Interesting article on t.v. message boards
10-19-02, 12:12 PM
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Interesting article on t.v. message boards
10-19-02, 12:22 PM
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The Remote Controllers
By MARSHALL SELLA
Sarah D. Bunting and Tara Ariano are obscure names in the high-stakes world of Hollywood TV production. They are anything but L.A. insiders; Bunting works in Manhattan, while Ariano is based in Toronto. Yet their opinions carry real weight among the producers and writers who fashion many of the most popular programs on television. The two women are co-editors of a Web site called Television Without Pity, and that's a name producers know extremely well. True to its name, Televisionwithoutpity.com critiques shows mercilessly and includes message boards where vast communities of passionate viewers register everything from arcane appraisals of a program's story line to their hatred of an actor's leather jacket. When TWoP editors run interviews with writers and producers on the site, it is usually because the Hollywood types have contacted them, a little dazed by the level of the site's vitriol.
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Even a show as critically adored as ''The Sopranos'' gets smacked around when it disappoints its most ardent fans. This season's third episode, for example, which was loosely centered on a local Columbus Day parade, was instantly deemed a flop by TWoP participants. ''Was this entire episode made to shut up the Italians that keep complaining about how they are portrayed in the media?'' complained one viewer. ''The whole Italian image thing really just bored me to death.'' Another posting offered a litany of protests: ''The death of Bobby's wife was really gratuitous. . . . I also don't quite get the reason why Carmela would be attracted to Furio.'' The hardest knocks, however, were reserved for a sex scene involving Tony Soprano's sister, Janice. ''I really didn't need to see that,'' wrote one repelled viewer. ''I've now gone completely blind.'' Another fan joined in: ''I never thought I would be so grateful for a white piece of fabric in my life, but God bless the top sheet of Janice's bed.'' Within days, 274 detailed messages had been posted about the episode.
Right now, Television Without Pity has active discussions on 35 shows. And that's just one Web site. Most popular series are tracked by scores of sites -- an official one run by the network; the others run by fans -- that dissect the content of every episode. Many postings are requests for specific changes. Some of these are minute. ''I can't believe Abby bleached her hair,'' an ''E.R.'' fan recently lamented online. ''She looks better as a brunette.'' Other critiques are more sweeping, asking the show's writers to aim higher. One TWoP participant recently wrote of ''C.S.I.'': ''It would be refreshing if the 'bad guys' actually got away with murder (pun intended) on this show for once. Instead, 'C.S.I.' remains in a time warp, and takes the 'Perry Mason' approach in which the good guys win every ep. Boring.''
It would be simple to underestimate the intensity with which Web sites fetishize TV programs -- and the impact they have on the show's creators. It is now standard Hollywood practice for executive producers (known in trade argot as ''show runners'') to scurry into Web groups moments after an episode is shown on the East Coast. Sure, a good review in the print media is important, but the boards, by definition, are populated by a program's core audience -- many thousands of viewers who care deeply about what direction their show takes.
Any notion that the Hollywood telegentsia hovers above the fan-site fray was shattered two years ago when Aaron Sorkin, creator of ''The West Wing,'' bitterly responded to an online complaint; he posted under his own name on Television Without Pity (or, as it was then called, Mighty Big TV). A year later, Sorkin wrote a ''West Wing'' episode that savaged TWoP and its ilk, portraying hard-core Internet users as obese shut-ins who lounge around in muumuus and chain-smoke Parliaments. It was his best and loudest available form of revenge against a phenomenon that has not always treated him fondly. One disgruntled ''West Wing'' viewer recently demanded on TWoP that Sorkin show his fictional president and first lady ''being nice to each other some time.'' She went on: ''I don't mean show us they love each other -- that's been established. I mean call each other something other than 'Jackass' and 'Medea.' Or give each other a kiss hello. Something!''
John Wells, executive producer of ''E.R.'' and ''The West Wing,'' knows better than to shrug off Web sites' feedback. ''We always have someone on the writing staff assigned to keep track of them,'' Wells says. ''Though we don't often need to assign that duty. There's always a writer who's in there all the time and can give you a clear sense of what's going on. I don't overreact to the boards, but I pay real attention to messages that are thoughtful. If you ignore your customer, you do so at your peril.''
J.J. Abrams, show runner of the very Net-friendly spy show ''Alias,'' sees the boards as a real measure of the audience's pulse and rates their members as nothing less than ''an integral part of the process.'' That could never have been said five years ago.
''If the Internet is your audience, TV is quite like a play,'' Abrams says. ''Movies are a done deal -- there's no give and take -- but in a play, you listen to the applause, the missing laughs, the boos. It's the same with the Internet. If you ignore that sort of response, you probably shouldn't be working in TV right now.''
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Ever since ''The X-Files'' sparked the proliferation of Internet message boards in the mid-90's, TV creators have gradually come to realize the value of these feverish Web discussions. Online chat, fluffy as that phrase sounds, has become a force in Hollywood -- one that nobody anticipated, possibly because it married new technology with a curious variation of old-fashioned viewer mail. The Internet allows a mass audience to register specific desires and grievances that can never be conveyed by the Nielsen ratings. What's more, creators of TV shows can actually incorporate these insights from viewers. Where films are a single exhale of artistic breath, television breathes in and out over time. It doesn't exist as one impenetrable objet after a single act of creation. In TV's perpetual, rolling incompleteness, anyone with the right equipment, anyone who finds the right tunnel in, can actually bend and shade its content. And technology has made the tunnel wide enough for tens of thousands to enter at once. With the aid of the Internet, the loftiest dream for television is being realized: an odd brand of interactivity. Television began as a one-way street winding from producers to consumers, but that street is now becoming two-way. A man with one machine (a TV) is doomed to isolation, but a man with two machines (TV and a computer) can belong to a community.
Television Without Pity was conceived as a narrower and less ambitious site, co-founded by Bunting (who goes by Sars on the site) and Ariano (known as Wing Chun), along with a tech expert named David T. Cole (Glark). Back when they first published on the Net in the fall of 1998, their site was called DawsonsWrap; it charted the narrative path of the teen-oriented hit ''Dawson's Creek.'' In very short order, that show began frustrating TWoP editors beyond measure. Bunting says that its ''insidious, sexist, lazy writing had us apoplectic, not least because we're supposed to identify with a character who, on his best day, is an obnoxious, self-absorbed twit. Of course, there's no way for us to prove that we had a direct impact, but we spent three years taking the 'Dawson's' writers to task, and in the wake of our criticism, the character actually became almost bearable.'' Although Dawson remained an irritating character, Bunting explains, he developed a welcome self-awareness about how much he annoyed the people around him.
