If I Were An Executive Producer

Watched Studio 60 last night. Pretty powerful episode on a few levels. Jenna Fischer was the guest host, though only in a monitor during the goodbye did we see her. More meta TV as the show within the show was dealing with how to boost ratings. After it was over, I thought about what I would do if I were in charge of that show. The first thing I would have done was hire a separate staff of writers to write the sketches. The second thing I would have done was produce the sketches, film them and post them on YouTube. The content of the sketches is a pretty small backdrop in the show, but to hype the show within the show I think the audience needed to be convinced that Harriet Hayes, Tom Jeter and Simon Stiles were funny, not just moody behind the scenes. So instead of the Colbert model or the current SNL model, the segments released on YouTube (and NBC.com) would be extra from the show. Though I still believe that the timeslot and day of week the show started on hurt it more than anything, the audience wasn't convinced that Matt Albie was a genius or that Studio 60 was a mainstay in television.