John Hodgman on the return of Community to NBC:
I only ask you, friends of the Internet, as a creator and consumer of culture, to not confuse your enthusiasm for a thing—expressed in tweets and tumbls and comments and torrents and downloads and upthumbs and gifs—with actual support for a thing that you want to last.And if you want that thing to last, that means supporting it in the way that, for better or for worse, it makes its money: watching it as it airs, buying tickets to it when it comes out, buying it when it is available, seeing it when it comes to town.
I agree. But something nags: is it our fault that TV networks insist on using metrics that are so out of alignment with how people choose to watch shows today? Is it our fault that we now express our appreciation for quality entertainment through clicks, likes, tweets and pins? The snarky gremlin on my shoulder wants to say "well, what did you expect would happen when you put your television show on television?"
I'd never even heard of Community until I heard it mentioned in this interview with Bill Murray. Even then, another year passed before my wife put it in our Netflix queue. We gobbled up the first two seasons and I bought a Season 3 pass on iTunes so we could catch up to the season currently airing. It's a brilliant, brilliant show.
There eventually has to be a better way to help shows like Community survive than to watch them with full commercials during its time slot. That doesn't feel like supporting the show -- that feels like supporting television watching. We just don't roll like that anymore.
(Some of us roll like this:)