In 1999, Ariano and Bunting widened their scope considerably, applying their site's gruff sensibility to an array of shows. TWoP's home page now bears the slogan ''Spare the Snark, Spoil the Networks.'' The site is essentially twofold. One of its attractions, of course, is the message boards; anybody with an opinion can post a message. But its most elegant punch comes in its ''recaps'' of individual episodes. These recaps, written by freelance writers, routinely run anywhere between 10 and 16 pages, not much shorter than an actual script, and are stunningly witty and precise. Ariano and Bunting split the editing duties. In their accounts of every relevant moment of a given episode (progressing almost line by line, often reproducing entire passages of dialogue), their hired ''recappers'' are by turns vicious and admiring. They scatter their prose with references to any number of other TV shows and movies. It is all very intertextual discourse, shot through with cruel nicknames they accord the shows' characters and an overall air of merry, unveiled contempt. A recent precis of a ''Dawson's Creek'' episode, for example, began with this genteel observation: ''Those screaming sounds you heard last night around 9 p.m.? They were the cries of anguish and pain unleashed when thousands of viewers ripped their eyes out of their skulls so as to avoid the opening scenes of the second half of the 'Dawson's Creek' two-part season premiere.'' The recapper for ''Six Feet Under'' is particularly droll. Recounting a scene in which Nate Fisher flirts with Ari, a female rabbi, he writes: ''Now, I know a lot of people are turned off by the rabbi's constant assertions that she and Nate can never be together, but the sad truth is that that's pretty much exactly how Jews really flirt. . . . The scene continues with Ari delivering some psychobabble about the nature of unintended consequences, but since no one is really interested in my thoughts on Talmudic law, I won't bore you with details. On the other hand, Nate clearly has a thing for girls who go metaphysical, so maybe it's actually a very clever dating technique. Anyway, the scene ends with them holding hands, each secretly wishing that they could rip the other's clothes off. I swear, if Nate doesn't dump Brenda for this woman soon, I don't know what I'll do. Probably make fun of his hair some more.''
Hollywood hardly takes its marching orders from TWoP -- it would be daylight madness to abjure creative control to amateurs and, worse, outsiders -- but it certainly pays heed. One of the executive producers of ''The Agency,'' Shaun Cassidy (yes, that Shaun Cassidy), once e-mailed the TWoP editors about their brutal coverage of his show, but he conceded that he thought the posts were funny and went so far as to end his note with the sincere query, ''Do you have any scripts to show me?'' One TWoP recapper, Heather Cocks, was hired as a Hollywood staff writer on the strength of her critiques of ''Making the Band.'' She now writes for a reality show called ''Tough Enough,'' which is actually much like ''Making the Band,'' only with wrestlers.
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TWoP pays its recap writers next to nothing and has itself hovered on the brink of oblivion; generating revenue on the Internet continues to be a mystery even to the best minds in American media. Though it has been forced to cut back on the number of programs it covers, the site sees a lot of traffic. Even during this summer's languid off-season, it pulled 350,000 ''unique users'' a month, and those numbers have sharply increased since. Most remarkably, the average viewer's time per session on TWoP is now 22 minutes; on the Net, that's an eternity.
One of the more playful signs of TV creators' scrutiny of Internet sites is a new tactic that Hollywood slang has dubbed ''the shout-out.'' Quite often, as a sly wink to a Web site (and an assurance that its interest is requited), producers will include references to specific fan sites in their episodes. There have been dozens of shout-outs to TWoP alone. The satirical (and therefore canceled) show ''Popular'' named a character after the man who recapped the show for TWoP, only to cheerfully kill him off in an auto crash. NBC's ''Ed'' once similarly tapped out a coded greeting to the site; the man who recaps it for TWoP goes by the name Uncle Bob, so the show's writers used the nonexistent Midwest expression ''What in the Uncle Bob was that?'' The show ''Once and Again'' has included glimpses of an extra carrying a messenger bag with the TWoP logo. It is all a way of ratcheting up Internet heat, of Hollywood whispering through the screen to its online enforcers: We read you loud and clear. Also, please, be gentle with us.
Internet message boards, observes Abrams of ''Alias,'' reverse the process of the writer's room. In conception, a staff plots out and arcs a story line, fleshing it out in production. ''Viewers in the boards dissect it just as carefully,'' he points out. ''They're so smart. They realize the most subtle connections in the script and get to the core nugget. It's really cool.''
Accordingly, sites like TWoP have subtle but substantive input. ''On our show, there's a character named Will that we thought people would love,'' J.J. Abrams says, laughing. ''We conceived him as a man pursuing the truth. But on the message boards, people thought he was an idiot! He was pursuing a truth they already knew; they were way ahead. So we fine-tuned the way he was presented and came up with stories that worked better for the audience. Of the 10 million things you have to keep in mind running a show, you can only keep 8 million in your head. The Internet groups are right there to remind you about the other 2 million things. They don't lead us, but they're as important as anything.
''This isn't live TV. We're working six or eight weeks in advance, so our reactions aren't immediate, but there are times when, in post-production, we'll make line changes or alter a piece of music. I'll accept a smart critique from anywhere, whether it's from a 50-year-old studio executive or a 12-year-old kid in a rural town. Internet people are a community. They have a proprietary sense of the show. Why would I ignore people who take the time to think these things through? I am so grateful. They're doing what I'd be doing if I weren't working in TV.''
The ''Alias'' message boards on TWoP include a section called ''Dear J.J.'' Viewers don't post letters to the show, or naively to the stars: they know how the creative hierarchy works. Typically, one member, who goes by the name Carrielynn, offered this critique in the wake of Will's rehabilitation: ''Dear J.J., Now, after some consideration, I have decided that I don't completely and utterly hate Will. Yes, he is completely idiotic sometimes, and yes, he screams like a girl. But aside from that, I got no beef. Just a couple of conditions for you to follow and everything will go smoothly next season. 1. As previously stated, there is no reason for Willage to be sporting a leather jacket. Ever. 2. Please, and I'm begging you, don't try to make him a love interest for Syd. Good friend, fine, but I'd hate for this show to go the tired love-triangle route that so many other shows have gone (cough, 'Felicity,' cough cough.) Let's show some creativity, shall we? And J.J., this last contingency is of utmost importance: 3. FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, BUY THE BOY A HAIRBRUSH. Do we understand each other?''
As they are cybernetically masked in a spooky ''Eyes Wide Shut'' sort of way, message-board folk are unfettered by the decorum you would employ in a letter to the editor of a magazine, but they police a show's quality and content all the same. Anonymity breeds not only rudeness but also sincerity. For his part, Abrams is dazzled by the viewers' meticulous knowledge. Message groups are so reliable about a show's history that he has used them to confirm details about old ''Alias'' episodes. It is quicker -- and every bit as trustworthy -- as rifling through old scripts.
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Sites like TWoP may have more power than even their creators realize. Two years ago, the producers of ''Charmed'' were on the fence about bringing back a (half-human) character named Cole for its next season, but the message boards' lust for him was a deciding factor. Granted, this practice isn't entirely novel; soap operas have reacted to regular mail with that degree of attention for decades. But the swiftness and heft of it is utterly different. Though few on a TV staff read viewer mail, everybody can read the boards. Writers check out their episode's ''grade'' on TWoP; cast members read Internet commentary and are by turns elated or upset. Some who portray villains are mortified to see that people in the message boards hate them. (An alarming number of viewers want to ''slap'' Janice Soprano.)
