Drama in Blog Time.

Posted on January 7, 2007
Filed Under Review |

I loved the first series of 24, yet after a determined attempt to watch series 2 felt I’d already got it. 24 and me haven’t connected since. Similarly with Desperate Housewives, we, my wife and me who never make an appointment with the TV, were there every Tuesday evening. Having just seen the first two programmes in series 3 the only reason for me to keep watching is a mistaken belief that my wife craves the company.

To my surprise I read today that 24 is still wowing audiences globally and the leak of programme 1 of series 6 on BitTorrent has caused somebody consternation.

This could just be my own disconnect with popular culture but programmes like 24 seem to be benefitting from the rapid and wasteful output that is the blogging community. When 75 million people write on a near daily basis it’s reasonable to assume that more than 75 million people read blogs. That’s 75 million people who are eager and willing to read material of little consequence that will be replaced a day later by more material of little consequence.

The judgement “of little consequence” is actually that of the writer rather than me or any other reader. When you routinely replace your writing on a daily basis, consigning another post to the black hole that is the world’s blog archive, you implicitly make the judgement: goodbye. I have some 700 posts on this site and 690 of them have not been viewed since soon after I wrote them.

What’s that got to do with human drama? 24 and Desperate Houswives and of course lost are programmes that attempt to create fandom worship around their characters. Iron Sink Media is trying to do some of the same on the web - producing what it calls relationship entertainment. I remember listening to Pixar It guru Michael Johnson talking last summer about their methods for securing viewer devotion with movies like Toy Story. Devotion now comes in many different forms from Toy Story II to Soup of the Day and My Space as well as 24 and Desperate Housewives.

Drama production is now guided by the objective of fostering devotion rather than by the implicit tragedy, humour or revelations that a given set of relationships inevitably, inexorably supplies to us. Audiences that happily read throw-away literature on blogs every day and writers who happily consign their work to the black hole, everyday, make up a new kind of audience. I am not sure what its precise characteristsic are but producers and directors and writers on shows like DH, 24 etc etc, seem to have a handle on it.

I wonder if the significance of this activity is captured particularly well, anywhere? While a large chunk of humanity has completely changed its writing and reading habits, I mean they have changed how they think, express and communicate which is three big ways to change, there is also a marked movement towards different forms of complete leisure - golf has overtaken Europe’s warm zones and altered ancient outcrops of rock into rolling green everywhere from Ireland to the Algarve; shooting is now the fastest growing leisure sport in Britain, wellbeing is tomorrow’s web 2.0.

So while 75 million people slave over blogs others are putting their feet up, you know, figuratively speaking.

These developments and changes puzzle me greatly perhaps as much as does the fact that it is not more widely discussed. I think TV drama is the first beneficiary of our altered mindset but surely the beneficiary numbers will increase. I want to know what does it all mean?

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