Who’s Shaping Whom When the Internet and TV Worlds Collide?

This was written for B&C Beat, but did not go up due to vacation deadlines. Enjoy!


The big news in new media this week was the much-vaunted melding of the minds between CNN and YouTube, coming together this past Monday on the consecrated grounds of the Presidential debates. The unexpected headline grab which set the blogosphere alight occurred earlier than that, and has led to continued raging amongst bloggers and on TV to this day, which was when JetBlue’s handlers requested that the YearlyKos event remove JetBlue’s logo from its website. What has bloggers in a tizzy now is the question of whether or not the proprietor of a blog is responsible for the comments left on the blog by readers. This was all spurred by a campaign of Bill O’Reilly’s, announced on his TV show, to shame JetBlue into revoking its sponsorship of YearlyKos, and which was referenced on television by Mr. O’Reilly as recently as yesterday evening. YearlyKos, of course, is attached to the blog DailyKos. Has TV’s effect on the internet outshined the internet’s effect on TV, at least for this week?

Please note that I would like bonus points for using both the phrase “new media”, as well as “blogosphere”, in the first paragraph of this column.

I caught the tail end of the debate on TV, and it was definitely enough to get me to go online and download the broadcast, in its entirety, to my nifty new video iPod, which I then proceeded to watch while riding the train. I’m not sure if the purveyors of the debate can count my viewership as a previously untapped resource, as I have been known to watch these events in the bar after practice with the closed captioning on – “Shh! I can’t read what Kerry is saying!” – but it is quite likely that, due to the sheer novelty of the event, more than one tech savvy yet politically unmotivated soul was compelled to do the same. Please note also that the question I was privileged to catch on the ‘tube (that’s “boob-“, not “You-“) was, “look at the candidate to your left and tell the audience one thing you like and one thing you dislike about that particular candidate.” This did not make for scintillating television, although it was sort of funny - too long to be very funny, as per the generally accepted rules of comedy, but at least quirkily humorous.

Tuesday’s edition of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with John Stewart featured a “correspondent” who was very upset with the format of the debate, espousing a fear that, by taking the news out of news reporters’ hands and putting it into the hands of the public, via YouTube, the “correspondent” would be out of a job. Of course, this issue at the moment is not a real one, as CNN chose the questions for the debate, and Anderson Cooper hosted it. It did provide some real comedy in reference to the endeavor, and it also outlined the very real fact that the people asking the questions were, well, unprofessional. I suggest that television reporters wait to worry until the public begins to provide really polished content, by which time the reporters will most likely be reporting online, anyway. Until then, while YouTube may spice up CNN, it is still CNN’s show.

Of course, with the ongoing issue between The O’Reilly Factor and Daily Kos, here we have an instance of TV actually sending attention away from itself towards the internet – as if it didn’t receive enough attention already. The question now being posed speaks to accountability, mainly asking, if you run a blog, are you responsible for the contents of the comments posted to your blog? Does the fact that comments opposing the views contained within the posts on your blog are often purposefully left published, in a sort of www letters to the editor policy, and further are often the catalysts for debate within the comments section - does this fact preclude you, the proprietor of the blog, from the responsibility of monitoring the comments section for vulgarity, profanity, and hate speech? Is this an instance in which profanity is not, in fact, profanity, if it is employed in an effort to denounce profanity, as if it were being denounced from a pulpit? Or, would it behoove you, the blog’s proprietor, to remove the offending comment and leave a marker explaining, euphemistically of course, the gist of the comment, so that the resulting debate is not disrupted, in spirit, for posterity’s sake? Should there be an FCC-equivalent in place, monitoring popular blogs? Could there even be, or is it a Sisyphean task? In this same vein, if so-called offending words from DailyKos’ comments section are repeated on The O’Reilly Factor, so as to prove a point as to how vulgar DailyKos is, and again on the show’s website, does that make The O’Reilly Factor just as vulgar?

Comedy Central weighed in again, this time from O’Reilly pseudo-homage The Colbert Report, as the eponymous host Steven Colbert announced that he didn’t “want to talk about Iraq anymore. It's too easy . . . At least there's one place that understands this: Fox News." Colbert went on to say that by denouncing DailyKos, O’Reilly was focusing on “the homeland.”
"Do not go to DailyKos.com," Colbert ordered. DailyKos.com was then flashed on the screen so that, as he explained, “viewers know where not to go."

If new media is really the beast that will kill old media, television is really doing a good job of helping it drives nails into its own coffin.

Technical difficulties

The preceding two posts would have run on Broadcasting & Cable magazine's site on April 17th and April 10th, respectively, but, due to some technical difficulties, I have the exclusives. Enjoy.

Oh, and starting with today's post on B&C Beat, I have a picture and a bio. I'm a real boy, Gepetto! It's very exciting! Get pumped! I don't hear you!

It's Always Sunny on The Riches

To be completely honest it’s not very sunny for most of the characters on The Riches, but it is for me - Hartley Underwood’s back! Yes, Dahlia’s one-armed nemesis, the autocratic president of EFHA, played to outsized comedic perfection by Kaitlin Olson from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Hers is the next lawsuit that Doug has to make disappear on threat of losing his job. He does this by assuming that her seemingly perfect life is probably almost as shady as his is, and he strikes gold. Hartley Underwood used to be Mary Louise Blodgett, who had a penchant for stealing designer clothes and adult toys. Who writes the names on this show? They’re practically jokes by themselves. Hartley Underwood still has the propensity to pilfer the designer clothes, at the very least. The Malloys find out time and again that their new buffer neighbors are liars and crooks. I wonder if this was something Wayne knew all along, not having been born a traveler? If so, is it part of the reason that he ended up working for the biggest cheat in town?

Dahlia’s Dream Didn’t Involve The Riches

I’m laying it out on the table - I give The Riches’ “Dahlia is lonely after prison” story arc three more episodes before I’ll become absolutely sick of it and hope that they’ll deal with it more constructively, possibly giving her another story line to focus one. Last night’s episode, though, was intriguing because of the ways in which they tried to let her work out her demons. The fact that Dahlia could connect with her new boss so deeply, in so few words, served well to show how damaged her psyche really is. When she appeared in Wayne’s office for the first time in the episode, I felt for him, trying to muddle through with his wife turning herself into a giant distraction. When she appeared the second time, after losing even that new connection with her boss, I felt, profoundly, for her. She must have spent her time in prison hating that Wayne wasn’t there, and hating that she wished he were the one behind bars. She must have longed to be back on the road with her family. What she got instead was some version of the alleged American dream in which she spends most of her time alone in a giant house, not surrounded by her husband and kids in an RV. The house, the life, the societal restrictions – those are certainly not part of Dahlia’s dream.

I’m excited for The Riches marathon on Friday. I think this show is good enough that it would definitely be a shame if it didn’t catch on, and it’s generated enough buzz that I’d guess it will pull in new viewers if they get the chance to watch it from the beginning.