"The Britsh Are Coming! The British Are Coming...Up With a Great Idea!"

What is the Free Culture Movement? Does it have to do with something that is free? Of course it does. Is the movement gaining steam here in the United States? Not really. According to Wikipedia, the definition of free culture movement is “a social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify creative works using the internet as well as other media.”
This concept is not very common today, at least in the United States. There are digital rights management and copyright laws to stop this sort of “distributing”. The British, however, have begun to offer full episodes of their network’s TV series before they air, with favorable results. One such British TV series, a sitcom, was once also under development by NBC, called “The IT Crowd.” The sitcom began on Britain’s Channel 4 in February of 2006, and the first full episode was available online before it aired on television. The online episode was created, according to Digital Lifestyles, “as a way of extending a buzz around a show and enhancing the market activity.” The offering has worked well for the series, which is considered to be “very British.” That probably doesn’t just mean very pale actors with bad teeth and eating bland food, it means British humor!
NBC’s interest in adapting the sitcom soon fell through because of what they said were “administration changes” in the network. However, according to Why That’s Delightful, the whole series couldn't simply be re-produced with American actors, it had to be severely overhauled. British humor is just too different for the American audience. An example of their type of humor given on the site describes a scene where the main male characters are sitting calmly at a desk while the office building burns down all around them. As you can see in this clip of the first part of the first episode of “The IT Crowd,” there's an over-emphasis of awkward silences, use of sound effects and sight gags for humor.
The TV networks here just don't offer free online full episodes of TV shows before they air on television. Some reasons for not having episodes online before they air might be due to concerns about TV ratings and copyright issues. There are, however, some networks that have full episodes, but they are either not a current episode of the series or put online the day after the episode airs. But, maybe our TV networks should learn from what the British have done. The networks should be willing to try it out at least as an experiment. If it caught on it could bring back the “buzz” and discussion to many sitcoms and dramas, and thus generate more money for the networks. After all, we seem to follow everything else the British do nowadays! This would be only the next logical step!

Yes, the British have come up with a great idea!

Sitcoms Go Interactive!

Do you wonder why so few sitcoms really attract a fan base these days? Many new sitcoms that find their spot in primetime every fall become beleaguered and forced out by the effects of heavy competition with an established show. They never create the fan base needed to stay on the air and are set out to “sitcom pasture” early. In our technologically advanced world, people want to become more interactive with their favorite TV characters. Sitcoms seem to be able to accomplish this better than other dramatic shows that are heavier in content. The days of TV shows being “ read-only”, a phrase from Lawrence Lessing’s “How Creativity is Being Strangled By the Law”, are severely numbered. “Read-only” refers to the traditional concept of watching a television show it still happens and having no way to respond to what they saw or share their opinions publicly, except through those brutal ratings, of course! Gone are the classic sitcoms like I Love Lucy , The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Cheers. The new wave of sitcoms to seems to arrive with the a website as part of their territory. Now, the sitcoms become “read-write” with their fans, encouraging opinions and thoughts to be shared. This new “read-write” culture is considered “media democracy”, which and (as defined by Wikipedia) a social movement that aims to reform big media. It could be described as a grass-roots issue where proponents are fed up with big media and feel a need to increase public broadcasting and explore alternative media in order to empower the average citizen so all members of society can benefit.
Several newer sitcoms have joined the social networking and fan-based website. Some of these shows include “The Office”, “30 Rock” and “Two and A Half Men”, and are incidentally some of the most highly rated sitcoms on television. One of the most prominent of these shows is “The Office”. “The Office” has, I think, the most comprehensive fan-based sites for a television series. If you look at its website, you are almost mind-blown by all the interactive features they offer. The website has the features that every TV show website has like “cast bios”, “cast pictures” and an “episode guide”, but it also has much more. The website also features specialized blogs from the cast, trivia games, contests, a Dunder store, and ringtones to buy. “The Office” is also one of the only TV series for which the cast have set up Myspace pages for themselves, offering their own blogs and pictures.

A Blog Idea!

1). My interests within the media field mainly consist of the writing and study of sitcoms and social media. I could do lots of things with sitcoms, but I don't know how much it would actually serve the community. So, I might write my blog on some interesting element of social media. I've been thinking over the last couple of months on how trends start through the media. I'm not taking about the latest fashion to come on the market, but instead, social trends like the environmental movement or the "living green" aspect. Or anything else that someone delegates as a "problem" and thus uses the media as her pipeline to disseminate information to us. As with the current environmental movement, how come this has only been a big issue within the last four or five years? How come the media wasn't so saturated with this kind of news thirty years ago? Who delegates social trends as a problem, what information is given to us, what is not? How does this trend effect our daily lives and how can we cope with such a plethora of information out there?

I would be willing to some research and find out what other of these kind of trends are out there, write about them and discuss how the media is portraying them. Maybe I could find how you, the consumer, are benefiting from the particular social trend materialistically. If this seems like a lot to take on, it probably is, but I would have to find a way that would make it easier or simplier for me.

2). My other much easier idea I have for a blog concerns situation comedies. I want to be a sitcom writer, so it would interesting to look deep into them. I was thinking I could take various sitcom characters from classic sitcoms past and present, and analyize their personality and quirks as characters. I would leave each post open at the end for people to post what they might want to add. I would include snipits of this character on their respective show in action as well. I would also include a character analysis of brand new sitcoms for this fall season, charting their progress. I could have a list of information that tells people of the most trite examples of sitcom plots, which shows use this the most. It's basically sitcom mania!