It has even become Hollywood routine for a writer's assistant to work the boards as a mole. A staff member will slink into a board anonymously and, like Prince Hal walking incognito among his troops, tout a coming episode. Aspiring writers are routinely ordered to pop into message boards and pimp an episode before it is shown, often with a shifty claim along the lines of: I know someone who works on ''Angel'' and got a sneak peek at tonight's show! It's awesome!
That said, advance press doesn't always come from moles. Message groups sometimes get hold of synopses and scripts, then post ''spoilers'' about coming shows. In Hollywood, keeping control of a script is nearly impossible. On some popular shows, there is said to be what amounts to a near black market in as-yet-unshot scripts. Within a day or two of a script's being dispatched to the studio for approval, the thing has appeared on the Internet.
Curiously, this has occasionally resulted in direct improvements in shows. Recently, one hit show had a routine script leak, and the staff awoke to find someone on a message board complaining that a character was speaking fluent French when that same character had been seen peering at a basic phrase book not so many episodes earlier. The writers were actually able to correct the continuity error in shooting that very script, thanks to a message board's ill-gained insights.
Although fierce in their criticisms of beloved shows, Internet discussion boards feature the most loyal viewers imaginable. And when a cherished show is canceled, they don't move on quietly. Last month, when TNT canceled ''Witchblade,'' a call went out in an Internet group called Witchblade Central Station to publish a ''save our show'' ad in Variety. The ad cost $3,550, but members were thrilled to help and donated the funds in short order. A similar outcry occurred on the Yahoo message board for ABC's ''Push, Nevada,'' a show that suffered the terrors of the damned from being relegated to the worst time slot in television (pitted against the monster hits ''C.S.I.'' and ''Will and Grace''). Group members -- numbering more than 8,500 on that one site alone -- drew up petitions and contemplated boycotting ABC and all its advertisers.
In the wilderness of Internet feedback, of course, there is more fecund ground for certain networks and shows. While ABC has actually eliminated most of its official message boards because of the manpower it takes to moderate them, networks like the WB and Fox, with their younger, Net-savvy viewers, lean heavily on them. Any program with a sci-fi element is, by its nature, bound to have an Internet presence. After all, it was ''The X-Files'' that started this whole phenomenon; in effect, it paved the two-way street. The show was an ideal petri dish for Web cult status, appealing to fans who knew their way around their computers and who were prone to trade theories on conspiracy and mystery. (It still draws extensive Net feedback, despite the fact that the show is now only on the air in repeats.) Similarly, ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer,'' which offers the twin appeal of teen fashion and the supernatural, has long been a sure-fire message-board draw.
Conversely, shows that skew to older audiences or those with very broad demographics are less likely to pay close attention to their Internet response, and logically so. Viewers of ''Yes, Dear'' and ''Providence'' are not typically clambering online the minute an episode ends. And there is no ''Friends'' forum on TWoP. ''We'll never get a shout-out from 'E.R.,''' says Television Without Pity's Ariano, without a trace of regret. ''It's too established.''
That said, though the two-way street of viewer feedback is rolling with tumbleweeds on grayer, more staid networks like CBS, reality TV is the exception. Chris Ender, that network's senior vice president for communications, says ''Survivor'' was CBS's wake-up call to the power of the Net. ''In the first season, there was a ground swell of attention in there,'' he recalls. ''We started monitoring the message boards to actually help guide us in what would resonate in our marketing. It's just the best market research you can get.''
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The ''reality-based'' shows also enjoy direct participation on the Web by their protagonists, who are giddy from the attention and only too happy to hang out with virtual fans. TWoP editors have moles in one of the more famous programs of that genre and have become friendly with the contestants of ''The Amazing Race'' from both of its seasons. The ''stars'' consider the site their mouthpiece, chasing the adrenaline high of their all-too-fleeting appearances on TV talk shows, and now sometimes socialize -- ''IRL,'' or ''in real life'' -- with TWoP staff members.
Message-board types feel that they're getting something back in their half-imaginary communities. They're happy to be neighbors, bound by a common mission out in the Internet suburbs of big-ticket American media. They bend heliotropically to the attention of artists they admire, warm their hands on the glow of celebrity and creativity. And they feel that, in a very real way, they're involved with the show.
They're not deluded. A few seasons ago, after the main character on ''Felicity'' decided to cut her famous long hair, WB executives were so alarmed at the virulent Web reaction that they feared their actress had lost some of her iconic power. There was even talk of using wigs to lure back the betrayed viewers, but it was felt that the wisest course was to have her grow the hair back. Similarly, the show runner for ''E.R.,'' John Wells, told me that a sudden appearance of wispy facial hair on the dreamboat-doctor Noah Wyle ''resulted in thousands of Internet hits. It was staggering.'' As it happened, Wyle had never meant to keep the goatee as a long-term look, and he shaved it off of his own accord. (His Internet approval promptly grew back.) The TWoP critique at the time, written by Ariano, was gin-clear: ''Oh, Jeebus,'' she wrote, in the freewheeling house style. ''Why won't someone close to Noah Wyle just tell him that he shouldn't grow facial hair, like, ever?''
Nancie S. Martin, who runs the WB's Web site, sees the boards' imprints firsthand. ''The directions shows take is affected by all this,'' she says. ''Producers really do use these communities. On 'Smallville,' for instance, there was a feeling on the message boards that the show should focus more on character than Kryptonite, and sure enough, the next season is going to reflect that directly.''
Of course, there are limits to viewers' understanding when it comes to the inner workings of Hollywood. No show runner discusses the boards without using the phrase ''grain of salt.'' Marti Noxon, executive producer of ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer,'' has had to cut back on her Web visits, in no small measure because some loyal fans quite unjustly turned against her -- by name. Internet fans blamed Noxon for changing the tone of the show, which was created by Joss Whedon. One British viewer went so far as to post: ''I think Marti Noxon should be on BtVS. And I think Drusilla and Spike should tie her up and torture her, then kill her in the most painful way possible. Then hacking her body beyond recognition so there could be no possible way to make her rise from the grave. Then they should STAMP on the bits.''
Says Noxon: ''It all gets very personal. I don't have a strong enough ego to go in there. People on those sites blame me for the darkness of last season's shows, and those story lines were created by Joss a year earlier. This show is a slow-turning ship. But suddenly, I'm the Queen of Darkness on the Net! This year, we've made the show . . . well, a bit less dark. We get the sense, having read those criticisms, that maybe we've just been amusing ourselves.''
Nell Scovell, creator of the TV series ''Sabrina, the Teenage Witch,'' has also felt the Net's pull, but knows to be a bit skeptical. ''When I was running 'Sabrina,' I used to check the message boards after each episode, but it's hard to know how much stock to put into them,'' she says. ''I'd see a comment like, 'This show is more inteligent than most,' and my first reaction would be, 'This viewer's a genius,' and my second reaction would be, 'Wouldn't a genius spell ''intelligent'' correctly?'''
