JasonGlaspey.com

OK, I keep hearing about how the television networks are having a really hard time ‘breaking into’ new media, while also combating Tivo/torrent use and dwindling the ratings they cause. How it’s hard to know where and what to do to get viewers involved in shows off the tube. So far, the best many of them are doing is putting a few 30 second extras or out-takes onilne, but as NBC does, they wrap them in 30 second commercials making the process of watching too painful to endure. I love The Office, but I just can’t sit through a 30 second commercial for each 30 second clip. It’s not worth it to me. And besides, I hate NBC’s website and try and avoid it.

Here’s an idea. Bring the shows and the characters we know and love, to the media channels we already use/know/and love, especially when it makes sense for the characters and setting of the show.

For instance, I want to get inter-office emails from the characters in The Office. I want to read it when Jim sends Pam an email about the prank he’s going to pull on Dwight. I want to actually get that email in my inbox on Tuesday afternoon, so that by Thursday evening, I’m so anxious to see the episode, there’s no way I would Tivo it and thus, skip the commercials.

I want to be forced into seeing it live because if I don’t, I’ll miss something, and then on Friday, when I get a response email from corporate to the entire office in Scranton, I won’t be out of the loop. I watched the episode, and thus participated in real time with the show. And the email comes to me in real time, the next day after the prank, to me as a voyeur into the emails of The Office staff. It’s away from the TV, it’s not on Thursday nights only, and it’s pushing content to me. It doesn’t require me to go to the NBC.com website. I get it in my email, which I’m already checking.

Really, how hard would it be to release 10-15 emails during the week that tie into the episode? And what better show, with such rich characters, and a backdrop of an office already, to release these emails. It could create subplots that are mentioned in the episodes that make no sense to the audience that doesn’t get these emails. It would be a MUST-DO event for everyone who watches and follows the show.

And really, why stop there. Why can’t these characters be tweeting? Maybe it doesn’t make sense for Phyllis to tweet, but maybe Jim? And even if the Office characters don’t tweet, what about Frank from 30 Rock (the guy with the funny hats). I would LOVE to see the stuff he would tweet about. It allows us, the audience, to interact, develop a deeper relationship with, and get involved in characters we already love and can’t get enough of. And it makes them feel real. It’s much better than the alternative, http://twitter.com/theofficenbc, which is just shameless, lame, and completely un-engaging.

Come on networks, how about it. Get off your butt and make some more content, but bring it to us in more than ‘out-takes’ via your branded video channels. Give us real access to your characters. I’d even subscribe to flicrk channels of Kenneth, from 30 Rock. Kenneth doesn’t use flickr you say? Well why not make that a subplot, where he learns to use flickr and starts uploading crazy ass photos of his uncles in the backwoods. Better yet, leave that for Tracy Jordan, his photos may be a bit more SFW.