Stike.tv is in full swing, and I’m over all my hysterical whining about there not being enough new content to warrant the hype. One of the things that I believe will make the advent Stike.tv so important is the fact that it is bringing many neglected genres to online video. Sketch comedy is soooo 2005, from what I’m hearing and it looks like everyone is either putting out a sexy thriller or a gruesome horror show nowadays. So it’s refreshing to see some big money and time go into bringing other types of stories to the web, like Urban Cowgirl.

In the pilot episode of Urban Cowgirl young Jorgie is being driven by her father to a riding stables where he has arranged that she speak with the owner/lead trainer about a job. Upon arriving she spots the “it girls”, a group of  popular girls from her school, already leading their horses out to practice. Do you see where this is going? Add in an accomplished young cowboy, Zando, and a challenge to harness an old and temperamental horse, Stella, and you can probably figure this first episode out for yourself.

Obviously  Jeanne Rosenberg, writer and director of Urban Cowgirl, has done her fair share of youth meets animal movies (THE BLACK STALLION, THE JOURNEY OF NATTY GANN, WHITE FANG, HEIDI to name a few ) and this is territory that she is comfortable with. Maybe that’s why the story seems a bit too cookie-cutter. Despite that, it is a sweet show, so far (this is coming from a guy in in his mid-thirties).

Urban Cowgirl seems like an after school special re-purposed for the web. It’s very traditional TV: in production style, script, cast and length…and I know that some people will have a problem with this. The internet video early adopters will certainly not like the show. But that doesn’t matter, because as our little online video crawl space opens up to accommodate more and more people, the early adopters will lose their dominance, like so many black t-shirted clove-smoking Cure fans grumbling about all the main-stream people going to the concerts.

I have to be honest with you here, this is not a show that I’d pursue on my own. I say that simply because I’m certainly not the target audience for this – that would be female, between the ages of 13 – 21, which, if you think about it, kinda fits nicely to web demographic.

I  will be keeping tabs on this show none-the-less and it’s certainly something that I’d recommend others to watch (my 14 year old niece, for example)

…and what’s that, you say? It’s too long for online video you say? Pshaah! Listen folks, if you don’t realize that viewers want good content with passable production values, regardless of the length, you’ll never be able to profit from web-video. The 3 to 5 minute web video standard is on the way out. With more sites offering full content TV shows and films online and with the main-streaming of devices that allow you to watch digital video streamed onto a television set longer content is the future. Whether Urban Cowgirl will be around is another story.

the Bottom Line:

This is a sweet show for a female teen to early twenties demographic. The first episode suffers a bit from predictability, but I recommend it all the same. 3 out of 4 stars.