Of course, it is tempting -- and often well advised -- to scoff at people who adopt loopy pseudonyms (Dawsnzchck; Touched--By--A--TV) to obsess online about their fave TV shows. It's as easy as shooting Trekkies in a barrel. But perhaps that's not a fair impulse. Robert Thompson, a media expert at Syracuse University, withholds his scorn. ''If this were happening at any other time in history, we'd celebrate it,'' he insists. ''When readers hold parties for Bloomsday and discuss James Joyce, we consider it an apex -- people taking culture seriously. But when viewers discuss the minutiae of a TV show, we call them crazy. One's got to admire it. Essentially what the message boards are is a panel of unpaid experts, with passion, analyzing culture.''
Even on this oddly personal level, the effect of the new interactivity has its distorting effects. As much as it grounds the program, it fictionalizes the viewer. While audiences feel more invested in their favorite shows, the medium might become more geared to precisely what the old neo-Marxist intellectuals dreaded: a hyperactively numbed consumer culture, resulting not in art but in a ''culture industry'' that demeans and deceives rather than enlightens, even if the message boards' input is ''active'' and has an impact on the narratives of shows.
In an extreme case, it could be that Net influence, with its qualitative specificity and sheer heat, could gnaw away at the hegemony of the Nielsen ratings. Perhaps, if message boards become powerful and pervasive enough, the day will come when viewers vote online for or against a show's renewal, ''American Idol''-style.
So, for the moment, TV interactivity lives where it always did, but writ large: in human feedback. Television Without Pity may lack mercy, but it is wildly supportive of the medium. It's electronic tough love. But then, there's the old truism that, in Hollywood, a friend is someone who stabs you in the chest.
And -- for the moment -- Sarah D. Bunting, with her bright, flick-knife prose, is still on the job, keeping both lanes open on the two-lane highway. ''There are people who tell us, 'Get a life!''' she says. ''Well, this is it. This is what we went out and got. If only we could get to these TV people before they made the shows.''
Marshall Sella is a contributing writer for the magazine. He last wrote about the British comedian Steve Coogan.
------------------------------------
Wow, that was long.
By MARSHALL SELLA
Sarah D. Bunting and Tara Ariano are obscure names in the high-stakes world of Hollywood TV production. They are anything but L.A. insiders; Bunting works in Manhattan, while Ariano is based in Toronto. Yet their opinions carry real weight among the producers and writers who fashion many of the most popular programs on television. The two women are co-editors of a Web site called Television Without Pity, and that's a name producers know extremely well. True to its name, Televisionwithoutpity.com critiques shows mercilessly and includes message boards where vast communities of passionate viewers register everything from arcane appraisals of a program's story line to their hatred of an actor's leather jacket. When TWoP editors run interviews with writers and producers on the site, it is usually because the Hollywood types have contacted them, a little dazed by the level of the site's vitriol.
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Even a show as critically adored as ''The Sopranos'' gets smacked around when it disappoints its most ardent fans. This season's third episode, for example, which was loosely centered on a local Columbus Day parade, was instantly deemed a flop by TWoP participants. ''Was this entire episode made to shut up the Italians that keep complaining about how they are portrayed in the media?'' complained one viewer. ''The whole Italian image thing really just bored me to death.'' Another posting offered a litany of protests: ''The death of Bobby's wife was really gratuitous. . . . I also don't quite get the reason why Carmela would be attracted to Furio.'' The hardest knocks, however, were reserved for a sex scene involving Tony Soprano's sister, Janice. ''I really didn't need to see that,'' wrote one repelled viewer. ''I've now gone completely blind.'' Another fan joined in: ''I never thought I would be so grateful for a white piece of fabric in my life, but God bless the top sheet of Janice's bed.'' Within days, 274 detailed messages had been posted about the episode.
Right now, Television Without Pity has active discussions on 35 shows. And that's just one Web site. Most popular series are tracked by scores of sites -- an official one run by the network; the others run by fans -- that dissect the content of every episode. Many postings are requests for specific changes. Some of these are minute. ''I can't believe Abby bleached her hair,'' an ''E.R.'' fan recently lamented online. ''She looks better as a brunette.'' Other critiques are more sweeping, asking the show's writers to aim higher. One TWoP participant recently wrote of ''C.S.I.'': ''It would be refreshing if the 'bad guys' actually got away with murder (pun intended) on this show for once. Instead, 'C.S.I.' remains in a time warp, and takes the 'Perry Mason' approach in which the good guys win every ep. Boring.''
It would be simple to underestimate the intensity with which Web sites fetishize TV programs -- and the impact they have on the show's creators. It is now standard Hollywood practice for executive producers (known in trade argot as ''show runners'') to scurry into Web groups moments after an episode is shown on the East Coast. Sure, a good review in the print media is important, but the boards, by definition, are populated by a program's core audience -- many thousands of viewers who care deeply about what direction their show takes.
Any notion that the Hollywood telegentsia hovers above the fan-site fray was shattered two years ago when Aaron Sorkin, creator of ''The West Wing,'' bitterly responded to an online complaint; he posted under his own name on Television Without Pity (or, as it was then called, Mighty Big TV). A year later, Sorkin wrote a ''West Wing'' episode that savaged TWoP and its ilk, portraying hard-core Internet users as obese shut-ins who lounge around in muumuus and chain-smoke Parliaments. It was his best and loudest available form of revenge against a phenomenon that has not always treated him fondly. One disgruntled ''West Wing'' viewer recently demanded on TWoP that Sorkin show his fictional president and first lady ''being nice to each other some time.'' She went on: ''I don't mean show us they love each other -- that's been established. I mean call each other something other than 'Jackass' and 'Medea.' Or give each other a kiss hello. Something!''
John Wells, executive producer of ''E.R.'' and ''The West Wing,'' knows better than to shrug off Web sites' feedback. ''We always have someone on the writing staff assigned to keep track of them,'' Wells says. ''Though we don't often need to assign that duty. There's always a writer who's in there all the time and can give you a clear sense of what's going on. I don't overreact to the boards, but I pay real attention to messages that are thoughtful. If you ignore your customer, you do so at your peril.''
J.J. Abrams, show runner of the very Net-friendly spy show ''Alias,'' sees the boards as a real measure of the audience's pulse and rates their members as nothing less than ''an integral part of the process.'' That could never have been said five years ago.
''If the Internet is your audience, TV is quite like a play,'' Abrams says. ''Movies are a done deal -- there's no give and take -- but in a play, you listen to the applause, the missing laughs, the boos. It's the same with the Internet. If you ignore that sort of response, you probably shouldn't be working in TV right now.''
