On Lasts -- Stanek

If you ain't first, you're last. – Ricky Bobby/Teshale

Apologies for the extreme lateness of this post but somehow it fits the subject matter. So I’ll pretend it was for dramatic effect and not the more mundane, inexplicable realities.

Teshale is right: we, as a culture, are obsessed with firsts. First kisses, first dates, first past the post, Who's on first, the list goes on and on. But, as with so many things, our fascination is misplaced. Firsts are a curiosity, often, though certainly not always, memorable more for the novelty than the significance. Blasphemy, you say! But it’s all relative. And relative to lasts, firsts are noticeably lower on the ladder.

Every journey has a start and a finish, but it isn’t the first step that endures, it’s the last step. Neil Armstrong’s first step on the moon sticks in the popular consciousness as one of the grandest technical achievements in human history, yet it is Eugene Cernan’s final step on the moon that reminds us of the true significance we attached to those feats (just enough to never build upon them in any way). Lasts allow for introspection and evaluation; indeed, they demand it. By the time a last rolls around there is space enough to gain a little perspective on the path. Firsts are exciting because the path remains undefined, an infinite well of possibility. But lasts are important because with maturity comes thoughtfulness, and reflections on the pitfalls and twists of the path are more valuable than youthful pontifications on the possibilities.

One day not so long ago I was walking along in the wee hours of the morning. Up ahead the ground sloped upward with buildings, mostly apartments, rising off in the distance. But I knew that gentle slope led to the bluffs that ringed the edge of the peninsula on which I live; though I couldn’t see it, beyond them was the ocean. For some reason, I took comfort in knowing that I was on a peninsula and that ultimately it had an end. The sensation of an ecumenopolis, a reasonable approximation of which is achieved by the expanse of Chicagoland even if it does border a Great Lake, unnerves me. The lack of finality, the endlessness of the expanse is a terrible thing. Without a clear end, what defines these cities or these societies?

Lasts provide what firsts cannot: closure and, if we’re very lucky, comfort. My last breath will be so much more significant than my first: taken with my express knowledge and my consent. It will close out the projects I’ve begun: the trivial, the momentous, and the memorable. And it will save me from the horrors of eternity. Don’t tell anyone but the only thing I fear more than death is immortality. The mind becomes weary ever so quickly.

What do we remember? Last suppers, the last of the Mohicans, the last man to die for a mistake, the last recorded Beatles album, the last (sort of) troops to leave a warzone. And what do we spend generations anticipating? Remember, it wasn’t the first atomic detonation that people truly feared, it was the last. And still today, though less fervently, we fear it.

Lasts are what separate the finite from the infinite; regrettably, firsts do not. And while the Infinite might first Let There Be Light, ultimately it is merely a way of measuring the finite. But that requires knowing and accepting there will be a last and, if we're brave, or desperate, or zen enough, embracing it.

On Firsts - Teshale

Someone told me recently-- I think it may have been my brother-- a statistic he'd heard. The statistic was something like this: Imagine a hundred random people. 70 of those people have probably had a good idea recently-- but only one of them will actually try to make it happen. I have no idea if this statistic is true, but it sounds good and it's a good jumping-off point for my post.

People love being first, especially Americans. Often it doesn't really matter how or what or what's involved, just that we're #1. After all, if you're not first, you're last. One of the conflicts in the new movie The Social Network is about determining who was the first person to create Facebook. (More specifically the conflict is about who should get all the money Facebook generates, for being the first person to think of it.)

As a child, I equated being first (as in being the first thing encountered) with being best. 8-year-old me thought Joe Cocker's version of "With A Little Help From My Friends" was the original version, for instance, and that the Beatles' version was distinctly inferior for it. But why should being first be all that impressive? Being the first person to think of something doesn't necessarily mean that your idea is the best. It doesn't necessarily even mean your idea is good.

Being first, I think, means there are no expectations, because there's nothing to compare to. Moreover, if you are first, and acknowledged as first, then--however crappy your idea was-- being first means you've thought of something nobody else did. Nowadays, genuine, insightful originality is something that is often hard to come by (discussed in an earlier post). Being "first" often seems to be conflated with originality, and more indirectly, some sort of intangible genius or intelligence others don't possess. Very, very occasionally people are just not ready to understand how influential or excellent someone is until much later on; but in my experience, the people who actually say some variant on "People just don't understand the genius of my original idea" are not actually all that smart.

