Last night I attended a panel discussion in Hollywood on the State of Teen TV coordinated and hosted by Anastasia Goodstein of Ypulse. It's always fun to meet a blogger whom I read regularly, and Anastasia was even more fun in person than on her blog. You can read her summary of the event, but I'll also give you some thoughts on what struck me most.

The panelists included:

• Rob Thomas - creator and exec. producer of the CW show "Veronica Mars"
• Rajiv Mody - director of franchise development for MTV's Virtual Laguna Beach/The Hills
• Dixie Feldman - editorial director of The N (the network with the #1 concentration of the teen/young adult demo)
• Amanda Zweerink - director of community at Current TV
• Kelli Feigley - partner at Dreaming Tree Films
  

The overall theme that emerged is that television as we know it is changing, and that some of the players involved are more willing or able to adapt to this new world, which is not all that different from the online world that teens already live in.

The ethos that is evolving is that teen audiences want "to be able to live the show and share it with their friends," as Rajiv described how his virtual worlds tie into the TV-based programming. Fans can go online and mingle with the cast members, participate in events tied to the latest episode, and feel like they are part of the show. Dixie (whose bio contained one of the best lines of the night: "She puts the broad back in broadcasting.") described how when one of the characters in the N show Degrassi died, fans lit candles at a virtual vigil and put armbands and veils on their avatars. The network facilitated the expressions of grief by providing clips of sad scenes and sad music for use in creating video tributes.

The other part of it is that teens want to have a voice in the content that they watch. Current TV contains about one-third viewer created content, and they also give a lot of latitude to the producers they call on to create content. They are looking for ways to make it easier for people to contribute content, such as submitting short pieces of footage for editing rather than a long finished piece. As mobile technology improves toward broadcast quality, impromptu videos of newsworthy events will become a major source of content. For a younger audience, Samsung Fresh Films (part of Dreaming Tree) runs a program to help teens create their own professional-quality films.

One of the most interesting parts of the evening was when Rob and Dixie spoke about how they approach dealing with hot-button topics on their shows. Rob lamented that the show that just aired with some references to the abortion pill got hate mail from both the left and the right. He emphasized that as a writer, he's not trying to be topical and teach life lessons, but he is interested in "putting a moral and ethical dilemma in front of Veronica and seeing how she responds." Another episode coming up will have one of the characters active in the Invisible Children campaign.

Dixie talked about some of the many issues that had come up on The N's shows. There was an abortion episode on "Degrassi," which ended up being pulled by Viacom (MTV's parent company). Another character got gonorrhea of the throat. In the show "South of Nowhere," an episode centered around a girl who was attracted to another girl. They took a lot of heat for that, but they also got a positive response from a lot of teen girls. She and Rob both said that they had not had the network execs object to or censor an episode, but their battles have been more with the standards and practices people who get into niggling details like how many times they can use the word "boner" in one episode or whether it's less objectionable to show a girl eating a popsicle, lollipop, banana or corn dog in a particular scene. On the positive side (from my perspective, at least), Dixie said that because their audience is primarily teens and preteens, the S&P folks are more emphatic about the need to portray consequences and provide context for decisions made by the characters.

Rob had some interesting predictions about where TV is heading. He thinks there will be more specificity of viewing, with fewer "big tent" shows that appeal to everyone and more shows for niche audiences. In the future, we may buy particular shows a la carte rather than subscribing to cable or satellite channels. He also speculated about the interesting things they could do with a virtual universe based on Veronica Mars.

The worst term of the night that I'd never heard before was "vomenting," which means adding text or audio commentary to shows a la MST 3000. The N provides a "video mix masher" for teens to use with scenes from the shows to create their voments. (I hope this term doesn't catch on!)

So it sounds like television and online content will continue to mash themselves together until eventually there will be no distinction between the two. Teens want to interact with the programs, create their own content, and do this all on their own terms. Our challenge as social marketers now is how to facilitate teens doing this with content related to our health and social issues, whether on TV, online or both.

Anastasia will be uploading the recording of the event on her blog soon.



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