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Ever since ''The X-Files'' sparked the proliferation of Internet message boards in the mid-90's, TV creators have gradually come to realize the value of these feverish Web discussions. Online chat, fluffy as that phrase sounds, has become a force in Hollywood -- one that nobody anticipated, possibly because it married new technology with a curious variation of old-fashioned viewer mail. The Internet allows a mass audience to register specific desires and grievances that can never be conveyed by the Nielsen ratings. What's more, creators of TV shows can actually incorporate these insights from viewers. Where films are a single exhale of artistic breath, television breathes in and out over time. It doesn't exist as one impenetrable objet after a single act of creation. In TV's perpetual, rolling incompleteness, anyone with the right equipment, anyone who finds the right tunnel in, can actually bend and shade its content. And technology has made the tunnel wide enough for tens of thousands to enter at once. With the aid of the Internet, the loftiest dream for television is being realized: an odd brand of interactivity. Television began as a one-way street winding from producers to consumers, but that street is now becoming two-way. A man with one machine (a TV) is doomed to isolation, but a man with two machines (TV and a computer) can belong to a community.
Television Without Pity was conceived as a narrower and less ambitious site, co-founded by Bunting (who goes by Sars on the site) and Ariano (known as Wing Chun), along with a tech expert named David T. Cole (Glark). Back when they first published on the Net in the fall of 1998, their site was called DawsonsWrap; it charted the narrative path of the teen-oriented hit ''Dawson's Creek.'' In very short order, that show began frustrating TWoP editors beyond measure. Bunting says that its ''insidious, sexist, lazy writing had us apoplectic, not least because we're supposed to identify with a character who, on his best day, is an obnoxious, self-absorbed twit. Of course, there's no way for us to prove that we had a direct impact, but we spent three years taking the 'Dawson's' writers to task, and in the wake of our criticism, the character actually became almost bearable.'' Although Dawson remained an irritating character, Bunting explains, he developed a welcome self-awareness about how much he annoyed the people around him.
In 1999, Ariano and Bunting widened their scope considerably, applying their site's gruff sensibility to an array of shows. TWoP's home page now bears the slogan ''Spare the Snark, Spoil the Networks.'' The site is essentially twofold. One of its attractions, of course, is the message boards; anybody with an opinion can post a message. But its most elegant punch comes in its ''recaps'' of individual episodes. These recaps, written by freelance writers, routinely run anywhere between 10 and 16 pages, not much shorter than an actual script, and are stunningly witty and precise. Ariano and Bunting split the editing duties. In their accounts of every relevant moment of a given episode (progressing almost line by line, often reproducing entire passages of dialogue), their hired ''recappers'' are by turns vicious and admiring. They scatter their prose with references to any number of other TV shows and movies. It is all very intertextual discourse, shot through with cruel nicknames they accord the shows' characters and an overall air of merry, unveiled contempt. A recent precis of a ''Dawson's Creek'' episode, for example, began with this genteel observation: ''Those screaming sounds you heard last night around 9 p.m.? They were the cries of anguish and pain unleashed when thousands of viewers ripped their eyes out of their skulls so as to avoid the opening scenes of the second half of the 'Dawson's Creek' two-part season premiere.'' The recapper for ''Six Feet Under'' is particularly droll. Recounting a scene in which Nate Fisher flirts with Ari, a female rabbi, he writes: ''Now, I know a lot of people are turned off by the rabbi's constant assertions that she and Nate can never be together, but the sad truth is that that's pretty much exactly how Jews really flirt. . . . The scene continues with Ari delivering some psychobabble about the nature of unintended consequences, but since no one is really interested in my thoughts on Talmudic law, I won't bore you with details. On the other hand, Nate clearly has a thing for girls who go metaphysical, so maybe it's actually a very clever dating technique. Anyway, the scene ends with them holding hands, each secretly wishing that they could rip the other's clothes off. I swear, if Nate doesn't dump Brenda for this woman soon, I don't know what I'll do. Probably make fun of his hair some more.''
Hollywood hardly takes its marching orders from TWoP -- it would be daylight madness to abjure creative control to amateurs and, worse, outsiders -- but it certainly pays heed. One of the executive producers of ''The Agency,'' Shaun Cassidy (yes, that Shaun Cassidy), once e-mailed the TWoP editors about their brutal coverage of his show, but he conceded that he thought the posts were funny and went so far as to end his note with the sincere query, ''Do you have any scripts to show me?'' One TWoP recapper, Heather Cocks, was hired as a Hollywood staff writer on the strength of her critiques of ''Making the Band.'' She now writes for a reality show called ''Tough Enough,'' which is actually much like ''Making the Band,'' only with wrestlers.
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TWoP pays its recap writers next to nothing and has itself hovered on the brink of oblivion; generating revenue on the Internet continues to be a mystery even to the best minds in American media. Though it has been forced to cut back on the number of programs it covers, the site sees a lot of traffic. Even during this summer's languid off-season, it pulled 350,000 ''unique users'' a month, and those numbers have sharply increased since. Most remarkably, the average viewer's time per session on TWoP is now 22 minutes; on the Net, that's an eternity.
One of the more playful signs of TV creators' scrutiny of Internet sites is a new tactic that Hollywood slang has dubbed ''the shout-out.'' Quite often, as a sly wink to a Web site (and an assurance that its interest is requited), producers will include references to specific fan sites in their episodes. There have been dozens of shout-outs to TWoP alone. The satirical (and therefore canceled) show ''Popular'' named a character after the man who recapped the show for TWoP, only to cheerfully kill him off in an auto crash. NBC's ''Ed'' once similarly tapped out a coded greeting to the site; the man who recaps it for TWoP goes by the name Uncle Bob, so the show's writers used the nonexistent Midwest expression ''What in the Uncle Bob was that?'' The show ''Once and Again'' has included glimpses of an extra carrying a messenger bag with the TWoP logo. It is all a way of ratcheting up Internet heat, of Hollywood whispering through the screen to its online enforcers: We read you loud and clear. Also, please, be gentle with us.
Internet message boards, observes Abrams of ''Alias,'' reverse the process of the writer's room. In conception, a staff plots out and arcs a story line, fleshing it out in production. ''Viewers in the boards dissect it just as carefully,'' he points out. ''They're so smart. They realize the most subtle connections in the script and get to the core nugget. It's really cool.''
Accordingly, sites like TWoP have subtle but substantive input. ''On our show, there's a character named Will that we thought people would love,'' J.J. Abrams says, laughing. ''We conceived him as a man pursuing the truth. But on the message boards, people thought he was an idiot! He was pursuing a truth they already knew; they were way ahead. So we fine-tuned the way he was presented and came up with stories that worked better for the audience. Of the 10 million things you have to keep in mind running a show, you can only keep 8 million in your head. The Internet groups are right there to remind you about the other 2 million things. They don't lead us, but they're as important as anything.
''This isn't live TV. We're working six or eight weeks in advance, so our reactions aren't immediate, but there are times when, in post-production, we'll make line changes or alter a piece of music. I'll accept a smart critique from anywhere, whether it's from a 50-year-old studio executive or a 12-year-old kid in a rural town. Internet people are a community. They have a proprietary sense of the show. Why would I ignore people who take the time to think these things through? I am so grateful. They're doing what I'd be doing if I weren't working in TV.''