Ultimately, I think being the first person to think of something doesn't matter as much as putting that idea into practice, or making that idea work on some real-world plane. I, for instance, thought to myself last year "Wouldn't it be cool to write a story where you had some kind of device that could get you into people's memories, and there was a guy who spied for a company by using the machine? But then one day he has to get into the mind of a family member? And then the family member's mind is unstable, so he might be stuck there forever if he doesn't find what he's looking for, and even forget who he is? Kinda like The Cell, but more about the nature of memory and how you are what you remember, so maybe a Cell meets Memento kind of thing. Yeah, I should totally write that."

You may see a problem.

This happens quite often (not my getting Incepted, but different people having strikingly similar ideas). You see it with people suing J.K. Rowling, for instance, or any other successful authors or filmmakers or TV writers for "stealing their ideas." If I were to ask you to name a book about a skinny English boy with dark hair and glasses finding out he was the world's greatest wizard and having adventures and an owl and a scar, what would you name? Probably not The Books of Magic by Neil Gaiman , even though that series came out in the 80s. Does that mean J.K. Rowling stole the idea from him? If you were to read both books, I'd wager you would say no. It's a cliche, yes, but what is original is the artist's interpretation of the idea, not the idea. 99 out of 100 times, the idea is the easy part. Actually figuring out how the thing would work in real life is much harder. Granted, this whole "idea is less important than the manifestation" thing treads very murky waters when your idea concerns relatively tangible things, like windshield wipers or the double helix...especially when you've been discussing your great ideas with other people, James Watson. As an aspiring author, I can tell you that I have no shortage of ideas for stories, but I very often struggle with how to actually make these ideas work on a page without sounding like crap. If an idea is stolen, in my opinion it's often this latter part, the method, that is lifted-- in order to claim the genius that someone's hard work created, to claim the glory of being First without realizing why being First is impressive at all.

When I became older, oddly enough, I started to become dismissive of simply being First. I would think to myself "Psh. I could do better than that," but would never actually do better. I am often afraid of being the First, because outside of sports, being the First rarely (if ever) means being perfect. It's very easy-- for me, at least-- to get stuck in a cycle of thinking "I want to be the very best (like no one ever was)," and letting fear of being imperfect overwhelm me. Ultimately, though, I've realized this dismissive attitude is futile, and also will generate me no money whatsoever. Nobody criticized The Wright Brothers for having a really wobbly first flight. The Russians didn't think "Man, if we put a dude on the moon...we'd do it way better" as they quietly sipped their tiny cups of tea mixed with vodka in Leningrad and Moscow. People revered Zefram Cochrane not because the Phoenix was flawless, because it wasn't; it was because he was the first human to invent warp drive.

So, I guess, here's to being first. It doesn't mean you're the best. It rarely means you're the best. But hopefully it means you're always getting better. And if you'll allow me to abuse one more cliche, I'll leave you with the words of that guy who was first at, like, a jillion things, Isaac Newton:"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants".



Just kidding. We're number 1!

Does A Good Underdog Story Matter Anymore? - Teshale's Comment.

To be fair, it is hard to expect a 25-year-old to deal with decades of pressure, the hopes of generations-- the hopes, in fact, of an entire city-- for over five years. He has his own dreams, his own beliefs, his own desires. But that is the irony of sport; that it is not at its heart about being fair, despite what most of its fans claim. If sports were fair, only the best teams would win every year. Roger Federer would win every tennis tournament until someone better came along. In fact, if sports were fair, there would be no underdog story. The power of sports, I argue, comes ultimately from the unexpected; from what should happen not happening, for better or worse.

I think there is still power in a good underdog story. It's why everyone always seems to hate the Lakers and the Yankees, why so many non-Bostonians were rooting for the 2008 Celtics and the 2004 Red Sox. The underdog, however, can come in various forms. I think that there are two: the underdog team, and the underdog player. Furthermore, and most importantly, the two cannot exist together. I suspect this, ultimately, is why Lebron and the Cavs could not work, despite the stars seemingly aligning for it: Lebron was not a true underdog.

