Most of the time, when I teach TV History and Appreciation to my students at New Jersey's Rowan University, one goal is to get them to imagine watching old television when it was new. But every once in a while, comparisons to TV old and new have me looking at today's television through THEIR eyes. It's a very different experience -- and recently, NBC's
30 Rockgave me that chance...
For one of my TV courses, for example, we already had seen the live Golden Age telecast of 12 Angry Men, and George Clooney's 2000 live performance of Fail-Safe, so I thought NBC's then-upcoming live episode of 30 Rock would be an interesting assignment for a paper. That week, I showed the most recent "regular" episode of 30 Rock, assigned them to watch the live episode on NBC or afterward on Hulu or the network's website, and waited for the papers to come in.
The papers themselves, on the whole, were well-written, solidly organized, and reflected a genuine enthusiasm for seeing a prime-time TV show performed live, without a net. A few students, relying on the Internet, compared the changes in the East and West Coast performances -- which I also did, the following week, in class.
One student, Laura Schnatterly, provided such a creative suggestion for what 30 Rock SHOULD have done on its live episode that it earned her an instant A. While she, like virtually all her classmates, loved the cleverness of the live "flashbacks," which had Tina Fey's Liz Lemon played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Laura suggested what would have been an even more bold and brilliant casting coup:
"This would have been the perfect time," she wrote, "for Sarah Palin to get on the show and play the 'stand-in' for Tina Fey's character in her flashbacks."
Yes, it would have been. And after all those times of Fey playing Palin on Saturday Night Live, that would have completed the circle perfectly. No offense to Louis-Dreyfus, who was very funny, but think of Palin as Liz -- and, regardless of the level of Palin's performance, think what a superb comic surprise THAT would have been...
But perhaps the biggest surprise, regarding my 30 Rock viewing assignment, was how many students wrote that the episodes shown in class, and assigned to view, were the first 30 Rock shows they had ever seen. Some of them even thanked me for assigning the live episode -- confessing that had I not told them to watch, they would have been unaware the live episode was even coming.
And that made me look at 2010 television from THEIR perspective. How can 30 Rock NOT be on their radar? It's one of the best shows on TV right now, and certainly aimed at a college-level sensibility -- and it started back in 2006, so it's been around since most of them were in high school. But no.
And not knowing about the live episode? NBC couldn't have promoted that more aggressively -- but these kids aren't watching network TV, so they aren't seeing the ads, much less the show. Networks of today have to reach these young viewers where they're already gathering, and that's no longer network TV.
This generation is different:
If you build it, they WON'T come. Not unless you track them down with an engraved invitation...