The ''Alias'' message boards on TWoP include a section called ''Dear J.J.'' Viewers don't post letters to the show, or naively to the stars: they know how the creative hierarchy works. Typically, one member, who goes by the name Carrielynn, offered this critique in the wake of Will's rehabilitation: ''Dear J.J., Now, after some consideration, I have decided that I don't completely and utterly hate Will. Yes, he is completely idiotic sometimes, and yes, he screams like a girl. But aside from that, I got no beef. Just a couple of conditions for you to follow and everything will go smoothly next season. 1. As previously stated, there is no reason for Willage to be sporting a leather jacket. Ever. 2. Please, and I'm begging you, don't try to make him a love interest for Syd. Good friend, fine, but I'd hate for this show to go the tired love-triangle route that so many other shows have gone (cough, 'Felicity,' cough cough.) Let's show some creativity, shall we? And J.J., this last contingency is of utmost importance: 3. FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, BUY THE BOY A HAIRBRUSH. Do we understand each other?''
As they are cybernetically masked in a spooky ''Eyes Wide Shut'' sort of way, message-board folk are unfettered by the decorum you would employ in a letter to the editor of a magazine, but they police a show's quality and content all the same. Anonymity breeds not only rudeness but also sincerity. For his part, Abrams is dazzled by the viewers' meticulous knowledge. Message groups are so reliable about a show's history that he has used them to confirm details about old ''Alias'' episodes. It is quicker -- and every bit as trustworthy -- as rifling through old scripts.
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Sites like TWoP may have more power than even their creators realize. Two years ago, the producers of ''Charmed'' were on the fence about bringing back a (half-human) character named Cole for its next season, but the message boards' lust for him was a deciding factor. Granted, this practice isn't entirely novel; soap operas have reacted to regular mail with that degree of attention for decades. But the swiftness and heft of it is utterly different. Though few on a TV staff read viewer mail, everybody can read the boards. Writers check out their episode's ''grade'' on TWoP; cast members read Internet commentary and are by turns elated or upset. Some who portray villains are mortified to see that people in the message boards hate them. (An alarming number of viewers want to ''slap'' Janice Soprano.)
It has even become Hollywood routine for a writer's assistant to work the boards as a mole. A staff member will slink into a board anonymously and, like Prince Hal walking incognito among his troops, tout a coming episode. Aspiring writers are routinely ordered to pop into message boards and pimp an episode before it is shown, often with a shifty claim along the lines of: I know someone who works on ''Angel'' and got a sneak peek at tonight's show! It's awesome!
That said, advance press doesn't always come from moles. Message groups sometimes get hold of synopses and scripts, then post ''spoilers'' about coming shows. In Hollywood, keeping control of a script is nearly impossible. On some popular shows, there is said to be what amounts to a near black market in as-yet-unshot scripts. Within a day or two of a script's being dispatched to the studio for approval, the thing has appeared on the Internet.
Curiously, this has occasionally resulted in direct improvements in shows. Recently, one hit show had a routine script leak, and the staff awoke to find someone on a message board complaining that a character was speaking fluent French when that same character had been seen peering at a basic phrase book not so many episodes earlier. The writers were actually able to correct the continuity error in shooting that very script, thanks to a message board's ill-gained insights.
Although fierce in their criticisms of beloved shows, Internet discussion boards feature the most loyal viewers imaginable. And when a cherished show is canceled, they don't move on quietly. Last month, when TNT canceled ''Witchblade,'' a call went out in an Internet group called Witchblade Central Station to publish a ''save our show'' ad in Variety. The ad cost $3,550, but members were thrilled to help and donated the funds in short order. A similar outcry occurred on the Yahoo message board for ABC's ''Push, Nevada,'' a show that suffered the terrors of the damned from being relegated to the worst time slot in television (pitted against the monster hits ''C.S.I.'' and ''Will and Grace''). Group members -- numbering more than 8,500 on that one site alone -- drew up petitions and contemplated boycotting ABC and all its advertisers.
In the wilderness of Internet feedback, of course, there is more fecund ground for certain networks and shows. While ABC has actually eliminated most of its official message boards because of the manpower it takes to moderate them, networks like the WB and Fox, with their younger, Net-savvy viewers, lean heavily on them. Any program with a sci-fi element is, by its nature, bound to have an Internet presence. After all, it was ''The X-Files'' that started this whole phenomenon; in effect, it paved the two-way street. The show was an ideal petri dish for Web cult status, appealing to fans who knew their way around their computers and who were prone to trade theories on conspiracy and mystery. (It still draws extensive Net feedback, despite the fact that the show is now only on the air in repeats.) Similarly, ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer,'' which offers the twin appeal of teen fashion and the supernatural, has long been a sure-fire message-board draw.
Conversely, shows that skew to older audiences or those with very broad demographics are less likely to pay close attention to their Internet response, and logically so. Viewers of ''Yes, Dear'' and ''Providence'' are not typically clambering online the minute an episode ends. And there is no ''Friends'' forum on TWoP. ''We'll never get a shout-out from 'E.R.,''' says Television Without Pity's Ariano, without a trace of regret. ''It's too established.''
That said, though the two-way street of viewer feedback is rolling with tumbleweeds on grayer, more staid networks like CBS, reality TV is the exception. Chris Ender, that network's senior vice president for communications, says ''Survivor'' was CBS's wake-up call to the power of the Net. ''In the first season, there was a ground swell of attention in there,'' he recalls. ''We started monitoring the message boards to actually help guide us in what would resonate in our marketing. It's just the best market research you can get.''
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The ''reality-based'' shows also enjoy direct participation on the Web by their protagonists, who are giddy from the attention and only too happy to hang out with virtual fans. TWoP editors have moles in one of the more famous programs of that genre and have become friendly with the contestants of ''The Amazing Race'' from both of its seasons. The ''stars'' consider the site their mouthpiece, chasing the adrenaline high of their all-too-fleeting appearances on TV talk shows, and now sometimes socialize -- ''IRL,'' or ''in real life'' -- with TWoP staff members.
Message-board types feel that they're getting something back in their half-imaginary communities. They're happy to be neighbors, bound by a common mission out in the Internet suburbs of big-ticket American media. They bend heliotropically to the attention of artists they admire, warm their hands on the glow of celebrity and creativity. And they feel that, in a very real way, they're involved with the show.
They're not deluded. A few seasons ago, after the main character on ''Felicity'' decided to cut her famous long hair, WB executives were so alarmed at the virulent Web reaction that they feared their actress had lost some of her iconic power. There was even talk of using wigs to lure back the betrayed viewers, but it was felt that the wisest course was to have her grow the hair back. Similarly, the show runner for ''E.R.,'' John Wells, told me that a sudden appearance of wispy facial hair on the dreamboat-doctor Noah Wyle ''resulted in thousands of Internet hits. It was staggering.'' As it happened, Wyle had never meant to keep the goatee as a long-term look, and he shaved it off of his own accord. (His Internet approval promptly grew back.) The TWoP critique at the time, written by Ariano, was gin-clear: ''Oh, Jeebus,'' she wrote, in the freewheeling house style. ''Why won't someone close to Noah Wyle just tell him that he shouldn't grow facial hair, like, ever?''
