Today’s Question: If the Apocalypse comes calling but you don’t see it on your iPhone or iPad…was it real?
New Research Says Viewers Remain Devoted to TV Programming — Even Though They’re Increasingly Watching It Online and on Tablets – by Team TVWriter Press Service (in other words, this is a press release)
A new study offers encouraging data for TV programmers, indicating that fears of losing viewers to YouTube, Netflix and other new media may be overblown.
And, like any good celeb, he’s happy to tell all. And, because he’s a hell of a writer, he tells it very well indeed:
Lost’s Carlton Cuse Relives Dealing With the Modern Celebrity of the TV Showrunner -by Carlton Cuse
There’s been a cultural change in television in the last few years. TV showrunners have become known entities to people who watch television in the way that movie directors have been known to filmgoers for a long time. When I started out as a writer and producer in television, I never had the slightest expectation that fame would be part of the job. There was a little bit of fandom that came from co-creating, writing, and producing my first series, 1993’s cult favorite The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. We were getting about 500 letters a week. They would show up in boxes, but they were addressed to the actors, or the show, or the “producers,” unnamed. It was vastly different from what would happen with Lost.
When Lost started, we were just trying to make a TV show that we’d watch, that we thought was cool. We truly had no idea people would become so engaged by it. By the end of the first season, Damon Lindelof and I had suddenly become the named, responsible parties for the show. I first noticed that something was different when a fan group that organized around a website called TheFuselage.com held a fund-raiser party at the Hollywood Renaissance Hotel, and they invited some of the actors and writers to attend. The fans that showed up were mostly interested in meeting each other, but some of them were actually very interested in meeting Damon and me. And that was really kind of shocking: Suddenly there were fans wanting to have their picture taken with us. I never expected that somebody would want to have his picture taken with a showrunner.
…And those who envy them, brought to you by:
Take it from those who know, kids. If you’re gonna be a writer (or even an editor) you’d better love writing (and editing) ‘cuz:
As interesting as this sounds, this can’t be a good thing (certainly not for the audience):
‘Suburgatory’ Character Jumps From the Show Into Ad Breaks — Is This the Future of the TV Business? (Ad Age/TVWeek.Com)
As part of a trend designed to get viewers of television programming to stick around for the commercials, ABC’s “Suburgatory” is letting a character from the show stray into commercials for Lowe’s, Advertising Agereports.
“TV networks are allowing characters from the shows to stick around for a while and hawk product,” the piece reports. “On Wednesday, Sheila Shay, a butt-insky neighbor known for the attention she dollops on her garden, home and the lives of those living around her in the sitcom’s fictional suburb of Chatswin, will hold forth on the advantages of buying goods at Lowe’s and using the home-improvement retail chain’s MyLowe’s tool to track purchases and organize their homes.”
…At least, that’s what this article says, and we sure as hell agree:
Unsolicited Evaluation Is the Enemy of Creativity – by Dr. Peter Gray
Non-directive, Non-Judgmental Parenting Predicts Subsequent Creativity in Children Longitudinal research has shown that children raised by parents who are relatively non-directive and non-judgmental exhibit more creativity later on than do those raised by relatively directive, judgmental parents. In a classic study, conducted in the 1970s and ‘80s, David Harrington, Jeanne Block, and Jack Block assessed the child-rearing beliefs and practices of the parents of 106 preschool children (3.5 to 4.5 years old), and then, when the children were in 6th grade and again in 9th grade, asked the children’s school teachers to rate them on a number of characteristics pertaining to creativity. [1]
