TV show idea.

Jaime's mom emails random questions to all her kids and kids-in-law. Yesterday the question was:

If you had your OWN TV show, what would you call it and what part would you play AND what night would you have it on?

Not sure If I answered all her questions but Saturday morning allowed me an opportunity to take a stab at the idea. Sorry this is so long. You're about to be subjected to my one-man brainstorming process and it's not always a clean, neat thing. Also, I should disclaim the hugely optimistic tone that follows. In most cases, it should not be mistaken for naivety. Just my ramblings.

I'm not sure what I'd call it. But it would only run full episodes on the Internet, not TV, with only teasers on actual TV. It would only run on hulu.com. And since hulu is ingeniously and jointly owned by old media rivals NBC and FOX, teasers for the show could run on all NBC and FOX networks (I think there's about 467,652,435,091 of them, roughly), and ad time would be paid for by NBC and FOX, not by me, since my show would be driving traffic to hulu.com, in their interest. And because it just sits on the internet and takes up server space, but not TV media time, I'd have much much less pressure and lower chances of getting the axe from the networks and being taken off the air in only 2 episodes. In short, I'd be given a longer chance to "make it," thus increasing the opportunity to build a fan base and allow the the grassroots, word-of-mouth thing do it's trick.

Oh, and the WOM would mos' def' do it's thing. Bloggers, Twitterers, and Facebookers would give me more positive "ad" media than FOX and NBC would ever give me on TV.

'Cause I'd hire good writers, like Christian Lander, and maybe even have a host like him or someone else that would be recognized by a few, but not everyone, and therefor would be affordable, but still be cool and culturally relevant. My show would be his/her "in" to the next level of fame, so he/she would be eager to to rock it (don't stop it).

Which brings me to my biggest problem. I don't know what it would be about. None of my initial ideas are exciting. I'm just going to keep on typing and whatever comes out is what it will have to be about:

It could be about smaller, up-and-coming, independent musical artists and bands that would otherwise never make it on TV, so they'd be hungry to be on the show. But they'd rock enough and have enough of a grassroots fan base that it would still be in the shows best interest to put them on a pedestal and interview them, let them play, have a camera follow them around for a couple shows/rehearsals/recording sessions and let the masses get to know them. (Maybe that's what the show would be called - "Pedestal.") It would be funny. and inspiring, and educational, and musical of course. And it would fill in a certain gap that MTV and VH1 NEVER fulfilled, let alone strayed from in the last 15 years.

Oh, get this: Because the video is online, links would pop up on bottom of the video (but not in an annoying way) that would allow you to actually click directly to other online content related to the topic being discussed. When you click on it, it opens a new window or browser tab and pauses the show. Just go back and push play to resume to the show. At the end of the show all the links will be listed out to click on them as well (which means all those websites will have an invested interest in the show as well). Just the beginning of INTERACTIVE TV.

In this new age of Pandora.com, people would tune in to discover new artists and otherwise willfully subject themselves to cerebral gelatinizing online video content that becomes a reliable source of entertainment and music education for millions (mwahahahahaha).

As the show becomes more successful we could partner with other companies for additional mutually beneficial opportunities: For example, Bose or other good computer audio OEMs could partner with us for special promotions and shared media, as it would obviously be beneficial to watch the show with killer speakers or headphones. Maybe that's a dumb idea. I dunno. Scratch that for now. Milk before meat.

(c) 2009 Eric Forsyth.