My friend
Jared has a
really interesting post up at the Naked New York blog. He specifically talks about the issue with only 10 percent of shows making it past season one: "Technology and music reward early adoption, but television does not. Why should any viewer invest time and energy in a new program when it's almost certain that it'll be taken away before it can get serious? It's like falling in love with someone who you know is destined to break your heart, right?"
He also pointed to this
AdAge piece about a new CBS show slated for the summer and only 13 episodes. As the article explains, "When CBS tested the program with audiences, Mr. Turteltaub said, the network discovered that people grew more enthusiastic about watching it when they realized it had a definite end in sight and wasn't going to push along for several seasons."
Taken with the
cheesy future of television I just wrote about, I got to thinking about the idea that what we were seeing was a splitting of television into multiple media, one the live version we're used to and the other time (and maybe device) shifted. If that's true, and we can really consider a TV with a DVR (or internet connection) a new medium, than it makes perfect sense that the content would need to adapt to match it. Just a thought, will need to consider the implications a little more.