When I accidentally happened upon an NBA finals game earlier in the year, the question on the garishly suited announcers' lips was always "Will Lebron do x, y, z?" When I turned on ESPN this June to watch a little World Cup action, there was a ticker along the bottom devoted entirely to Lebron. It was always about Lebron James, not about the Cavs. It was "Can Lebron finally take the Cavs to glory?" not "Can the Cavs finally win glory?" Luke, at the beginning of his saga, was simply a whiny farm boy who nobody really took seriously. He was not touted as the chosen one at the tender age of...however old teenage Luke was. Luke was always part of a team, from a young age. And far from being misfits, this team consisted of people who made the Kessel run in twelve parsecs, who were the daughter of the most badass guy in a multitude of galaxies (spoiler alert), who were...ok, I'll give you that some of them were a little ragtag. That doesn't change the fact that they all worked together to change the world.

I am sure they are excellent and worthy players, but if you asked me, I could not name any other member of the Cleveland Cavaliers. This is, I suspect, not purely to do with their talent, but rather the fact that they are not as much of A Story as Lebron was, or rather, was turned into. And hype, ultimately, is what separates an underdog team from an underdog player. Magic should come from all over the field (or court); in being the underdogs, a team is united, not set up to prop one particular player, or hope that that one particular player can save their bacon when they really need it. There is certainly nothing wrong with someone on an underdog team being able to create magic like this. But if they're the only person creating magic like this, frictions arise.

In my attempt to discover what Stanek might be feeling, I have only actual football to think of. Liverpool FC could be thought of as a kind of underdog team, I suppose; the previously mighty team thirsting for a championship for over twenty years. When they came the closest to ending that drought, in the 2008-2009 season, it was with the contributions not only of Steven Gerrard, the talismanic midfielder and hometown hero-- but with Xabi Alonso (alas, Xabi) playmaking, and with Fernando Torres linking up with Gerrard to create, arguably, the Premier League's most deadly scoring duo, and with goalkeeper Pepe Reina keeping clean sheet after clean sheet. The underdog team is, above all, a team, and must work together if they are to achieve the unlikely.

Of course, the underdog player can and often does make the difference. But I find this is only really true in the concentrated, short-term environment of tournaments. Diego Forlan, for instance, recently carried the Uruguay team on his back to the quarterfinals of the World Cup. In the slog of a yearly campaign, however, the character of a team shows, and in the words of a television show everyone loves to hate, live together, die alone.

There is still hope for the underdog story in sports, mostly because such stories get people reading. Here's a question: who decides who the underdog is? Even the Evil Empire wants to be thought of as the underdog ("Everybody hates us, we don't care"). I'm not about to say the Lakers are underdogs because everyone seems to hate them; what I'm saying is that different people will have wildly differing beliefs about the same facts, because what they want to happen will supersede everything. Like I said before, sports are not about being fair; they are about the unexpected, but more personally, they are about whatever you want happening, happening, regardless of what that is. And the myth of the underdog feeds into that desire. The underdog story will always matter, as long as people want to win.

I feel I should point out that all the advertising revenue generated by Lebron's ESPN sports special, "The Decision," went to The Boys and Girls Club of America.

Does a Good Underdog Story Matter Anymore? -- Stanek

Recent events compel me to return to a subject Teshale and I discussed some time ago: the issue of sports teams and allegiances. In a way, this gets at the heart of what sports are in the modern world. The answer to that particular question seems to have three major facets. Sports, as Lebron James pointed out Thursday night, are a business. And that suggests the importance of earnings potential and fomenting one’s “brand.” Sports are competitions. They show us amazing athletes doing amazing things and in that there is great enjoyment for us. And, as Teshale noted in our earlier go-around, sports are entertainment. And though we came down on opposite sides of the question being discussed in that exchange, my response agreed with her on this point.