Nancie S. Martin, who runs the WB's Web site, sees the boards' imprints firsthand. ''The directions shows take is affected by all this,'' she says. ''Producers really do use these communities. On 'Smallville,' for instance, there was a feeling on the message boards that the show should focus more on character than Kryptonite, and sure enough, the next season is going to reflect that directly.''
Of course, there are limits to viewers' understanding when it comes to the inner workings of Hollywood. No show runner discusses the boards without using the phrase ''grain of salt.'' Marti Noxon, executive producer of ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer,'' has had to cut back on her Web visits, in no small measure because some loyal fans quite unjustly turned against her -- by name. Internet fans blamed Noxon for changing the tone of the show, which was created by Joss Whedon. One British viewer went so far as to post: ''I think Marti Noxon should be on BtVS. And I think Drusilla and Spike should tie her up and torture her, then kill her in the most painful way possible. Then hacking her body beyond recognition so there could be no possible way to make her rise from the grave. Then they should STAMP on the bits.''
Says Noxon: ''It all gets very personal. I don't have a strong enough ego to go in there. People on those sites blame me for the darkness of last season's shows, and those story lines were created by Joss a year earlier. This show is a slow-turning ship. But suddenly, I'm the Queen of Darkness on the Net! This year, we've made the show . . . well, a bit less dark. We get the sense, having read those criticisms, that maybe we've just been amusing ourselves.''
Nell Scovell, creator of the TV series ''Sabrina, the Teenage Witch,'' has also felt the Net's pull, but knows to be a bit skeptical. ''When I was running 'Sabrina,' I used to check the message boards after each episode, but it's hard to know how much stock to put into them,'' she says. ''I'd see a comment like, 'This show is more inteligent than most,' and my first reaction would be, 'This viewer's a genius,' and my second reaction would be, 'Wouldn't a genius spell ''intelligent'' correctly?'''
Of course, it is tempting -- and often well advised -- to scoff at people who adopt loopy pseudonyms (Dawsnzchck; Touched--By--A--TV) to obsess online about their fave TV shows. It's as easy as shooting Trekkies in a barrel. But perhaps that's not a fair impulse. Robert Thompson, a media expert at Syracuse University, withholds his scorn. ''If this were happening at any other time in history, we'd celebrate it,'' he insists. ''When readers hold parties for Bloomsday and discuss James Joyce, we consider it an apex -- people taking culture seriously. But when viewers discuss the minutiae of a TV show, we call them crazy. One's got to admire it. Essentially what the message boards are is a panel of unpaid experts, with passion, analyzing culture.''
Even on this oddly personal level, the effect of the new interactivity has its distorting effects. As much as it grounds the program, it fictionalizes the viewer. While audiences feel more invested in their favorite shows, the medium might become more geared to precisely what the old neo-Marxist intellectuals dreaded: a hyperactively numbed consumer culture, resulting not in art but in a ''culture industry'' that demeans and deceives rather than enlightens, even if the message boards' input is ''active'' and has an impact on the narratives of shows.
In an extreme case, it could be that Net influence, with its qualitative specificity and sheer heat, could gnaw away at the hegemony of the Nielsen ratings. Perhaps, if message boards become powerful and pervasive enough, the day will come when viewers vote online for or against a show's renewal, ''American Idol''-style.
So, for the moment, TV interactivity lives where it always did, but writ large: in human feedback. Television Without Pity may lack mercy, but it is wildly supportive of the medium. It's electronic tough love. But then, there's the old truism that, in Hollywood, a friend is someone who stabs you in the chest.
And -- for the moment -- Sarah D. Bunting, with her bright, flick-knife prose, is still on the job, keeping both lanes open on the two-lane highway. ''There are people who tell us, 'Get a life!''' she says. ''Well, this is it. This is what we went out and got. If only we could get to these TV people before they made the shows.''
Marshall Sella is a contributing writer for the magazine. He last wrote about the British comedian Steve Coogan.
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Wow, that was long.
10-19-02, 12:45 PM
#4
DVD Talk Hero
Thanks for posting that. You're right ... long ...
Oh, man ... people aren't mad at you because the season was "dark", you stupid bitch. People were mad at you for oversimplifying the relationships and traits of characters we had come to know for 5 years. You turned Xander into a cartoon. You turned Willow into an after-school special. As we discussed when this went down, the blueprint for the season that Joss laid out was great ... dark ... but great. The execution that you implemented was insulting. Every time you turn to Joss as an excuse for your inept execution of his design, you validate the hatred we thrust upon you.
Anyway, interesting article. It does show that even when we tell the show runners what we think, they aren't really listening. They see the mood, but they don't hear the reason. Often the reason is their involvement in the show, so it stands to reason they'll twist our words to fit their egos.
It's good that the people who don't have their heads entrenched in their asses at least recognize the opinions of their core audience. I agree that TV should remain an artform, and the critics shouldn't dictate content. We don't need everything to turn into the creative void we get from Must See TV. Still, it's healthy to have some relationship with the creators, a voice that is heard if not always implemented. The ****wads at USA2 could learn something about listening to their core audience.
das
Of course, there are limits to viewers' understanding when it comes to the inner workings of Hollywood. No show runner discusses the boards without using the phrase ''grain of salt.'' Marti Noxon, executive producer of ''Buffy the Vampire Slayer,'' has had to cut back on her Web visits, in no small measure because some loyal fans quite unjustly turned against her -- by name. Internet fans blamed Noxon for changing the tone of the show, which was created by Joss Whedon. One British viewer went so far as to post: ''I think Marti Noxon should be on BtVS. And I think Drusilla and Spike should tie her up and torture her, then kill her in the most painful way possible. Then hacking her body beyond recognition so there could be no possible way to make her rise from the grave. Then they should STAMP on the bits.''
Says Noxon: ''It all gets very personal. I don't have a strong enough ego to go in there. People on those sites blame me for the darkness of last season's shows, and those story lines were created by Joss a year earlier. This show is a slow-turning ship. But suddenly, I'm the Queen of Darkness on the Net! This year, we've made the show . . . well, a bit less dark. We get the sense, having read those criticisms, that maybe we've just been amusing ourselves.''
Says Noxon: ''It all gets very personal. I don't have a strong enough ego to go in there. People on those sites blame me for the darkness of last season's shows, and those story lines were created by Joss a year earlier. This show is a slow-turning ship. But suddenly, I'm the Queen of Darkness on the Net! This year, we've made the show . . . well, a bit less dark. We get the sense, having read those criticisms, that maybe we've just been amusing ourselves.''
Anyway, interesting article. It does show that even when we tell the show runners what we think, they aren't really listening. They see the mood, but they don't hear the reason. Often the reason is their involvement in the show, so it stands to reason they'll twist our words to fit their egos.
