Steve Gillmor wrote a blog post the other day that almost had me resurrect myself from a stomach bug and post a response. But hell, I just didn’t have the energy. However, when I read Battlestar Podcasts. Other than the fact that episode four of season three marks a pinnacle in television, the podcast is just so damn good. Who else sits down with a packet of cigarets and glass of scotch and provides a running commentary each of week of the behind the scenes. How transparent and 2.0 is that!
Take Chaser’s War, one of Australia’s best comedy shows in well over a decade. For the later part of the recent season you could subscribe to their RSS feed and have the weekly episode on your iPod within a day of the show airing on the ABC.
Take The OC, a show that’s a little out of my demographic, but according to this panel interviewed by Guy Kawasaki right smack in Gen Y. MySpace just announced it’ll be releasing the show a full week before it airs on Fox.
Just wait for a few innovative ways of shows tapping into the audience in real time. We’ll be seeing some pretty remarkable ways for people to create a series. Imagine a season of Lost that you can control. Maybe we’d know what they hell it all meant by the end, or maybe we’d be more confused.
I’ve only covered a few areas where I think television is excelling in it’s embrace of the Internet. Give me a short time and I’ll continue the list. There is no doubt that just blatting out a weekly show to the airwaves is dead, but it’s rapidly being replaced by a new way of “casting.” iTunes, YouTube, MySpace, Digg, and the “next big thing” are all just extending the reach, not killing television.
3 Comments
I agree with you for the most part about the evolution of TV alongside web2.0 (and about BSG 3×04 … damn, that was one hell of a ride!) but it’s worth keeping in mind that sometimes one step forward can also make more obvious two steps back – as was the case with the BSG webisodes in contrast to the podcasts!
PS: The link I meant to include in that last post was this one.
Wow. I didn’t even realise that the BSG webisodes were only available in the US. I grabbed them from bittorrent
(not that I watched them).
I get your point Tama. I had a similar realisation, though from a different perspective and “measurement”, about the “tyranny of distance,” and called it +8GMT’ed. Wanna join my tribe?