In fact, this last point is the most personal and thus (from my point of view) the most important. The philosophy underlying my rebuttal to Teshale was simple: sports are indeed entertainment and the essence of good entertainment is a compelling story. If the home team’s struggles and triumphs are to be meaningful beyond offering the simple thrill of competition, the story of the team must integrate seamlessly with the broader story of the city it represents. Cleveland’s sports teams, as I intimated before, have stories that mirror those of the city itself. The New York Yankees’ blatant poaching of its smaller market competitors’ heroes reflects that city’s Borg-like obsession with assimilation, not to mention an inferiority complex so deep and so completely internalized by its inhabitants that it actually manifests itself as an unwarranted superiority complex. And even the dysentery-prone Pittsburgh Steelers are a reflection of their proud city: gritty, tough, and determined, with a knack for revitalization in the face of adversity. Sports teams of great cities are fractals containing complete pictures of the characters of their cities.

On Thursday night, Lebron James’ whirlwind romance with six eager suitors came to a merciful but inglorious end. He had flirted with them for years—despite ostensibly being in a committed relationship with one—and they had all previously traveled to downtown Cleveland to grovel at the King’s feet on the slim hope of winning his affections. All in all, it was a disgusting display culminating in an unprecedented feat of public self-fellatio: an hour-long special on ESPN where Lebron revealed “The Decision.” But his choice, which I’m sure everyone and her mother knows by now is the Miami Heat, and the way in which he made it is at the center of the question this post seeks to address.

With Lebron at the helm, the Cavaliers were contenders (with the best record in the NBA two years in a row) but still underdogs. They were the beacon of hope to a depressed sports town. And best of all, they were led by a local boy made good (Lebron’s hometown of Akron is less than 40 miles south of Cleveland). When Cleveland’s stroke of luck at landing the first pick in the 2003 NBA draft—they had a 22.50 percent of getting that pick in the lottery—after an embarrassing 17-win season it seemed as if a new era, A New Hope, was dawning.

More than anything, Lebron’s selection fed a storyline. It was the beginning of a basketball opera, centered completely on Lebron. He was to bring the city of Cleveland redemption, a weight we discovered only days ago he simply wasn’t strong—or confident—enough to bear. He was Luke Skywalker, a humble hero from an unlikely place who would lead a ragtag band of misfits to topple an evil empire and save his home. This, of course, is the entertainment-oriented narrative strand of sports. But the fact of the matter is that while this is the most compelling aspect of it all to me, the same isn’t true of Lebron.

His self-selected moniker of “Chosen One” proved sadly apt. He wasn’t to be our Luke Skywalker. He was to be our Anakin Skywalker. Blessed with incredible abilities, he trained and grew into adulthood with the Cavs but was destined to turn his skills against those who had placed their hopes in him. We now know the contours of a nefarious plot began to emerge four years ago in Japan. The clues were there and we probably should have guessed that the hometown hero story might not be especially important to a man who grew up in northeast Ohio rooting for the New York Yankees, Dallas Cowboys, and Chicago Bulls. But many of his loyal fans were still surprised.

The importance of the storyline has turned out to be less important than the currency of dominion in the basketball universe: rings, and lots of them. The journey now takes a backseat to the destination for our former hero and we might be tempted to say to Lebron the same words relayed by a dismayed and hurt Obi-Wan to his friend: “well, then you really are lost.” He’ll play with his friends, he’ll likely get multiple rings, and with those victories will come the power he seeks (seriously, what the fuck?) and the additional endorsement money that comes with being a winner.

But though the superstar has fled his small market home, I continue to firmly believe that the underdog story, the small market triumph, remains the Holy Grail of sports entertainment. Though Lebron has seemingly weakened that prospect with the Cleveland to Miami jump, in the long run he may have strengthened it. By creating a new juggernaut—a “new Evil Empire”--he’s generating a powerful new storyline. And by casting himself as its central villain, he may well have created a story even more exciting in some respects than the narrative he derailed (ask anyone who’s seen the original Star Wars trilogy and the prequel trilogy which is more interesting). I continue to hope that someday the Cavs can bring victory and redemption to Cleveland without Lebron. We'll find our real Luke Skywalker to bring down Anakin, perhaps with a Han Solo that's a bit more consistent than Mo Williams (we still love you, Mo). Until then, I shudder to think that, should his experiment in Miami go as well as some fear it will, LeAnakin James may have just given me the first reason I’ve ever had to root for the Lakers in an NBA Finals series.

Help me Obi-Wan Bry-Kobe, you’re my only hope.

