Word: screens
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...what we once called the "small screen" is fading away. We'll have tiny screens and giant screens: online devices and ever cheaper flat-screen video walls. To me, lush cinematic shows like Big Love and Mad Men need a big canvas; for others, it's football that demands the real estate. Some shows are more interchangeable. I was not surprised to find that MTV's The Hills, with its sleek visuals and forgettable dialogue, is perfectly suited to the bauble-like screen of the iPhone...
...some shows will be big and grand for the giant screen. Other shows, like Comedy Central's on- and off-line hits, will thrive on both platforms. Producers will start conceiving series both as whole entities and repurposable parts--like the Jan. 31 SNL skit involving Pepsi that ran the next night as a Super Bowl ad for Pepsi...
Media messages will be tailored both ways: already, President Obama is doing network TV to broadcast messages wide, and online videos for a more intimate, fireside-chat connection. And as more people watch traditional TV on the tiny screen and online video on the big one, more will jump the boundaries. Collegehumor.com just debuted a show on MTV, while this spring ABC premieres In the Motherhood, a sitcom based on a webisode series...
...this may change traditional TV, but the tiny screen could also revive genres. For a decade, sitcoms have struggled on big networks. But online, few offerings do as well as humor. Be it funnyordie.com or the faux Japanese talk series Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show, people want the tiny screen to make them laugh...
Some would argue that that's a matter of scale--that it's impossible to be moved by something in a 4-in. (10 cm) video window. I'm not so sure. Hunched over my tiny screens lately, I've found myself riveted by Battlestar Galactica, provoked by a YouTube animation about the credit crisis and verklempt over an old video I posted of my son blowing bubbles in the bathtub. Big screen and tiny may have their differences, but where there's engagement, there's emotion. The screen that matters most is still the one where the story lingers...