millsworks

Neil Patrick Harris did a great job as host of last night’s Emmy Awards broadcast but the highlight was clearly the appearance of Dr. Horrible.

Update: The folks at YouTube pulled the original posting of the video so I’m providing my own copy here – which is a legitimate fair use of the material since it’s being presented as a cultural critique of the event. That’s my fancy way of saying that any brown-nosing legal interns should just fuck off and leave this alone unless you want to get counter-sued for abusing the DMCA.

There were a number of cracks made about the death of broadcast television and while the whole event was obviously a cheer leading session in defence of a dying industry – including this clip mocking the net – it was clear that what was happening to television had to be acknowledged.

Television has followed the course proscribed by McLuhan when he said old media would become the content of new media. The best television programs now are comprised of film content which no longer gets made for theatrical release – cinema, true cinema, is now the content of television. Television itself is being subsumed within the growing influence of the net. The broadcast industry (which includes the caretakers of the pipes – the telco & cable industries) are actively seeking to control and restrain the net to become merely another form of television but that denies the obvious. The internet is not television – but television can, and will, be contained within the internet.

The internet, as a medium, far surpasses the limited abilities of broadcast television.

As for reality television, which had it’s own full category last night, I made the comment on Twitter that reality tv used to be called “The News”. This explains why the nation has such a tenuous and slender grasp on reality itself.

Enjoy how the story of our disrupted culture unfolds. If it’s too much to bear – hide in the basement, sofa monkeys, and make a freeze ray.

Cheers.

P. S. If the audience numbers for last night’s show are any indication – only 12 million viewers, the lowest ever for an Emmy broadcast – the industry is indeed undergoing a significant seachange. Even taking into account Tivo or other time-shifting measures we’ll soon see the day when a simple clip like this garners a larger number of views than the entire audience for broadcast itself. Thanks for watching.