"Young American Bodies" and "Schweddy Balls": Seeking Online Alternatives as the Strike Continues

With scripted series dropping from network schedules like ducks from the sky during hunting season the media has made it a point to direct frantic viewers to the Internet where a limitless supply of video distractions await quotHas the strike claimed your favorite shows Then get thee to your laptopquot the mavens cryIt39s all starting to sound somewhat nutty to me In what way does the experience of watching quickie videos online approximate the joy to be had in settling down for 30 minutes or more to watch one39s favorite television series with remote in hand to check out dozens of other networks during commercial breaks It has me thinking about the National Association of Television Programming Executives convention in New Orleans way back in January 2000 where the overriding theme was the many ways in which the brand new world of original Internet programming was going to cut the guts out of television That was supposed to happen before the end of 2000 or so the experts declared Some of us said it wouldn39t happen at all not simply because household technology wasn39t able to support the programmers39 dreams but also because their concepts mostly suckedAs fate would have it the Internet bubble burst a few months later and the back aisles of the NATPE convention floor the following year were riddled with providers of original online content perched in cheap little booths selling off their wares as if at a yard sale It was a pitiful sightSince that time advances in technology have made professional and amateur video easily available to all who care to create it or watch it and the end result is bigger and better than the online producers at NATPE 2000 could ever have imagined Now the mounting damages of the WGA strike are prompting people to seek out Internet programming and embrace it as an alternative to television which is exactly what those producers at NATPE 2000 had said would come to passToday we have more videoloaded Web sites than any one person could hope to keep track of with comedy shorts at the forefront of it all It is suddenly chic for educated upscale adult men and women to chatter away about the humorous programming on MyDamnChannel FunnyorDie SuperDeluxe and other sites that are home to original entertainment programming That standby from a decade ago the wild and frequently offensive video site Icebox featuring the memorably controversial Mr Wong and Hard Drinkin39 Lincoln is still active but less buzzedabout than it used to beMeanwhile online serials are forging new territory More than ten years ago during the first wave of original production for the 39Net The Spot was the talk of the digerati now Quarterlife is the Web drama to beat Curiously The Spot in its infancy and its simplicity was sexier and edgier than Quarterlife which looks very much like a wellproduced aggressively tasteful broadcast television program that has been chopped up for placement on a different distribution platform The Spot was amateurish and rough around the edges but it had a certain sharp sex appeal for its time and it was something that would never work on television although the presidents of every network entertainment division were fixated on it wondering if it might be a mysterious blueprint for future television developmentIf The Spot in its heyday was the Fox of the Internet I think the serials on the wildly provocative Nerve in particular Young American Bodies with all those breasts and penises on proud display have made it the online HBO Similarly the perfectly pretty Quarterlife strikes me as totally ABC Interestingly Quarterlife started out as a pitch to ABC but it will migrate to NBC on March 2 The lowbudget production values and spontaneous antics of the twentysomethings in The Burg remind me of FX39s It39s Always Sunny in Philadelphia In fact a television adaptation of The Burg might make a perfect companion series for FX39s lone comedy It needs a partnerI would rather spend the little time I spend away from broadcast and cable television watching rogue amateur videos on YouTube but that is a matter of personal taste Professional or amateur Hollywood made or home grown I say bring it all on and then bring moreBut the media must stop bashing television in the processLately I find that the millennials I talk to about online programming are much more realistic about it than the midlifes who are almost unreal in their enthusiasm It is interesting that so much of the focus of original online video programming is on the young the very demographics that care not to be typecast Television went this route with unprecedented fervor from 19952005 with the fast rises and sudden demises of the muchmissed WB and the already forgotten UPN two mininetworks that struggled to agedown broadcast while their target audience was first gravitating to broadband The remains of the two were cobbled together into The CW in 2006 and the jury is still out on whether or not it can remain so narrowly focused on young viewers and prosper in the longtermAnd yet it makes sense that all of the excitement about online video is focused with laserlike intensity on young people since they are they ones who are coming of age with the new technology that makes it all possible But I don39t think they are as obsessed with it as older folks think they are My tween goddaughters and their friends spend a lot of time online but they are engaged in social networks or playing games they aren39t passively watching videos the way their parents passively watch television As much as they like the Internet they like television more as far as content of substance is concerned Ask them what they watch online and they mumble Ask them about Hannah Montana or America39s Next Top Model or American Idol or The Simpsons and they won39t shut upSimilarly my teenage godson and his pals will seek out the occasional online video but more often than not they are looking for clips from television shows A favorite The Saturday Night Live classic Schweddy Balls You39ll find it on evtv1 Sometimes they will seek out an entire episode of something None of them show any significant interest in online series of any kind although they are all fans of JibJab videos especially the quotsendablequot ones because they can insert their own faces into them Their current picks are Night of the Living Democrats and Night of the Living Republicans But day to day there doesn39t seem to be enough time in their hectic adolescent schedules to watch such stuff and even when they suddenly have an open hour or two they go directly to their XBoxes and Wiis or to reruns of Scrubs on Comedy Central Besides they would rather grab their Flips and shoot something than sit down and look at what someone else has shot

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"Young American Bodies" and "Schweddy Balls": Seeking Online Alternatives as the Strike Continues

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Ed Martin

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