Anyone looking for cheap thrills probably didn't get much out of Wednesday night's hyped-to-death, online-only fashion show from lingerie purveyor Victoria's Secret.
Advance promo for the event launched into overdrive on Sunday during the first quarter of the Super Bowl, with the airing of a 30-second jigglefest of an ad that pointed viewers to the Victoria's Secret Web site. The company claimed the site received more than 200,000 unique visitors in the hour following the ad.
Then, parent company Intimate Brands turned up Wednesday with full-page ads in national newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, where ads proclaimed, "When trading ends tonight, the Real Action begins."
But in the end, the Real Action viewed on RealNetworks' RealPlayer proved to be a Real Disappointment.
Before the show began, impatient viewers were invited to "test [their] system with supermodel Tyra Banks." Ah, don't we wish. Then, viewers were treated to a lengthy montage of scenes from past shows, backstage hectica, and interviews with models, all set to a hip-hop/industrial/electronica backbeat.
Finally, at 7 p.m. EST, the live show opened with some exuberant chat from an unidentified Victoria's Secret hostess, who clearly wasn't competing in the cleavage contest in her black-on-black suit. But she seemed enthused about the event anyway.
"Wow, what great PR!" said she, in self-congratulatory mode. "We are doing such a good job of bringing the Victoria's Secret message to the world."
That message, which scrolled across the screen for the next 30 minutes or so, was "Please Stand By."
Finally, just after 7:30 -- more than half an hour after the event was supposed to begin -- the screen flashed to a darkened auditorium. More than 10 minutes of piano-plinking mood music and utter darkness ensued.
Then, a woman's voice rose above the piano in a kind of semi-strangled wail made all the more ghastly by the poor reception over a 56.6 kbps modem. A chugging techno beat erupted and the lights began to come up on what appeared to be a human figure.
Perhaps that first magical figure materialized for others, but at least one viewer (this one) spent another 30 seconds staring at a blurry, still image as his RealPlayer coped with "Net congestion."
But when the live feed reappeared onscreen, the moment had arrived: close-up, unmistakable cleavage.
Just what millions of Web surfers, freshly unshackled from the Child Online Protection Act, had been waiting for.
Soon, the 3-inch video window was dancing with nearly naked, pointillistically rendered women, whose movements were made robot-like by the herky-jerky transmission of the streamed video.
If fashion is about image, detail, subtlety, and fantasy, then this experiment made it clear: Streaming video is not the way to go. The human form, scantily clad or not, is better rendered in soft curves than in fat square pixels.
And then it was over. The show closed with the reappearance of the PR woman, who giddily noted that the show had been attended by luminaries including Donald Trump and Puff Daddy. She then interviewed two Victoria's Secret employees, each of whom had won a ticket to the US$10,000-a-seat event.
Both seemed pleased that they'd come across the country to watch a 20-minute fashion show.
"Once again," noted one, whose name was too garbled to make out, "Victoria's Secret has their finger on the pulse of what women and men are looking for."