It's good that the people who don't have their heads entrenched in their asses at least recognize the opinions of their core audience. I agree that TV should remain an artform, and the critics shouldn't dictate content. We don't need everything to turn into the creative void we get from Must See TV. Still, it's healthy to have some relationship with the creators, a voice that is heard if not always implemented. The ****wads at USA2 could learn something about listening to their core audience.
das
10-19-02, 09:31 PM
#5
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Originally posted by das Monkey
Thanks for posting that. You're right ... long ...
Oh, man ... people aren't mad at you because the season was "dark", you stupid bitch. People were mad at you for oversimplifying the relationships and traits of characters we had come to know for 5 years. You turned Xander into a cartoon. You turned Willow into an after-school special. As we discussed when this went down, the blueprint for the season that Joss laid out was great ... dark ... but great. The execution that you implemented was insulting. Every time you turn to Joss as an excuse for your inept execution of his design, you validate the hatred we thrust upon you.
Anyway, interesting article. It does show that even when we tell the show runners what we think, they aren't really listening. They see the mood, but they don't hear the reason. Often the reason is their involvement in the show, so it stands to reason they'll twist our words to fit their egos.
It's good that the people who don't have their heads entrenched in their asses at least recognize the opinions of their core audience. I agree that TV should remain an artform, and the critics shouldn't dictate content. We don't need everything to turn into the creative void we get from Must See TV. Still, it's healthy to have some relationship with the creators, a voice that is heard if not always implemented. The ****wads at USA2 could learn something about listening to their core audience.
das
Thanks for posting that. You're right ... long ...
Oh, man ... people aren't mad at you because the season was "dark", you stupid bitch. People were mad at you for oversimplifying the relationships and traits of characters we had come to know for 5 years. You turned Xander into a cartoon. You turned Willow into an after-school special. As we discussed when this went down, the blueprint for the season that Joss laid out was great ... dark ... but great. The execution that you implemented was insulting. Every time you turn to Joss as an excuse for your inept execution of his design, you validate the hatred we thrust upon you.
Anyway, interesting article. It does show that even when we tell the show runners what we think, they aren't really listening. They see the mood, but they don't hear the reason. Often the reason is their involvement in the show, so it stands to reason they'll twist our words to fit their egos.
It's good that the people who don't have their heads entrenched in their asses at least recognize the opinions of their core audience. I agree that TV should remain an artform, and the critics shouldn't dictate content. We don't need everything to turn into the creative void we get from Must See TV. Still, it's healthy to have some relationship with the creators, a voice that is heard if not always implemented. The ****wads at USA2 could learn something about listening to their core audience.
das
All that being said, I pretty much despise that website the article was about. Talk about egocentric. Man, the narcissism that permeates every review sickens me, and I find it completely intolerable. How sad that a site like that is what gets the attention of the producers and writers.
10-20-02, 08:58 AM
#6
DVD Talk Legend
Holy crap, that was a freakin' long ass article and I read the entire thing.
The article was very interesting and very good. I guess I understood it differently, since I hadn't really realized how much of an impact that the internet has on TV producers and writers.
RE: Will's character on "Alias"...no wonder why I'm starting to like the guy! They purposely made him more likeable.
RE: Cole's character on "Charmed"...back in the day, I would've killed him off. I'm glad he's on the show now, though. I think.
RE: TWoP...I just recently "discovered" that site about a month ago. I actually thought the recaps were very well written and quite hilarious (sorry WarriorPrincess
...we'll always have memories of Popstars, though! 
).
The article was very interesting and very good. I guess I understood it differently, since I hadn't really realized how much of an impact that the internet has on TV producers and writers.
RE: Will's character on "Alias"...no wonder why I'm starting to like the guy! They purposely made him more likeable.
RE: Cole's character on "Charmed"...back in the day, I would've killed him off. I'm glad he's on the show now, though. I think.
RE: TWoP...I just recently "discovered" that site about a month ago. I actually thought the recaps were very well written and quite hilarious (sorry WarriorPrincess
...we'll always have memories of Popstars, though! ).
10-20-02, 12:35 PM
#7
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Wheeeeeee! Good for TWoP for getting some exposure, and in the New York Times... TWoP is one of my top three favorite forums/sites. It's almost intimidating to go and read the forums because some of the shows will hit 30+ pages of discussion, and so many of the posts are smart and/or funny. It would take hours to read all that.
I'm on the Ed boards once in a while, and I remember Uncle Bob flipping out about his shout-out. I'll claim to my dying day that I got a shout-out on Ed, too... yes, I've mentioned it before on here, and no, I will not shut up about it.
He abandoned Sports Night. What does he want us to do, give him hugs and kisses?
I'm on the Ed boards once in a while, and I remember Uncle Bob flipping out about his shout-out. I'll claim to my dying day that I got a shout-out on Ed, too... yes, I've mentioned it before on here, and no, I will not shut up about it.
Any notion that the Hollywood telegentsia hovers above the fan-site fray was shattered two years ago when Aaron Sorkin, creator of ''The West Wing,'' bitterly responded to an online complaint; he posted under his own name on Television Without Pity (or, as it was then called, Mighty Big TV). A year later, Sorkin wrote a ''West Wing'' episode that savaged TWoP and its ilk, portraying hard-core Internet users as obese shut-ins who lounge around in muumuus and chain-smoke Parliaments. It was his best and loudest available form of revenge against a phenomenon that has not always treated him fondly.
10-20-02, 03:31 PM
#8
Neat to see the site get a little publicity. I've been following them since they were MightyBigTV.com, and they've always provided loads of content. The message boards get a little hectic, however.
10-20-02, 06:46 PM
#9
DVD Talk Gold Edition
TWoP is a fun site, although some of the posters there, as with any large site, are a little childish. I stopped reading a number of the boards there because so many of the posters are so sheltered that they think everything is a shout out. Yeah, like television writers have nothing better to do than to send secret messages to people on message boards.
(i.e. "I noticed that too, sillylongnickname, that they had Buffy reading a newspaper while eating breakfast. Since I mentioned last week that I was reading a paper while eating breakfast, it has to be a shout out to me!")
BTW, New York Times, the X-Files wasn't the first tv show to have any kind of an online presence that helped to galvanize fans. Babylon 5 and Trek fans were both well-organized for a while before X-Files came along, with B5 being the first show with the show's creators maintained a dialog with fans, starting over a year before the pilot even aired.
(i.e. "I noticed that too, sillylongnickname, that they had Buffy reading a newspaper while eating breakfast. Since I mentioned last week that I was reading a paper while eating breakfast, it has to be a shout out to me!")
BTW, New York Times, the X-Files wasn't the first tv show to have any kind of an online presence that helped to galvanize fans. Babylon 5 and Trek fans were both well-organized for a while before X-Files came along, with B5 being the first show with the show's creators maintained a dialog with fans, starting over a year before the pilot even aired.
10-21-02, 09:01 PM
#11
DVD Talk Limited Edition
I agree about Buffy too. I've watched most of Buffy over and over, but I can't get through even a second viewing of the last half of the 6th season. I love dark, but prefer dark and complicated to dark and stupid.
tasha
tasha