Is Must See TV, On TV, Dead? - Stanek's Comment

But I know the truth: there's no going back. You've changed things... forever.

Must see TV, as it existed in the latter half of the 20th century, is dead. The reason is simple: that concept was based on boundaries, it was rooted in constraint and a lack of choice. In an age where time and (viewing) space are manipulable, that model is rapidly becoming outmoded. Only in a finite entertainment universe can a particular program be “must see.” Let's consider two factors that have rapidly eroded the supremacy of the immutable timeslot anchored to a traditionally popular channel.

First, the rapidly inflating landscape of the television universe. The explosion of television channels over the past few decades has diluted content and generated a digital New World for viewers to explore. In 1985, the average number of TV channels receivable was 18.8. In 1990, it was 33.2 By 2000 it was 74.6 and in 2007 the average home in the U.S. received 118.6 channels. Of course, most people watch only a fraction of the available channels—the average viewer in 2007 tuned to only 16 channels for at least 10 minutes per week. But the key point of interest isn't how many channels a person watches, it's the fact that they can choose now to watch different channels than their neighbor.

Part of the reason for that is that there are channels now for everyone's tastes. We have channels on history, weather, science, nature, news, sports, travel, food, science fiction, and comedy. We have channels aimed at men, channels aimed at women, channels for game show fanatics, channels airing classic movies, channels airing contemporary movies, on-demand television and movie options, you name it and they've probably got it. Of course, many of these channels stray a bit from their ostensible mission. SyFy plays a disproportionate amount of wrestling and low-budget horror films, news channels rely on a crude parody of analysis in the evenings, and the history channel plays a lot of weird shit about wormholes and truck drivers. But the fact remains that even when a channel's name sometimes borders on being a misnomer, they're catering to some particular audience.

I was recently introduced to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, thanks to Comedy Central’s 2-hour IASIP happy hour on Monday nights. I was aware of the show before reruns came to Comedy Central but, since I don’t generally watch FX, it escaped my craving for misanthropic comedy until now. The lesson there is that for some of us, our channels of choice are oases in a desert of uninteresting or, at the very last unfamiliar, programming. It's frightening to wander in search of a new watering hole, particularly when you suspect the promos greenery in the distance is just a mirage. So we don't bother summoning the energy to try something new; the price of our laziness is missing some solid shows. Of course, then they go into syndication and end up on a network we do watch and everything's fine.

Second, the near-total mastery of time. Yes, it's always been possible to tape programs to watch them later. But that required physically having and storing VHS tapes, fumbling with labels, rewinding. Taping programs was an occasional indulgence, used mostly to record a single episode of a TV show you couldn't avoid missing or, by jury-rigging two TVs together, illegally copying rented videos. It was impractical to use as your primary mechanism for watching television.

Today it doesn't matter when you watch most television shows. We have seen the rise of "time-shifted viewing," as DVRs have made it possible to effortlessly record, store, and watch (sans commercial breaks) any program you want. The result has been that a significant chunk of televisions actually viewed on televisions aren't watched at the time they originally air. In addition, as Teshale pointed out, the internet--particularly in the era of Hulu--is a viable option for watching shows. And I'm sure that soon enough we'll be able to watch television shows from the future, years before they're ever produced. Take that, causality.

There are still exceptions, of course. We've only mastered TV time, not actual time. News events--inaugurations, celebrity deaths, disasters, and the like--continue to dominate ratings because those television events still compel people to tune in live (if you record it to watch it a week later, it ain't news). Similarly, major sporting events (e.g. the Superbowl) and other results-oriented, spoiler-based or otherwise time-sensitive forms of programming also invite live watching. But these exceptions aren't regular or common enough to undo the influence of time and space factors.

Together these two factors make it unlikely that astonishing numbers of eyes (at least on a percentage basis) will be trained on the same channel at the same time anymore. Even if huge numbers of people do choose to watch the same program, they will do it at different times and through different mediums. The (viewing) space issues mean less viewers for a given show, as potential program-watchers spread out, however unevenly, through the TV landscape. The time issues give viewers the option of watching at their own pace, which often--at least in my case--means skipping the advertisements that bring in revenue to the network. I suspect that down the line this trend is going to become increasingly important. Will revenues from internet ads start picking up the slack? Will networks switch to a greater reliance on subscription-based business models for both television and internet programming? I can't say.

