Media Meditation 1 Curb Your Enthusiasm

When I did my last batch of media meditations, I talked about a show that is of my personal favorites, Curb Your Enthusiasm. In that post I talked about how the show was an example of how television is adapting to the web 2.0 world by moving away from traditional sitcoms. As we are doing reading this semester I wondered about how the scripting goes for the program now.

When people watch a traditional television show, they are aware somewhere in their mind that it is a show. However, is that awareness there when they watch something that is somewhere between a traditional show and a documentary? While Curb doesn't go quite as far as "The Office" for instance, it is certainly not a traditional sitcom. This brings up the challenge of making something scripted appear unscripted. It would be interesting to get a peek at a script to see how this is done. I have seen interviews, and I know that alot of the content is actually adlibbed and unscripted. Larry is a writer for his show that he acts in. He knows that he is going to adlib. Does he put space reserved for that in there?

I think that Curb is too far along to change, but in the future, how will shows adapt to the 10min YouTube clip? Will they adjust their scripting so that is is easily hosted in small bits? Or will they not change at all, and simply move their distribution to channels such as Hulu? Television is at a crossroads. Not only do they have to adjust their distribution and financing scheme, but it seems that the collective attention span is shrinking. Where do they go now?