I don’t watch TV as such. But I do watch video on the web, including “television” programming like Battlestar Galactica, and I have a Netflix account which lets me stream video from their collection to my computer.

Television has always been a “social object”, a catalyst for social interaction as long as it’s been around. That social interaction used to occur while watching the programs, afterward watching them, or in anticipation of them (who shot JR?). Now people are taking that conversation to online and mobile platforms. People are going to connect socially around programs online whether the creators of the programing actively facilitate that or not.

I feel like the best online communities are going to be ones set up by passionate fans on their own. In those communities, they will feel free to be able to say whatever they want, without the networks regulating their speech.

I think “television” would do well do feed those passionate communities—give them interviews with the people that make the shows, make programming available to embed wherever there fans want to put it.

If you are looking at an offline community strategy, look at Sci-Fi conventions, which are crawling with past and current stars. Would this work for other genres? I don’t know. You’ve got to look where the fans are and go there.

Ze Frank succeeded partly by becoming a ringleader of a series of media making games that he invited viewers to participate in. Then he could use the best of the resulting media in his show. I don’t know who else is doing this, but it seems like a promising approach.

On the topic of games: the most overarching medium is the game. Games can include all other media forms—you can pipe TV into the game environment.

More on games and other media here:

http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail3952.html

How do you make this work?

You may want to check out some of the work I did with NPR’s Vote Report project, done in conjunction with TechPresident.com, and our upcoming Inauguration Report project. In both cases, we encouraged the public to tag content in a specific way so they could let us know what they were experiencing at polling places and the inauguration respectively. We also set up alternative ways of getting involved. If you were online, you could use Twitter, Flickr, etc. If you had an iPhone, we had an app for you. If you were offline, you could use text messaging or even voicemail to participate.

All of this content was then made available as a geotagged map and a raw stream. We let the public set everything that came in, warts and all, because we wanted their assistance to dig through it as well and help us find the best nuggets. That way, the public could get involved in two ways – they could contribute to the creation of content and offer editorial suggestions as well. I’m hoping this is just the start of a range of networked journalism activities we’ll do at NPR.

Which fictional TV shows have amassed a fan following? In recent memory, I think of things like LOST, ALIAS, Battlestar Galactica and The Office.

How did they do it?

The first 3 are mystery / sci-fi shows, which translate naturally to the “cult undercurrent” that propagates on the web. They also encouraged their fans to search for clues, solve puzzles and try to outwit the writers at their own game — all of which is empowering and makes a casual fan feel like he / she is part of the larger creative process.

And The Office is probably a mirror image of what a lot of these same fans live through every day in their real lives. But being early adopters of web tools like MySpace and iTunes didn’t hurt, either — especially when those channels were used to offer supplementary material that added depth to the overall viewing experience.

Any new show that’s looking to build a similar following would be smart to:

* Both engage and empower its audience

* Not take the intelligence of its audience for granted

* Allow its audience to watch the show whenever and wherever it wants

* Provide supplemental content that adds depth and insight for the dedicated fans who want more than just a casual viewing experience.

I think the question of social networking and the future of TV is quite pertinent. I particularly like how you created a distinction between the social networking created through online content and those created with a offline focus (in this case TV, but it applies across the board).

The biggest difference I see between these two communities is that an offline based community is inherently separated, whereas the online based community is part of a collaborate process to create the very content they are discussing. The online community feels vested in what they are discussing, whereas the offline based community is more passive. I think answering the question of how to create high quality content while creating an active community in such a fashion will determine much about the future of TV.

Al Gore’s Current.TV is attempting to do this to some capacity, as anyone in their community is allowed and encouraged to create content for the website as well as vote on which of their content should end up airing on TV. The problem with such a set up is that it is not yet conducive to creating expensive and complex productions. I am certain that it will soon create an entirely new level of reality TV though, as it will greatly increase the body of suitable material and the democratic means of sifting through that material to find the content most desirable.

However, I also think more and more channels will begin to consider input from their biggest fans as a means of determining which content should be produced and how that content should develop. One easy example would be if a station would air pilot episodes of shows on their website and allow their online community to determine which shows will be picked up. That would make the online community feel vested in the work of the station and the show, and they will begin marketing the show for free through their other social networks as well as from peer to peer marketing.

This was a great post Scott—thanks for sending it to me, and feel free to twitter me again at @HarryWaisbren or send me an email at Hwaisbren@gmail.com if you’d like to discuss it further!

I can’t think of a TV channel that does the web well.

These TV networks want to filter and own the contributions people make. Instead, they need to let the community feel ownership over the channels.

If I think about a powerful online community I’m apart of, the first thing that comes to mind is that it’s my place. There are no filters between me and my friends.

Current TV and CNN’s iReport make the whole process of contributing too clumsy and top-down. Maybe the nature of 24-hour television just can’t compete with a billion choices internet.

[...] Television and Online Communities [...]

Thank you for your response. I totally agree with what you’re saying about television programs and community building and how it applies – but do the same theories apply to news networks, i.e. CNN, FOX, etc.?

How do you take the ze frank approach of building games, interactive projects, etc around news content? I think it’s a lot easier with something like Heroes, or Lost since its fictional characters and its basically fans discussing the characters, plots, etc. But what can a news network do since they are concerned with factuality, etc. There’s a lot more monitoring that has to happen, filtering, etc – or does there? What’s the leap that they need to take to incorporate I-report, U-report etc into their regular .com space? So far they’ve tried to keep the two separate – then hand picked what ends up on air, or on the .com. Are there other social media leaps that they need to take? What other spaces should they be involved in?

Fictional programs have an easier natural hook to unite viewers than news shows do, because news is partisan and divisive by nature, whereas fiction tends to be uniting. (If you don’t like a show, you don’t watch it; if you’re watching it, then you already have at least one thing in common with everyone else who watches it.)

News programs that don’t hide their bias have a much easier path toward rallying a community around their POV (think Rush, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, etc.). News that purports to be unbiased almost can’t generate a community on principle alone, because to do so would somehow be seen as sensationalistic or manipulative. It’s not the news itself that people would be expected to rally around; it’s the causes and actions that the news sheds light on that should be the rallying point.

In my opinion, CNN’s i-reporters are a great example of mainstream media being dragged down by low-quality social media empowerment. I never click on an i-reporter story because I rarely think they’re of value; they immediately strike me as someone’s amateur hour news report, tailor-made for 15 seconds of CNN pseudo-fame. On the other hand, I fully support something like Alive in Baghdad because they produce their news under their own umbrella, apart from the presumed criteria of someone else’s business model.

I think mainstream news agencies who expect to revolutionize the news via social media may be misunderstanding both their own role and the role of social media. When it comes to news, people want to rely on trusted sources. (Not that there really ARE that many anymore, but I digress.) I don’t care about individual POVs on the news (which is what social media would provide); I care about accurate facts being delivered quickly and coherently, and I care about hard questions being asked immediately, rather than from the safe distance of historical evaluation. The mainstream news should focus on strengthening their own trustworthiness and accuracy, while using their financial might to force open the doors that independent journalists can’t get behind.

Meanwhile, the MSM should be scouring the independent news ranks for hotbeds of social interest, budding journalism stars and independent facts that can be corroborated and compiled into a larger story. They can use social media as a way to connect with the people who are passionate about news, while also considering the social media news outlets to be a feeder system toward a mainstream media that’s worth aspiring to join. Otherwise, they run the risk of becoming as irrelevant as the i-reporters they cater to, and that destroys two systems at once.