What I can say is, we won't be going back to the way things were. Television is becoming increasingly granular and, in some cases, individualized. The more it caters to your particular viewing desires, the harder it becomes to make it into a mass commercial gimmick. Of course, all this will be moot once you can download customizable entertainment right into your head. Or someone invents a holodeck. We're all just marching toward a future in which we each live inside our own minds, anyway.

RIP, Urkel.

Is Must See TV, On TV, Dead?-Teshale

Good news, everyone! To start off the STB's third and most glorious resurrection, and to honor the return of Futurama to our TV screens (well those of us with Comedy Central), I thought I would discuss a topic dear to both mine and Stanek's hearts: science fiction television. You see, we here at the STB are right on the cutting edge, which is why I have chosen to discuss the season finale of a TV show a mere six weeks after it aired. Nothing gets by me!

You might know that I enjoy a little show called Lost. You probably know about it already, so I won't describe it. What I will say is that Lost was unlike any show currently on TV-- but it wasn't the first of its kind. Anyone who calls Lost groundbreaking hasn't seen The Prisoner, or Twin Peaks, The X-Files, or heck, even Roots. Lost, while admirable because of what it attempted to do, was exceptional because it seems to have been the last of its kind, not the first-- one of the last heavily serialized genre television shows that people watched. Or, more broadly, the last gasp of must-see serialized drama.

The most popular shows watched on actual television sets nowadays are procedurals, reality TV, and sitcoms: NCIS, The Big Bang Theory, Dancing With the Stars. (Summer is a different prospect since there isn't that much new stuff on, but bear with me.) A procedural is popular because it is easy, not because it is necessarily good. You know going into it what you're going to get, and you can just dip in whenever you have time. You don't have to have seen seasons 1-3 of SVU to know what's happening in season 4, for instance. But starting to watch season 4 of, say, Mad Men without having seen any of it will not be as fruitful an experience.

Serialized television-- a show where you need to watch every week or you get lost (SEE WHAT I DID THERE)-- is a much bigger ask. Especially now that so much entertainment competes for your eyeballs, including this very blog! In 2004, streaming television shows was essentially pie in the sky-- Crazy Talk, to networks and studios. They'd just gotten the hang of putting trailers online, and now you want to put in entire 40-minute shows? Netflix didn't exist. Youtube didn't exist. Hulu certainly did not exist.

This meant that if you wanted to see a cool show everyone was talking about, you had three choices: sit down Wednesdays at 8/7c (or whatever) and watch it, set your VCR to record it and get annoyed when people spoil it for you the next day, or just not watch it and wait until the end of the season to get the box set. (Or, if you were a little more technologically minded, you could torrent it, but let's discuss legal ways of watching TV for now.) If that great show was on HBO, either you found someone with HBO, paid for the service, or you waited for the box set. (In fact, the dilemma basic cable channels like AMC, USA and so on are beginning to face now, with trying to make money from their own original programming vs buying syndication rights to network shows, all while dealing with the smaller audience of basic cable, is actually interesting in its own right, but irrelevant, so I'll shut up about it.)

Nowadays, power is in the viewers' hands. But networks can't seem to accept this, and adhere to outdated standards. Networks are used to the golden days of tv, where a season finale of NYPD Blue or something could draw 20+ million live viewers. This is not happening anymore. It is really not happening anymore. Example: In 2006 at its height, House M.D could pull in around 18 or 19 million viewers (airing directly after American Idol helped, let's be honest). Even my parents watched House, and my parents never watch anything but PBS usually. The season finale drew about 22 million viewers, and those ratings were considered absolutely excellent at the time. In 2010 it is literally, literally unheard of for a drama to get more than 20 million viewers The shows that come closest nowadays are comedies-- for instance, this season Two and a Half Men topped out around 17 million viewers with an average of about 15 million-- and procedurals (see NCIS, below). Glee's 14 million for its return episode was seen as a ratings smash, and it averages around 7 million. Five or six years ago 14 million probably would have been seen as a well- performing show, but could be better, and 8 million viewers considered something to worry about.

