TV Verdict

The future of TV entertainment isn’t about channel surfing in the traditional sense. We’ll be surfing to shows or grabbing them from some version of on demand or from DVR’s. The future is now if you look around. Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog won an Emmy! The most successful TV 2.0 project has to be Sanctuary. Many people would say that Sanctuary actually took a full step backward though by moving from the cutting edge to the classic network show. You can hardly blame the creators of the show though. It’s an ambitious series that the web just can’t quite support, yet.  Some of the folks behind Stargate including one of the stars, Amanda Tapping, took on the daunting project of doing a web series, a really expensive one, and make it survive by selling it online.

Obviously, the show was just too expensive to survive online but it set a pace for pitching television that’s still going on today. The show garnered so many fans online and so much positive press that the Sci-Fi Channel took notice and made a deal to bring the show to good ol’ classic TV and the show now just started its second season on that network. Other shows starting on major networks have also come from the web. It’s hard to go too far without mentioning another show that also started on the web, South Park. This show didn’t start with the same goals as Sanctuary but it was originally just a little video on the web so it fits in the mold as well. With this feature, we’ll focus on other up and coming shows that are a part of what’s now called “new media”. These shows are on the web, on set top boxes, and in other unique places that aren’t traditionally what we think of as TV entertainment.

NETWORKING

There are several online networks now such as Revision 3 and Blip TV and we’ll focus on a new show with each article that you should be watching. In the first installment, Sanctuary and South Park had to be mentioned as regular media shows that started from new media and The Guild requires attention as a show that started in new media and doesn’t seem to have any plans of moving to regular television. Instead, the show is expanding into as many parts of new media as possible. It started on its own website and now you can see the show on Blip.TV, in iTunes, on YouTube, and on Microsoft’s XBOX 360. The XBOX 360 along with the Playstation 3, the TiVo, and the Roku box are bridges between new media and classic media because these devices bring new media shows into the living room on the family TV.

At any rate, The Guild is a show about a group of people with very different backgrounds that all become friends via there connection within an online role-playing game similar to World of Warcraft. The show is written by and stars Felicia Day who you may know from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog and that Sears commercial. The Guild is a comedy with its roots in old school improv. There’s a great deal of writing that goes into the show but it also feels very improvised. In the first season one of the gamers becomes obsessed with Felicia’s character and tracks her down. Through some really funny sequences, he ends up moved in with her. Much of the success of the show comes from Felicia Day’s quirky awkward nerdiness that is extremely appealing to the geek set. This is most definitely a niche show. People who don’t understand the world of videogames probably won’t be grabbed by this show. The Guild is also not a very deep show with tons of drama and character development. This show is meant to be a short bit of entertaining escapism, and it’s overall a success.