How Black & Sexy TV Is Becoming An Online Empire
Black & Sexy TV is known for its highly creative and entertaining collection of web series. The Couple, The Number, That Guy, Roomie Lover Friends & Hello Cupid are all web series created by Black & Sexy TV and associates. Viewers from around the world have become captivated by their one-of-a-kind story lines. Dennis Dortch, Founder & Creative Director of Black & Sexy TV, explains the inner workings of running a successful web series network. Black & Sexy TV has over 35,000 Youtube subscribers and almost 3 million views. If you’re an avid web series viewer, chances are you’ve watched one of their shows.
JAM: You created Black & Sexy TV after creating the movie “A Good Day To Be Black & Sexy.” When did you all decide to start making web series?”
Dennis Dortch: We decided to do web series after the first week the movie was released in LA. It was in 2008. That was my first taste of distribution. For us to go online, it was about controlling our content and product.
JAM: Who are the members of the Black & Sexy TV Team?
Dennis Dortch: My college buddy, Brian Ali-Harding is the Visual Director. He’s also the post-production picture guy. Jeanine Daniels is co-creator of The Couple, creator of That Guy and one of the writers on everything. Numa Perrier is the Head of Development and the co-creator of Roomie Lover Friends. And she runs the network along with me.
JAM: Why do you think fans connect so well with all of your web series?
Dennis Dortch: I think because we try to do the same thing we did with the movie. We try to create something that is a reflection of us, which is also a reflection of the fans. I think seeing a reflection of yourself and things that feel more realistic is an alternative.
Our sensibility is just being subtle and realistic and I think there’s an appetite for that. I think its just long overdo. When you think about other mediums like on television, you have people in charge who don’t really understand culture or have our culture at their best interest. And they don’t really know. It’s like taking a chance. When for us, it’s not that serious. It doesn’t cost us that much to create a series and get it out directly to the people. Its’ not really a chance at all. It’s just something that makes sense. You do it and you go, “Oh its great!” And you’re validated and you do more.
JAM: How does Black & Sexy TV generate new ideas when it comes to creating new episodes and new web series?
Dennis Dortch: I would say we have too many ideas. So we’re trying to pull back. Everything comes from real life. The Couple is completely real life. It’s one of those things where we can all relate. So we don’t try to come up with ideas, it just happens as we’re living. You know in our own relationships and things. Roomie Lover Friends is a true story and we exaggerate it as we move on. It’s based on something that’s true so it’s easy to keep going because it’s coming from a real place. That Guy is coming from real experiences. So, I don’t know how. We’re just creative people and creative people are always bubbling. It just comes from a place of realness. We just look back at that and try to keep that focus. We don’t try to go off and do something that’s not in our niche.
JAM: You mentioned Roomie Lover Friends, which is featured on Issa Rae’s channel. How do you all nurture partnerships with other web series creators?
Dennis Dortch: We all know each other, especially Black content creators. So it’s fairly easy to have a conversation. Issa is someone we partnered with early on. She’s made her appearances on The Number and I also directed an episode in the first season of Awkward Black Girl. So, that relationship was already established. Organically it happened that we just came to partner again but in a bigger way.
JAM: Which other Black content creators have you all partnered with?
Dennis Dortch: We haven’t partnered with anyone officially yet other than promoting web series. For instance, Alex Thomas’ Lenox Avenue. He’s in the circle of friends. So when he had his web series pilot coming out, we showed it on Roomie Lover Friends. So he could get his boost up front and it helped.
JAM: How do you form overall teams (cast & crew) for the web series?
Dennis Dortch: We are the team. We do all of them. Hello Cupid is the new one. It’s the first time that we ventured outside of our own ideas and our own team. So that is a partnership with Lena Waithe and Ashley Blaine Featherson who is also the star of the web series. They created the series and came to us. We helped develop it. I direct it and actually we’re all writing it at this point. So the same team is working on it and the idea came from within the family because we were already working with them anyway in a different capacity.
Ashley was actually on That Guy. She was already in the circle and she came to us with the idea. We liked it. We weren’t even looking for one. But we said we have to jump on this one, so we developed it.
Outside of that series, the four people I mentioned are the generally the team. It’s growing. We’re figuring it out and we’re bringing in other people. We’ve sort of had some bumps in the road along the way, a little bit of growing pains. For us, the main idea of our success is about control. It’s about being meticulous. It’s about holding a standard. We have a certain sensibility and we’ve got to stick with it. And so when you bring in other people it’s kind of hard to maintain that quality control. People have different ideas and different thoughts about how things should be. They may think, “It should be like a television show,” or “something I’ve done before”. When really, you can’t make television on the web. It doesn’t really work. People want television on television. And something alternative that they can’t find anywhere else to be online.
JAM: Why are web series becoming popular?
Dennis Dortch: Specifically for Black people, we joke and we call it the Underground Rail Road. A lot of things have been happening in Hollywood over the years. It’s been a writer’s strike and a financial collapse. In general in this country, things have tightened up and changed drastically.
I think a lot of people in the industry that are working and are Black are disillusioned with what’s happening with tv and Black people. So I think a lot of those people, who are trying to get shows or just working on shows, are turning to the web as an alternative to at least be a creative outlet. And I think the other side is the audience.
We’re in a unique position, whereas if this were a white audience or a pop music audience, there’s plenty of content on cable television, library, radio online. There are lots of different variations of things that are available for them. For Black people, not so much. So I think, the web actually sort of gave the opportunity for the producers and the consumers to come together and form a relationship. That’s an alternative to the limited images that we are actually getting. I think out of necessity it sort of happened.
And then obviously Awkward Black Girl busting out of the gates is really what opened everybody’s eyes that there was something, another place to get noticed. I think that it was like the catalyst, even though there were quite a few people that were doing it before Issa Rae, that was the one where everybody started going, “Hey!”
Even before she blew out, I just kinda knew something was happening and I didn’t realize it was on Youtube. Because before, we were on our own website. And we really didn’t really launch. There were other things in Hollywood that I was doing.
Trying to get deals going and I let it go, became distracted. But we had a lot of material accumulated that we never released. When Awkward Black Girl came out by episode 4, I was starting to really take notice. By episode 7, I was working with her already directing it. And then I started going, “Hey you know we have a lot of material. We need to get back into that game.” I think a lot of people were at the same time, thinking the same thing. So we jumped in later that year.
I’m glad we jumped in early because now there’s a huge avalanche of things coming. And I think it’s just what happens. There’s a wave of things that happen, the first wave. Then there’s that second wave where people start going, “Oh wait a minute, this is a great idea”. I think for us it’s great because people keep saying, “How come we don’t have our own Nollywood?” I think this really is a Nollywood for us without any interruptions or any middlemen. It’s literally a place for you to be able to understand that you can control your own destiny. You’re in control of your own craft and you can develop yourself without having to wait for someone to give you permission to do it.
Read Part II here.
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