Studio 60′s Failed Parody
No matter what you think of Aaron Sorkin’s new show “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip”, you should check out the parody blog from the show: Defaker. Wait, you can’t. It was pulled after a ton of bad press and flames in the comments. The site is gone. Completely.
What went wrong?
Not to pick on Aaron Sorkin shows but “The West Wing” bombed with its blogs for political candidates. I suggested the idea but thought that the producers should hire professionals to run it. Instead, there were 4 posts for each candidate. The posts were put up in a structure that had nothing bloggy to it. There was no promotion for it either. [Note: Aaron had left the show by this point.]
To compensate for that mistake, the producers went to the other extreme… the knocked off Defamer. It was embarrassing. It went beyond parody. If you act fast, you can see the cache here.
What could have been
As I was watching the show on Monday night (yes, I am a huge Aaron Sorkin fan and will watch any movie or TV show he writes) a few characters were reading the Bernadette Blog. I had to check. Did someone on the East Coast register bernadetteblog.com? Nope. Warner Brothers did last March. Smart move, right?
If the characters are following the Bernadette Blog and not Defaker, why not build the site there and let it leak out through references on the show. That could have worked.
What’s at the Bernadette Blog? Nothing. The domain redirects to the Warner Brothers home page. Not even to the Studio 60 web page. Yet another missed opportunity.
