Standard mantra from the Cinnamon couch heard on almost a nightly basis…150 channels give or take, and nothing…to be honest we watch way too much bad TV…bad meaning, “there is nothing on so I guess we’ll watch this tired, overplayed, predictable crap.” Am I alone in this vacuum, this void, this seemingly black hole of never-ending, non-original, non-sense? Have we come to the end of creative, funny, dramatic, intense, informative ideas? Certainly not. We just aren’t getting anything original because the dinosaurs that run the networks don’t like risk, or unknowns, or anything new that doesn’t have a built-in audience and guaranteed revenue streams. Might I suggest something…the big media conglomeration are actually dying and will go the way of the dinosaurs and TV as you know it is about change; and I’m not talking about the overblown switch from analog to digital in February.

I don’t think you’ll wake up tomorrow and CBS, NBC, ABC, & Fox will be gone – of course not…but they are losing power and market share everyday and just like the big three automakers they will wake-up to the realization that most people (especially the younger generations) now consider the status quo a liability/trash/not worth their effort – people didn’t stop buying Ford’s or GM vehicles because they don’t make reliable cars, people stopped buying because ‘reliable’ lost its value and the cool, hip, fresh, risky became the deal maker - How else do you explain people driving cars that look like a box with 4 wheels! Meaning simply this: the average/reliable/safe/status quo just aint good enough anymore. This was never so evident to me than on Tuesday night when ABC premiered a new show…’Scrubs’ a zany show about a daydreaming doctor and his struggle to understand life through pithy circumstances surrounded by a group of hilariously wacky people. Problem is Scrubs premiered in 2001 on NBC…I actually like the show but after watching the ABC incarnation Sarah said they didn’t change anything, it’s the same exact show – and let’s face it – it’s tired, overdone, overplayed, and predictable.

So what is filling the creative void in the market? What is taking the eyeballs away from the networks? The internet…don’t make a mistake here and assume that the internet is actually the cause of change…it’s not…it is merely the tool by which creative, talented individuals are able to distribute and build communities around their work. Jay Black a blogger for tvsquad.com writes an interesting piece about Leo Laporte…one such entrepreneur that has succeed in capturing a niche audience that would otherwise go unserved or be reduced to enduring the terrible G4 cable channel. I’ll let you read his take on what Leo is doing - for full disclosure purposes I am a TWiT and happen to agree with Jay. I’m also a guy who found great interest in the ’24 hours of iPhone Coverage’ Leporte did during the iPhone 3G launch, which was basically people talking about the new iPhone while standing in line to get one – so you might not be able to track with my level of geekiness – I understand. But Jay’s point is valid, a network TV show cost roughly ½ million to 1 million to produce per hour…Leo’s (per his tweet commenting on the tvsquad the story) cost is about $450 per hour to produce – Someone in Leo’s position only needs a few thousand viewers to make a nice living – just wait until there are 100 TWiT-like networks or when there are a thousand – one or two them serving up content that you and a few thousand others really enjoy.

Ok, so maybe that’s only a small part of the equation and the TWiT network is more tech news oriented & round table discussion than pure original creativity. So what about creative people doing creative things? You have the recent Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog incident. If you have not seen it you should. It is a 43-minute musical film, initially produced exclusively for Internet distribution. It stars Major Minor TV star Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser, M.D. or Barney on How I Met Your Mother) and tells the story of Dr. Horrible, the aspiring supervillain alter ego of Billy; Captain Hammer, his nemesis; and Penny, their mutual love interest. The short movie was written by writer/director Joss Whedon during the writers’ strike. It’s original, funny, edgy, and pretty entertaining.

But a single instance of creativity, or brilliance, or amusement won’t kill TV as we know it. So here are a few more examples of where individual are making almost TV quality content without the money of the big networks and more importantly without the influences of the big networks. Revison3.com is a whole network of internet-only shows. Many are focused at a niche group of people like comic book nuts or movie junkies or tech nerds. One of the shows on the network that Sarah and I both enjoyed was ctrl-alt-chicken, a slightly off beat cooking show hosted by a couple of nerds who don’t know how to cook. Sarah actually made two of the dishes they featured on the show – Chicken Cordon Blue (not so good) and Manicotti (very good) The point is the Revison3 network is full of shows that hit a target audience along with being fresh, untethered, and unpredictable. No network involvement, no scared CEO’s to nix something a bit different or new and if the show fails to gain an audience, like ctrl-alt-chicken which is out of production, you simply archive the dozen shows you made for the fans and you move on to next idea. For brevity I’ll mention only one more of the internet-only networks, though there are many and growing everyday… another example is channelflip.com – a British take on tech, games, movies, culture, comedy, etc…

Fueling their own death of dominance, big networks are jumping on the bandwagon and putting together/sponsoring sites like hulu.com and Joost.com. These sites are turning big numbers and making big in-roads even though they are only replaying network produced material. These sites have the advantage of being on-demand and pretty high quality. So now you can watch all three seasons of the off-beat comedy Arrested Development for free on Hulu.com – pretty cool. But they are making the mistake I warned you not to make – they assume incorrectly the internet is the catalyst driving the loss of eyeballs on TV, but it isn’t the internet at all. It is the pitiful content they produce year after year that has people searching for the new, the interesting, the next. They should instead launch sites with fresh new programming contrived and created by the best talent they have under contract and turn them loose to become a brilliant hit or a horrible failure (in the Revision3 vane – try something and see if it sticks). But of course they won’t and they will discover far too late just as the Big Auto Companies, the Newspaper Business, the Big Record Labels that individuals have changed and no longer value reliable cars, news that is printed on paper, or music produced by propped-up plastic artist that can’t really sing and no longer what to watch the same old junk they keep turning out.

One final area that is creating a huge distraction from traditional TV are sites like YouTube.com, Metacafe.com, FunnyorDie.com, etc…the list is endless. Most feature short clips that range from music videos to original comedy sketches to homemade videos of every stupid thing imaginable. Some of these sites like YouTube have actually been an asset to the big networks by reminding people of some the descent content they are producing. For example the recent resurgence of Saturday Night Live which hasn’t been funny for years, but recently with the political climate and the talents of Tina Fey has drawn a lot of attention – don’t worry I don’t expect it to be funny again for at least another four years. I’m also sure the phenomenon of these sites driving eyeball back to the network will fade too. Especially since the networks are actively trying to keep sites like YouTube from having and showing  their material. 

All this and more is changing TV as we know it. Not for the masses at first, but eventually the sheep will follow.

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