#sixseasonsandamovie

Natalie Fang
CCS 313
Blog Post #1

            Television is no longer television. This statement is nothing new, we've known this for a while, and it's even more apparent now with the extreme popularity and variety of TV alternatives. The new mediums and services are only going to expand with time and in the next decade, television may mean something else altogether. In "TV's Next Season," Lynn Spigel talks about the new ways scholars study television because of the modern age. She explains how television studies is now often under "umbrella terms like new media studies and visual culture studies" since television is now so tightly bound to the internet. And because it's so bound with the internet, we are seeing independent creators take their work into their own hands and find outlets such as YouTube and Vimeo to showcase their work to an audience. However, the creators are not the only ones given more power by the internet, the audiences are also given a louder voice when it comes to program selection and saving certain programs.

            Campaigns to save TV shows have been around way before the internet blew up, of course. There was the letter writing campaign to save Star Trek back in 1968, the sending in Tabasco hot sauce campaign that saved Rosewell for two more seasons, and the high DVD sales of shows like Family Guy that revived the show being off air for multiple seasons. Fans have even shown so much support that if the network the show was originally shown on doesn't save it, another network will, which was the case for shows like Cougar Town and Futurama. With the emergence of new streaming services, Netflix in particular, the support system for failing shows have expanded. For example, Netflix financially supported AMC's "The Killing" for a third season, but when AMC decided not to renew it for a fourth, Netflix picked it up to broadcast on their site. Netflix has also backed up the cult following behind "Arrested Development," producing the show's fourth season seven years after its cancellation.

            The most recent show that has been saved by a third party is Community. The comedy that aired on NBC back in 2009 was a huge critical success and gathered a solid following, but did not generate enough money for the network. NBC decided to pull the show from their midseason schedule, during the show's third season. The backlash was apparent throughout social media platforms with hashtags like #SaveGreendale and #sixseasonsandamovie taking off to show NBC that the show had an audience. The show returned in the following fall season for their fourth season but was cancelled after the fifth season.  However,  the show was saved by a internet company. Not Netflix, not even Hulu, but Yahoo had ordered a sixth season. A search engine, news source, mail service conglomerate, Yahoo is an odd choice to host a television program, but not that surprising. With the success of online streaming options, Yahoo is probably one of many odd sites to join in on this venture.

            But what about the Community  movie? With sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, crowdfunding has become a reality for many creative heads. Maybe Dan Harmonn, the creator of Community, will take note of what Rob Thomas, the creator of Veronica Mars, did with his cult favorite series.

Works Cited

Spigel, Lynn. "TV's Next Season?" Cinema Journal 45.1 (2005): 83-90. Web.