This is why so many good shows have been cancelled in the past few years; Firefly, Pushing Daisies, Life, Terminator (yes, Terminator), etc. It's because the format networks created to force ads upon a viewing public once upon a time no longer works, and since the format compliments networks, they're loath to change it. The problem for you, the viewer, is not that there are no good shows on network TV anymore-- it is that these good shows are hard to find, because networks have refused to adapt for so long.

There are a lot of claims in the media that people just aren't interested in serialized TV anymore. I don't think this is true at all, as can be seen by the success of a show like Glee, or even by the ultimate in serialized TV, 24. (You can't miss one episode or everything gets thrown off! Plus you'll have missed Jack Bauer ripping a man's throat out with his bare hands!) (Ok, maybe not his bare hands.) (No, his bare hands.) 24's ratings have stayed pretty steady for eight years-- that's not nearly as easy as you might think.

People are certainly interested in well-told stories; they are just no longer interested in being held ransom in order to see them, especially if they don't have to be held ransom. For a show you can dip in and out of, like SVU, or a reality program that has a shelf life, like American Idol or a sports game, the old format works perfectly. NCIS, for instance, regularly draws 15 million-plus viewers and drew 19 million this past season. How, I don't really know, but one of my guilty pleasures is Cold Case so I can't talk. You don't need me to tell you how many people watch American Idol, or the Super Bowl. But really, are you planning to buy a box set of a courtroom drama? Do you plan to buy the results show of American Idol on DVD, unless you are somehow personally connected to whoever is in the top 10? Does anyone besides a fan of the winners care about rewatching the Super Bowl? Nope. But do people want to rewatch well-told stories? Course they do, people buy movies on DVD, don't they? They get box sets of miniseries or whatever. Consider time-shifted viewings (i.e., not live) for my personal favorite show of the last two years, Damages. (Watch Damages. Seriously. Just do it. Right now. Go get the first season on DVD and watch it. It's super good.) In that article, John Landgraf (FX's president) says that viewership counts went up by 80 percent when factoring in DVRs. That is a huge audience, that is being lost using the Nielsen system.


So what can be done to keep good shows on the air? It's something that's already being done: put more shows online. But more importantly, the shows should be online for free. Why? Well, for one there needs to be some reason to go online-- I might as well just tape or DVR a show if I'm going to have to pay for the "privilege" of looking at it on a computer screen. For another, never underestimate the power of word of mouth. You want as many eyeballs as possible looking at your show, because it doesn't matter if it's the best show of the past two years, if nobody knows it exists nobody's going to watch it. Yes, I am still bitter. This seems like a nobrainer, I know, but networks only have so much budget for so many shows, and are understandably loath to do a huge ad push for a show they don't think will make back that budget.

This is all well and good, putting shows on the internet. Networks already do this. But what about getting those lost viewers back? (Look, I'm bringing it back round.) Is "must see TV" possible on television for a serialized show? Is it possible to get viewers back watching a TV, and all those sexy ads networks love, rather than a stream?

My hunch is that it is very possible. You need to make the programs worth watching, of course, but you also need to raise awareness about the show. My guess would be that if you had a show which was well written, well acted, just a great piece of work that really connects with people-- and (this is important) you give people opportunities to watch it-- people will come. I think the previously mentioned Glee is a good example. The show connected with people (that whole misfit in high school thing), it was different from anything else currently on TV (a musical number every week?!? everyone knows musicals don't work on TV). But just as importantly, the pilot episode was shown in the spring of 2009, and the show itself premiered in fall 2009. FOX got the show out in people's minds, got people talking about it, built up buzz, and that buzz helped carry the show three months later to a pretty decent opening. The two work in unison. The sooner networks realize that the best way to increase viewership is to increase awareness of a program, i.e. TELL PEOPLE THE SHOW EXISTS, the more viewers they'll have and the happier they'll be. And if people grow to love a show, they'll do whatever they can to keep that show around. It's everyday people who got a cancelled show a movie deal, who got a third season of their favorite show through sheer bloodymindedness. In fact, as Stanek probably knows, a little science fiction television program that struggled for ratings on 10 years ago is now experiencing its own glorious resurrection on Comedy Central-- Futurama.

