Thanks to striking writers, who are striking thanks to your changing media/entertainment consumption habits, NBC says this is a great time to completely re-think the way television is produced. No more pilot seasons, no more song-and-dance to prospective advertisers, no more glut. No more Hollywood excess, in other words.
Pat yourselves on the back, writers and young people. Your move away from watching Must See TV as it airs to playing games, watching DVDs or DVR’d content is finally being felt in Hollywood.
Also, NBC and Apple kissed and made up.
NBC chief eyes TV shake-up [Financial Times]
Perhaps you meant “prospective” advertisers?
They want to make TV more like the way it is around the world? Oh lordy. I’ve seen TV in Brazil, Colombia, India, Kenya, Tanzania and Zanzibar over the past few years and most of it is horrible! Better news and sports, yes. But the rest is much worse than most of the reality drivel we see here.
If they mean there’s not reliably going to be shows on every day of every week for a season, then I’ll just stop watching. It’s almost bad enough in terms of reliably being on at the time time each week that I don’t watch that much TV any more.
And I don’t watch reality TV. Big Brother, Survivor, etc., is all drek with no value whatsoever beyond voyeuristic schadenfreude. (There’s a mouthful!)
If they think I’m going to put much effort into finding new shows each time I turn on my TV, they are sadly mistaken. I’ll go to iTunes and buy DVDs and watch off-line. If I could dump cable and watch the local stations using an HD antenna, you can bet this kind of move is going to make me eye the value of not paying $106 a month to be tied to the mothership if it has nothing to offer me of value.