Ben Silverman, meet Chuck Lorre. Chuck Lorre, meet Ben Silverman.
Okay, maybe the two high-powered Hollywood types don't need me to make introductions, but at their respective Banff World Television Festival sessions, Silverman, the new chairman of NBC Entertainment and NBC Universal Television Studio, and Lorre, the co-creator of CBS's Two and a Half Men, both touched on interactive television, one looking to the future, one looking to the past.
Silverman, the founder of Reveille Productions and an executive producer behind The Office, Ugly Betty, The Tudors, The Biggest Loser, and 30 Days, among many others, is on a mission to revive NBC's ratings by finding "aspirational shows, positive shows. I'm going to zig when other people zag, and redefine what television is," he told New York Times TV columnist Bill Carter in front of a packed room during the festival's In Conversation With session.
Silverman thinks the current crop of interactive shows – American Idol with its phone and text voting, for example – are, despite their massive popularity, mere baby steps down the road of what's possible.
He brought up the example of the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books he read as a child, where the reader could influence the outcome of the narrative. "I think there will be a time when we have that more interactive experience," he said, adding that it will require a "different kind of creativity and a new generation of storytellers," as well as more sophisticated television technology. "We're still early, but we need to foster the next generation of talent."
Well, one of the current generation of talent hit on that very thing for his proposed 2001 show Nathan's Choice. Chuck Lorre envisioned a two-act show about a recent college graduate who would end the first act faced with a two-pronged choice. "I thought interactivity was something that would be fun to do," the co-creator of the upcoming Big Bang Theory told his Master Class interviewer, Macleans' Scott Feschuk, who suggested the idea was likely before its time.
Article comments
1 - Josh Lasser "TV and Film Guy"
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2 - Clint Johnson
I think that the problem with a lot of television is that there are already too many people with a say in what goes up on the screen. And these are people who have made television their business and have really given it a lot of thought... even if their thoughts are often kind of daft.
The best of television comes from a strong central voice executed as best the entire team can do. With any decision, there is a stronger and a weaker way to go and it would be counterproductive to dilute the writing talent over multiple scenarios.
I read those choose your own story books as a kid and after a couple I ignored them on the shelves. For one, the attempt to fool the reader into thinking that they had input into a storyline by giving them two or three canned choices... that just pulled me out of the already weak story.
What if they found some way to actually allow the voting viewer genuine control over where the story goes? I'll be onside with that as soon as you convince me that 51% of the viewing public could run a show as well as Joss Whedon.