Television is much more about mind control than about education and is pulled into the black hole of lowest common denominator. Once we lose the pretense of "standards" completely, we'll be watching, 8 hours a day, fat people eating fried foods while fucking and cracking bad jokes. (That actually sounds a lot like some of my comments here.)

Thinking out loud at your expense. Apologies. Will now go hunt snark.

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This means: you first make the audience pay for TV, then

you use that money to make it, at which point you no longer have to worry about if it will sell or not... it's already sold. Now you just have to make it good.

I know what you are thinking: wouldn't most of it end up being really bad? Yes, it does.... but *some* of it ends up being really good, and it's better to have one or two great shows (or films) in a sea of crap, than to have just a sea of mediocrity. Yes, this means that people will spend less time watching, but that's a good thing right?

I think it's hilarious that US had to come up with this "internet" to get to where the rest of the world already was, but hey... whatever works.

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30 Rock was originally going to be set at a Cable News network, not star Tina Fey, and focus much more on the business of creating television, than on the wonderful lives of Liz Lemon and Co. Let's just reflect on how much this premise could have turned out like a bad SNL sketch.

We can thank Kevin Reilly, Entertainment President at NBC, for telling Fey to write about what she knew (ie, a sketch comedy show) and cast herself. Of course, Reilly isn't exactly a regular executive, he did develop Law & Order, ER, The Sopranos, The Shield, Nip/Tuck, Rescue Me, The Office, Friday Night Lights, and 30 Rock, to name a few.

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And that's a very good thing.

P.S. Cajun Boy--I'm from Lake Charles, now living in Chicago. I'd appreciate it if you'd get in touch with me off line. My email address is in my profile info.

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DorothyBarker is absolutely correct -- for every mind-bendingly asinine note I've ever gotten on a script, there have been at least two or three times as many notes that were completely legit and given by smart people who actually want to help make your script, and the show, as good (or rather, as popular) as possible.

These people aren't stupid, and you must always remember that you -- smart, snarky, well-educated you -- are not the vast majority of the viewing public. Most people need the bad guys to be bad and the good guys to be good and everything to be explained in simple terms at the end of the hour, and that's why Mad Men gets under a million viewers but people just love the fuck out of the Mentalist.

I don't know your situation re: shopping your show, but if you are indeed living in Louisiana somewhere and not in Los Angeles, it's entirely possible that people were interested in your spec pilot for its "fresh voice" and wanted to meet with you without it ever even crossing their minds that you'd actually believe they want to buy your show and make it. The fact that they're not going to say that to your face, and might even lead you to believe that they're "developing" the show with you, is part of the elaborate kabuki of LA meeting culture, and while I feel for you, and know what it's like to jump through a million of what turn out to be utterly pointless hoops, well, you go through that whole process five or six times and also write on existing shows and maybe sell a feature or two or be a well-known comic for a while, and then your show might actually get made.

As for stuff coming up out of the internet, you might be able to launch a show like Jackass or possibly even a comedy career that way, but the fact of the matter is that people want to watch television that looks like television -- that is to say, television that costs at least a million dollars an episode and is made by crews of 100+ people on very expensive cameras in very expensive sound stages. And since the studios are the only places which have the money, and the equipment, and access to the talent to grind out multiple episodes, week after week... I just don't see it. Plus, you know, there are union issues, like the WGA just had with that "In the Motherhood" show.

And finally, most episodes of British television are farmed out to freelancers without a central writing staff and shot on erratic schedules without the benefit of the US (or Canada)'s TV-making empires, which is why, aside from the few auteur-driven shows we all know and love, most of them are cheap-looking and sort of suck.

Sorry to babble on, but there you have it.

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As some other blogger said on Gawker, which frequently contradicts itself (not a bad thing, of course), YouTube and most user-generated content comprises a creative desert. The blogger further added, most correctly, that it is very difficult to entertain people.

Maybe a few out there are stymied by the process involved in getting a show on to a network, but, the cream usually rises to the top (old saying in music business typically applied to those who think record labels are keeping them down).

I am not sure how many people actually watch user-generated TV shows online, but I am sure the percentage is very very small, and, those independently made films and shows (it's mostly films, I think) that make it big usually do so because someone of note at Sundance or elsewhere saw their project, liked it, and gave an endorsement, or they won a prize or something.

In other words, crowdsourcing of opinion very rarely results in a hit show. The gatekeepers have just been distributed a bit more, less centralized, but still there, and with much public support, since not everyone has the time to filter through 10000 horrible online projects to get to the one that is noteworthy.

Conclusion: new outlets and modes of communication will pry open a few cracks here and there for a few more to get through the gate, but, by and large, for the foreseeable future, the major players are not going anywhere, and lots of the content on television is pretty awesome.

Just my two cents.

Cheers and enjoy the long weekend.

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Fact is, while network TV is certainly no creative utopia, the process is usually smart, efficient and far more 'writer friendly' than the feature business. Executives have one goal: getting something on the air. And by and large they work their asses off to succeed in that goal. Of course, sometimes the product is less successful than they, or anyone, would like, but I defy you to find a writer who's worked in televsion who thinks the TV process is worse than the feature process. They may change your show in TV (a little, frankly) but they rarely if ever just fire your ass, which is the norm in features. Television, for all its flaws, is the only filmed entertainment in this country that can arguably be called a 'writers' medium'. And that's how we get shows like "The Office" and "Madmen" and "30 Rock".

And looking to the internet to solve all the problems of television--whether it be lagging viewership or an antiquated business model--is both jumping the gun and a bit naive. Who is going to underwrite these mythical internet series? Investors put money into independent movies in the hopes of seeing their names on a marquee (or their tongue in a starlet's mouth). Who's going to pay tens of millions to pay for a 'net series' and see their name...on someone else's Facebook page? No one, that's who.

Lots of TV sucks, both network and cable. Always has, always will. The sheer volume alone insures that. But some of it is great and often writers get to be true auteurs--like David Chase or Matt Weiner or Joss Whedon or Jenji Kohan--and create something long lasting and culturally relevant that can truly come close to being called art. It's not perfect, but it's not dead yet. And the internet isn't going to shock it back to life.

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