Recall: networks are old, and still coming to grips with all these changes, with figuring out how to use this complicated series of tubes. So next time you power up the ol' puter and think about heading over to NBC.com to watch the latest episode of Heroes, or whatever, consider doing something that will actually get a network's attention: buy it on DVD if you like it. Or rent it. Maybe even send a letter, I hear people still do that. Just let networks know that you like it somehow, or don't be too down when the show cancelled.

And remember, you can always go outside, too.

Is Humanity Running Out Of Ideas? - Teshale's (late) Comment

There is a joke made in a novel by author Jasper Fforde regarding novel (you see what I did there) ideas; it is that Flatland, by Edwin Abbot, was the last original idea for a book. This is, again, a joke. Even assuming this were true, and from the late 1800s onwards every book could be described as the plot of another book, we've hardly seen a subsequent death of interesting ideas; here's one and here's another (note the medium). There are less of them, true, but they're still out there.

I wouldn’t say that the glut of sequels currently flooding Hollywood today represent a malaise in the creative classes. I suspect the reason that there are so many sequels out is one of simple economics, and the way technology has changed how people view entertainment. Films, television and even novels are far less profitable than they were in the days of double features, Must-See TV, and so on. There was once a time when a dime-store novel literally meant that. But today, with the internet providing so many ways to obtain entertainment, let us say, democratically, less people are going to see films in the theater or TV on their TV because of all the options avaliable. It's a catch-22; there are few films out "worth" a $10.50 ticket, so nobody goes to the theater, and then theaters charge even more to make up the difference. Even taking inflation into account, in 1979 I could easily take a chance on some weird sci-fi horror movie nobody knew anything about because, at the absolute worst, I'd be out $4; the average cost of a ticket 30 years ago was $2.50. Less people are going to bother watching a TV show right when it airs, since they could record it on their DVR and skip all the commercials-- commercials, ironically, that give that TV show the funding it needs to stay on the air.

I think Stanek's right that there's a growing tide of laziness. I don't think it's through the creative class, however, but rather it's seeping through the producers and executives that greenlight films. There's always been a struggle between the financial side of making a film and the creative side, but it appears, by the sort of films that are getting a lot of advertising dollars, that nobody wants to take a chance on a film bombing. So nobody wants to try doing something new that audiences might like because the studio literally cannot afford it. This doesn't mean that nobody's coming up with new ideas, but merely that it's much harder for new ideas to get heard. Let The Right One In, for instance, is a recent Swedish film about a young boy who befriends a not-so-young vampire. It's been getting a lot of buzz, and audiences and critics who've seen it seem to enjoy it. Well, guess what some Hollywood producer's instinct is, upon hearing of this foreign film being successful in America? An American remake with the guy who did Cloverfield, of course! To, I quote, "make it a little bit more thrilling", because of course the problem with a vampire suspense film is that it isn't thrilling enough.

Why the film needs to be remade at all, only the studio making it could say. Perhaps they think that nobody'll see a subtitled film, because reading subtitles is Hard, or that Americans couldn't possibly be interested in seeing a film made outside of the American industry. Studios, finding themselves making less money, decide to go for the "sure thing" of a sequel to a blockbuster, even if the film isn't that good. On the whole, big stupid films (or even small, depressingly simple ones) draw in people who feel like seeing something where they know what they're getting. We should also note that August is usually the graveyard for blockbusters, and all the more "original" films are usually released during the latter months of the year as Oscar bait, also to get more people to see the film. (Whether this works is up for debate.)

Anyway, the idea that everything that could be thought has already been thought seems to me like a bit of a fallacy. Perhaps literally original thoughts, the sort of thing George Carlin was talking about, will become ever more rarer. But there will always be variations on a theme to provide a potential spur for new ideas; to me the Final New Idea is a bit like one of Xeno's paradoxes. A piano, as the saying goes, only has 88 keys, yet millions of different combinations can be made to create millions of different types of melodies, even excluding songs that are "technically" different. A lot of new ideas can stem from, for instance, combining two vastly different ideas that nobody had thought to combine before, for instance. We'll probably see the days of true geniuses grow even fewer than they already are, but I think the creative spark is strong enough that humanity will still come up with some truly original ideas. Probably not intentionally, though.