Every so often, maybe every couple months, I go back and re-read the pilot of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. You can find it kicking around online. Studio 60, for the uninitiated, was an Aaron Sorkin show about an SNL-esque sketch show. It’s like 30 Rock with the tone and format of The West Wing. The episode starts with a network executive telling Wes, the showrunner, to cut a sketch. When the show goes live a few minutes later, Wes interrupts the opener and walks out in front of the camera. He tells the actors to clear the stage, less they be associated with what is about to happen. He then goes into a speech that never, ever fails to give me goosebumps. He starts, “this show used to be cutting edge political satire but it’s gotten lobotomized by a candy-ass broadcast network hell-bent on doing nothing that might challenge their audience.” He urges the viewers to change the channel or, better yet, turn off their televisions all together.
The executive, now in the control room, urges the producer to cut Wes off, but he won’t. There’s a mood in the air. Wes’ team is a loyal one, and what’s more, nothing he’s saying out there isn’t perfectly true.
“There’s always been a struggle out there between art and commerce, but now I’m telling you art is getting it’s ass kicked.” He calls the network a “prissy, feckless, off-the-charts greed filled whorehouse” before the producer, fearing for his job, finally goes to VTR.
I highly recommend you read it. Pages 6-14 are the ones that will make you shiver. To be honest, I think you should just go watch the show and then come back. I’ll wait.
The point of this rant, like so many people have said so many times, is that broadcast television is largely crap. It’s very fashionable to write TV off all together as a waste of time and mental energy, but there’s nothing inherently low-brow about serialization. There’s something valuable, something political, something essential about ___
In my interview with Rob Barnett, the CEO of one of the biggest web television studios, My Damn Channel, he repeatedly brings up the idea of small vs. large D democracy. He’s touching on something I think we all know about our entertainment.
People watch a lot of damn TV and they always will. You can’t help but be influenced by what you watch. If a population of voters only gets to hear six opinions on a subject, can they really be said to be living in a Democracy? Isn’t being informed about all of their options an essential part of that?
We have a moment, right now, to decide where this medium is going and an ability to take it back. For the first time ever independent television is reaching a large scale audience. We can’t undersell the value of this just because people are making comedy. Comedy is an art form and better art makes a better world. It seems a little crude to quote Sorkin twice, so I’m going to credit JFK for the following, though it appears almost verbatim in the West Wing episode, “Gone Quiet.” I think you’ll understand immediately why I chose to end on this note.
“There is a connection, hard to explain logically but easy to feel, between achievement in public life and progress in the arts. The age of Pericles was also the age of Phidias. The age of Lorenzo de Medici was also the age of Leonardo da Vinci. The age of Elizabeth was also the age of Shakespeare.”
