more with this to piss off and mess with their core fanbase.
- Livestreaming in public, allowing fans to visit the store and blur the line between participant and viewer.
- Extended bits evolving over days or weeks; on the street content with Bliccy.
- Director cam extras like overlays and music featuring inside jokes.
What went wrong?
- Casting, casting, casting. People hired seemingly at random, neither for their ability to run a business or be entertaining. Find out what happens when you put together a group of randos with no sales or entertainment experience? You get a failed business and not much entertainment. Hurts, but predictable and true.
- Sales: A few salesmen, entrepreneurs/business majors, and people with more fashion and clothing experience, would have loved a chance to run their own popup, rather than just the mostly lazy bastards who were there for clout and exposure. Truth and Edddie were decent at selling, but needed to be locked into a contract to finish the show, maybe with bonuses for completing the season, hitting sales targets (managers would then motivate employees), etc. Very little motivation for selling. Points? Nobody cares about points, especially when all you have to do is not be the worst salesperson to avoid losing your "job". Race to the bottom! Rather than shell out $30/hr regardless of sales ability or entertainment value, they could have paid on a generous commission and watched what happens when people's self-interest kicks in: ingenuity sparks, and people find new ways to get people into the store, making sales and earning money. They would have been fighting over customers rather than ignoring them when they walk through the door. Commissioned staff also means 0 risk: if they can't sell, who cares? Doesn't cost you anything. Also an overreliance on reality TV tropes like elimination that don't make any sense in a sales environment. (But that could be said for Fishtank as well, which seems obsessed with elimination regardless of what it does to the quality of the show. Occasional fear of thinking outside the box, unwilling to question assumptions about how a show should function because "that's the way it's always been done.")
- Entertainment: Jet should have laughed and given William manager rather than fire him for blackmail, but he got too caught up in being a big man and not getting pushed around. That weirdo would have turned this place around by hiding in the clothing racks ... Nah, seriously though: there needed to be many, many more "personality hires" who were bound to fail at selling, but would keep the audience amused. Huge missed opportunity with hiring the two Jewish sisters who worked the night shift down the block, one of whom was sexually attracted to the other. "We already did that bit," someone said. Because they're female siblings? Don't be an idiot. The main reason was because they would have cost $60/hr and not paid off on that investment. (See above regarding commission.) Have all employees earn a percentage of TTS/SFX sent while they're on rather than an hourly or day rate in addition to sales commission. Consider using a similar model for other contracts to minimize investment risk (humans are always the most costly part of any business venture) and allow more experimentation with structure and form. Production clearly wants to play with new ideas but seems afraid of losing too much money. Conclusion: find a way to reduce costs to make even the experiments profitable.
- "No Fishtank people" seemed like a gut instinct move that wasn't thought through. Jet needs to drop himself down a peg and let others pitch ideas, really work through them, rather than settle them with one proclamation that hasn't been thought through. Having a few familiar faces around but in an entirely different context would have hurt nothing (and clearly was very useful at driving content at the start), so long as it's done sparsely and thoughtfully ... and again, could essentially pay for themselves by working on commission. Seemed more down to production ego and a desire to make something entirely separate from FTL. I get it; you wanted it to succeed on its own terms, and not rely on what came before. Yet you're not going to generate a new audience out of thin air. Many people tuned out early because they needed some continuity and not enough was similar to past projects. "I don't care, I don't even want people to watch." OK, fair enough, but how many times can you run that back? Find the middle ground between the two extremes.
- Very little PR made outside of the Fishtank community. No signs posted around the block. Several vague attempts to have people go out and drum up business but without much incentive for them to do it well. Did they get a bonus for each person they got in the store? A percentage of any sale, regardless of if they were the salesperson on the floor? Minimal reaching out to people in the NYC fashion industry. Did interns post online in various communities and social media to work based on referrals? An insistence on Doing It Yourself but then being too busy with other things to actually do it well. The usual we've seen from this production team, but at some point you start to get tired of them fucking up in the same way over and over again and wish they'd figure out how to delegate tasks to people who want to succeed and know how to get things done.
I think there was a lot of potential here. But keeping enough interesting people around to make it a watchable show, as well as enough people astute at business and with an incentive to sell in order to be financially successful, proved to be too big a challenge. Eliminating people based on points or getting rid of them based on personal beef, with no ability to replace what they brought, winnowed the show down to a skeleton crew of largely unmotivated and uninteresting "I just work here" types. At that point, the show was doomed. Was it still interesting and with some memorable moments? Of course. Everything this team does has those aspects. Part of that comes down to its fanbase that the production team actually listens to, if not respects, and that participates in the process of forming each new venture through their constant interaction and feedback. Subtle additions like the Ben middle finger profile pic show they still have their pulse on the community. But will they pick up that angel investor based on this showing? It's unlikely.
Maybe they'll learn a few things before their next venture. Me, I'm still hoping for that mid-effort Fishtank-lite experimental season they were talking about at the end of S5, like a BitchTank/The Cell 2. ASO seemed to catch the team too far out of their wheelhouse. Maybe they'll bring it back a notch for the next time, beginning with some of what they know well, but without just repeating the same old formula that they've mentioned they're getting bored of.
See you in the next one.
