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What The Office Will Do on its Summer Vacation

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While other TV shows will be taking their summer vacations, much of the cast of The Office will  be participating in a series of webisodes that will be available from NBC.com this summer.  According to an NBCU press release, there will ten eps: a story arc centering on a missing $3000, and the attempt to locate it. 

And in keeping with this season’s emphasis on the secondary and tertiary characters, the webisodes won’t have most of the big names: Steve Carrell, John Krasinski, Jenna Fischer and B.J. Novak.  Those people will be getting to take actual full vacations.  Sounds more and more like a real office, doesn’t it?

Conspicious by his presence is Rainn Wilson, which causes us to make a prediction: Dwight done it.  No doubt to finance the purchase of a of a brand-new Prism DuroSport 6000.

 

AOL Launches In2TV

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AOL launched their In2TV service today, featuring an eclectic mix of 30 Warner Bros. TV shows from the past half-century. Some good, some bad, some on DVD, some not — and all available for high-quality streaming in their entirety with “minimal commercial interruption.” 1 to 2 minutes, for now. Though if it’s successful, that will no doubt sneak up a bit: the whole point, of course, is another revenue stream.

We haven’t yet had a chance for a test-drive of the service through the Medialoper Review Labs — the pilot ep of Welcome Back Kotter, prior to Travolta becoming a superstar, will be just the ticket — but here are a couple of random initial impressions:

  • The home page is clean and well-organized: less clutter than iTunes, and easier to find stuff than Google video or YouTube.
  • Don’t come here looking for full seasons. Looks like they’ve launched with about 10 eps of each show.
  • They’ve also launched with features and interactive games.
  • There is more than one way to find an individual show: they’ve categorized them, have a search feature, broken out clips; and have a “show all feature” that actually lists more than a few at a time.
  • One of the best ideas: “Pilot Theatre,” which is exactly what you would think.

All in all, a nice auspicious start for IN2TV: one can only hope that they add more shows, and more episodes for each show.

“I heard that we’ve sold over a million downloads”

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That, my friends, is a million downloads of a television show — the U.S. version of The Office, which in its second season, has come into its own, both critically and commercially.

It’s always great when quality and popularity intersect, especially when they intersect in a show that nobody really gave a chance to succeed. So how did the U.S. version of The Office get to be so great? In a long interview with Television Without Pity’s co-founder Wing Chun, writer and actor B.J. Novak (he plays Ryan, the temp) holds forth on such topics as:

  • Living in the shadow of the Ricky Gervais version
  • All of those downloads.
  • Improvisation on the set.
  • Michael’s man-crush on Ryan.
  • Why their move to Thursday nights makes sense.

Nothing, alas, on the Prism Durosport. Nevertheless, from my standpoint, it’s beginning to look like The Office is going to end up being the greatest cover version of a stone-cold classic since Husker Du’s “Eight Miles High.”

Does TV Want to be Free?

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The L.A Times has an article today pointing out that TV execs are having a devil of a time convincing people that when they download a television show from, say, BitTorrent, that they are stealing that show.  In a weird way, it’s a problem that the TV industry created itself: for over a half-century, we’ve been told that, unlike a song, or a film, or a book, or a videogame — that show you are watching is free. 

You the consumer aren’t paying for it, but rather the advertiser(s) who sponsoring that show, hoping to get you to purchase their product(s).  My guess is that this is a model that is rapidly becoming outdated, and we are lurching toward a totally new era, where how we consume TV will be more like how we consume other media products. 

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