Turning a TV series into a multiplatform experience does not need to be an expensive tech-heavy effort. Fox has come up with one of the cheapest-cheerfullest solutions I’ve hear of yet. They’re going to run a Twitter crawl along the bottom of the screen during re-runs of Fringe and Glee according to Tech Crunch:
The television network will be airing old episodes for two of its shows, Fringe and Glee, with Twitter commentary along the bottom of the screen. But no, sadly, not just anyone can tweet anything and have it be on national television, these will be moderated streams. And most of the it will be taken up by the tweets of the two shows’ casts and producers, apparently.
During the episodes, the cast members and producers will be watching and tweeting live. Fans be able to see their tweets on the bottom portion of their television screens or can follow along on Twitter itself by checking out the FRINGEonFOX and GLEEonFOX Twitter accounts. Select tweets from fans following along will be put on air.
Of course it’s a little early to be talking or tweeting about reruns of Glee since the show doesn’t launch till September 9th, but it is as good a time as any to mention that Fox is running a contestant that rewards fans for promoting the show on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. I think it’s great to reward ordinary people for promoting your series but the problem with the Biggest Gleek contest is that it’s asking users to become spammers. You get points by inviting friends to play and promoting the show in status updates, tweets and more. Unfortunately, Fox doesn’t seem to be providing contestants with any cool information to spread about Gleeso the fans are filling up the web with a whole lot of nothing (maybe that’s why my connections so slow today!):
So alas, though I like what I’ve seen of Glee the series very much, I must pronounce the Gleek contest a big fat fail. A simple Twitter feed across the bottom of the TV screen is way better use of technology and fan power in my opinion.
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I’m not crazy about a crawl on the bottom of the screen during a show.
During Metropia, the viewer comments were banal at best, not to mention distracting.
It’s already bad enough having the broadcaster promotions popping up during a show.
Unlike the Metropia crawls, these ones are supposed to be moderated and will include tweets from cast and crew. In that sense, it may be a little like an extra features commentary only live. Maybe the cast and crew will even answer questions and interact with the audience. I believe the first attempt at this will be during the umpteeth repeat of the Glee pilot this Friday night.
I hope tweeting on tv shows never catches on. Trying to watch a program while the text is running accross the screen is at best “REALLY ANNOYING”.
Unlike the Metropia crawls, these ones are supposed to be moderated and will include tweets from cast and crew. In that sense, it may be a little like an extra features commentary only live. Maybe the cast and crew will even answer questions and interact with the audience. I believe the first attempt at this will be during the umpteeth repeat of the Glee pilot this Friday night….
Yes, it’s true, the Twitter stream was moderated and various cast and crew members were participating. Nonetheless I turned it off after about ten minutes, thinking stupid stupid stupid.
The initial tweets were completely contentless. It seemed to me that the cast had never been on Twitter before and so we were subjected to all the newb stuff: “I don’t know what to say.” And there were way too many tweets so you couldn’t read and watch the show. It was a pick one situation. Since the show had already aired a bazillion times and was available for streaming and the tweets were so dumb, I changed the channel.
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