Television as we know it is dying. It certainly had its golden age, but its best days are behind it. It is suffering from chronically low ratings and high rates of cancellation at the changing of the seasons. Cause of death: the Internet.
TV executives know full well that midnight is coming for their medium, while online creators are making short, low-budget videos with huge returns — if you want to feel like you picked the wrong major, look up how much money YouTube’s biggest names raked in last year. Executives wonder, in a mix of horror and bemusement, why so many people are watching yet another “Kids React” video while their focus-grouped sitcom fizzles. So they do what any company with a lot of money does when they feel threatened: they join the trend.
This ideology is what inspired Nickelodeon to give YouTube users TheFineBros, creators of the wildly popular “React” series of videos, their own TV show with Nick Cannon. The show’s format — the same one that TheFineBros (real names Benny and Rafi Fine) distilled to an insidiously simple science on their YouTube channel — captured tweens’ reactions to a barrage of viral videos. Despite being a carbon copy of the Internet series, the millions of views didn’t follow and what was supposed to be a 13-episode season was cancelled by the network after 12.
Most Internet shows that get picked up for TV have a fairly transmutable format, a recent and prime example being TruTV’s “Adam Ruins Everything,” which began as a smart-ass CollegeHumor sketch. In both the show and the skit, host Adam Conover breaks down a culturally-held belief and reveals why it’s actually asinine. In the search for new talent, however, even the Internet’s most unique forms can be brought into the mainstream. Take, for instance, video blogger Grace Helbig, whose channel chronicles her daily life and musings. The format seemed incompatible with television, but Helbig didn’t think so. Her roughly three million followers were enough to convince E! to give her a talk show. However, her show didn’t come close to reaching her average YouTube viewership. What those in charge of TV programming do not understand is that with the change in medium comes a change in soul. Helbig rose to Internet stardom because of her low-budget approach to documenting her life. It was part of her charm and what made her so popular in the first place — slapping a glossy coat of paint onto her persona just won’t yield the same results.
Many Internet stars are coerced by big network TV dollars and the idea that getting on television is some great legitimizer. Online content creators are led to believe that they can do better in this medium and have an actual career. All of this is built on the premise that online content isn’t real content — that only what makes it on TV is what makes a cultural impact. This is simply not the case. Media born online has arguably made a bigger splash in recent years than anything on TV. Just try to think of a moment on television that was as singularly unifying as the Pizza Rat meme was online. This isn’t just limited to video. Some of the best musicians got their start by releasing albums online and watch their fanbases grow. Chance the Rapper immediately comes to mind — he released his first free mixtape online in 2012 and is now headlining festivals across the country. The belief that online content is somehow lesser than content made elsewhere — be it an NBC lot or a Def Jam recording studio — is completely unfounded based on the origins of some of the most ubiquitous media in the current cultural landscape.
With all these Internet-based shows that continue to underperform, there seems to only be one that’s gotten it right: Comedy Central’s surprise late night hit, @midnight. The show is a lot like “Whose Line Is It Anyway,” but with hashtags instead of scenes from a hat that lead to comedians weighing in on trending topics and the top posts on Reddit. What the show does right, beyond being funny most of the time, is its approach to the Internet. It doesn’t try to gussie up the digital world for the bright lights of TV, but rather incorporates all of the Internet’s quirk into TV’s sphere. It doesn’t treat it like some foreign body that needs to conform, but as its own entity. Because that’s what it is. It’s a medium all its own, with its own place in the cultural lexicon, but that doesn’t make it the enemy of TV. The cohabitation of the online world and television is where entertainment is headed, and I can’t wait to see where it leads.
