Approximately a year ago, The Museum of Television & Radio changed its name to The Paley Center for Media to keep up with the changing times. The program that I attended with my sons last night "Click Critics: The Power of Fan Websites" was very much an example of how television and radio are now very much entwined with new media. It was an informative and very entertaining night and my teenage sons and I truly enjoyed it.
Pat Michell, President and CEO of the Paley Center first introduced the program. She did a great job of discussing what the program was about. She mentioned the power that fan websites had nowadays and that television networks and producers no longer need to pay for feedback on television shows. They monitor the fan websites and blogs for comments and find out all of information that they need for free.The moderator of the panel was Alan Sepinwall, television critic for The Star-Ledger. He did a great job of leading the discussion with the panel. One theme that kept arising was that fans of shows like those on the panel, mostly those with continuing narratives, want to discuss them and aren't happy just to only watch anymore. They want to be able to go on the Internet and have other outlets to continue to enjoy their favorite shows after the viewing is over.
Dan Manu, Site Director of Television without Pity, was the only person on the panel who had thier website as his/her full time job. All of the others work on their fan websites as sidelines. Each of the panelists showed a clip for the TV show that they blogged about. Since Television without Pity is not about one show, Dan Manu showed a very funny clip from the West Wing about fan sites. If you are a West Wing fan you may remember a scene from the 3rd season where Josh finds a fansite named LemonLyman.com. It turns out that Aaron Sorkin, writer and creator of the West Wing, wrote this in response to some negative incidents on Television without Pity. See the clip below:
Jennie Tan of OfficeTalley, has more of a relationship with people on the show than any of the other panelists. She's actually visited the set of The Office twice and speaks online regularly to many of the castmembers. She did say that many of them have myspace pages and are very accessible to fans. Erica Blitz of Galactica Sitrep is one of many writers on the blog about Battlestar Galactica. That explains how there are so many posts in such short periods of time. Both Erica and Jennie discussed how neither necessarily started out to write fan blogs, they just wanted to get into blogging, and just happened to choose this area They are doing pretty well for just stumbling into something. Erica wasn't sure what was going to happen to the blog after the show ends. Remona Outar creator of the Ugly is in blog, fell in love with Ugly Betty immediately and decided to write the blog to show her love for it. The show became a hit and so did her blog. Damon Schmidt is one of many writers at Whedonesque. For those that don't know, Whedonesque is not a fan site for one particular TV show; it is a fan site for Joss Whedon, writer, producer, director of such shows at Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly and Angel. Damon spoke about Joss Whedon updating them with all his news for the website and that Whedonesque is a site in which users (who join and become members) can post to. And then there was Kevin Croy, the creator of the mammoth website, Lostpedia. Lostpedia is a wiki, which means that anyone can edit it, just like Wikipedia. However, Kevin tries to keep spoilers about Lost to a minimum and the community on the site does a good job at editing them out. Kevin said that although he created the site and does the maintenance, most of what happens on it is run by the community that reads it. The site has over 4000 articles and is written in over 10 languages.
Last but not least, there was some fan musical entertainment. Lost now has 2 fans that have formed a duo called Previously on Lost that performed both at the beginning and end of the program. Each week they make up a song that recaps the previous weeks episode of Lost. They played Just Wink from episode 2 and Be my Constant from episode 5. They were very funny.
Afterward, the panelists were very friendly and accessible to anyone that wanted to say hi and meet them. I would love to see more of these type of programs in the future.
Pat Michell, President and CEO of the Paley Center first introduced the program. She did a great job of discussing what the program was about. She mentioned the power that fan websites had nowadays and that television networks and producers no longer need to pay for feedback on television shows. They monitor the fan websites and blogs for comments and find out all of information that they need for free.The moderator of the panel was Alan Sepinwall, television critic for The Star-Ledger. He did a great job of leading the discussion with the panel. One theme that kept arising was that fans of shows like those on the panel, mostly those with continuing narratives, want to discuss them and aren't happy just to only watch anymore. They want to be able to go on the Internet and have other outlets to continue to enjoy their favorite shows after the viewing is over.
Dan Manu, Site Director of Television without Pity, was the only person on the panel who had thier website as his/her full time job. All of the others work on their fan websites as sidelines. Each of the panelists showed a clip for the TV show that they blogged about. Since Television without Pity is not about one show, Dan Manu showed a very funny clip from the West Wing about fan sites. If you are a West Wing fan you may remember a scene from the 3rd season where Josh finds a fansite named LemonLyman.com. It turns out that Aaron Sorkin, writer and creator of the West Wing, wrote this in response to some negative incidents on Television without Pity. See the clip below:
Jennie Tan of OfficeTalley, has more of a relationship with people on the show than any of the other panelists. She's actually visited the set of The Office twice and speaks online regularly to many of the castmembers. She did say that many of them have myspace pages and are very accessible to fans. Erica Blitz of Galactica Sitrep is one of many writers on the blog about Battlestar Galactica. That explains how there are so many posts in such short periods of time. Both Erica and Jennie discussed how neither necessarily started out to write fan blogs, they just wanted to get into blogging, and just happened to choose this area They are doing pretty well for just stumbling into something. Erica wasn't sure what was going to happen to the blog after the show ends. Remona Outar creator of the Ugly is in blog, fell in love with Ugly Betty immediately and decided to write the blog to show her love for it. The show became a hit and so did her blog. Damon Schmidt is one of many writers at Whedonesque. For those that don't know, Whedonesque is not a fan site for one particular TV show; it is a fan site for Joss Whedon, writer, producer, director of such shows at Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly and Angel. Damon spoke about Joss Whedon updating them with all his news for the website and that Whedonesque is a site in which users (who join and become members) can post to. And then there was Kevin Croy, the creator of the mammoth website, Lostpedia. Lostpedia is a wiki, which means that anyone can edit it, just like Wikipedia. However, Kevin tries to keep spoilers about Lost to a minimum and the community on the site does a good job at editing them out. Kevin said that although he created the site and does the maintenance, most of what happens on it is run by the community that reads it. The site has over 4000 articles and is written in over 10 languages.
Last but not least, there was some fan musical entertainment. Lost now has 2 fans that have formed a duo called Previously on Lost that performed both at the beginning and end of the program. Each week they make up a song that recaps the previous weeks episode of Lost. They played Just Wink from episode 2 and Be my Constant from episode 5. They were very funny.
Afterward, the panelists were very friendly and accessible to anyone that wanted to say hi and meet them. I would love to see more of these type of programs in the future.
I need to go to the Paley Center. It sounds great. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteIt really is. And besides the specials programs, you can watch thousands of old episodes of tv shows there also.
ReplyDeleteLoved your writeup and thank you for coming out to support these types of events. I was thrilled to be asked to join the panel and had a fantastic time before, during, and afterwards.
ReplyDeleteThat was a really wonderful article! Thank you so much for attending, Im so happy that you enjoyed the program and I do hope that they have more programs like this as well.
ReplyDeleteHey! Thanks for sharing the information! Great write up, I think I will be a regular on "pity".
ReplyDeleteWow.. i never heard such tv and radio museum, it's fascinating to know it. Too bad. i can't find anything like this in my country
ReplyDelete