Aaron Sorkin, who made the excellent Sports Night, (and a show I have mixed-feelings on, The West Wing, which even a novice viewer like I could tell went down hill after he left the production), has a new show premiering this fall, Studio 60, which is sort of a mix of the two — an hour long dramedy about the behind-the-scenes operation of a sketch comedy show.

The first two episodes, courtesy of Netflix and an aggressive marketing campaign by NBC, are in my apartment as I type this. There was an article in The Baltimore Sun that I found interesting, particularly since it came after I’d learned that Netflix would have this preview disc available (if you’ve got Netflix, just do a search for “Studio 60″ and stick it in your queue).

The new marketing strategy signals the networks’ acceptance that they no longer can dictate when or where or how viewers watch television. Instead of relying upon splashy TV debuts during a heavily hyped fall premiere week to reach mass audiences and create buzz as the networks have done since 1950s, broadcasters are using new technologies, from iPods to DVDs, to target smaller groups of highly plugged-in consumers.

And they’re gambling that these viewers will spread the word about which new shows they like before the series air.

With the guerilla marketing campaign — which, episodes unseen, I’m already participating in — and the strength of the name “Aaron Sorkin” under the creator tag, I really think NBC might be underestimating the former playwright (did you know he also wrote A Few Good Men?)

There’s something really dirty about saying, “Stick it in your queue!”

*UPDATE*

Okay, so it’s only the pilot episode of Studio 60, and the pilot of Kidnapped. Haven’t watched Kidnapped yet, but I thoroughly enjoyed the pilot of Studio 60. I don’t want to give too much away …

… but what do I care? Even if you read this, you’ll forget what I wrote by the time the show premiers (still over a month away).

Studio 60 is the flagship program of National Broadcast Systems — both thinly veiled covers for Saturday Night Live and NBC. Angry over the cut of an offensive sketch, the head-honcho and creator of Studio 60, Wes (Judd Hirsch) loses his cool and interupts the opening segment to rant about the creative stillness of Hollywood, a rant which gets him fired by NBS’s head-honcho, a real dickhead played by Brian Weber, who isn’t impressed with the corrective actions Amanda Peet takes to save the studio’s image, involving bringing in a hot-shot actor/writer pair to save Studio 60 — Bradford Whitley as a recently relapsed coke-head, and the dude who played Chandler on Friends (what’s his fucking name? don’t fucking care do I). Including the two male leads, many familiar faces from previous Sorkin projects show up in various roles, and the show seems pretty sharp, although a little rushed (not surprising given how much needed to be fit in this first episode). Will I make an effort to watch this show regularly? No, I’ll probably wait for DVD (Battlestar Galactica it isn’t!), but it seems — so far — to be an excellent and amazing combination of Sorkin’s other two television projects.

… it doesn’t mean you can drive a car.

Of course, old age could also be a contributing factor.

If this had happened to a twenty-year old, I would’ve said, “Driving while stupid!” but it’s long been my contention that driving skill — if one had it, that is — deteriorates with age (not much of a problem for the slew of sixteen and seventeen year olds I’ve been encountering on the road who clearly have no driving skill to start with).

I’m for annual driving tests when people start hitting “old age” — seventy-five or eighty-ish. And, y’know, the usual rhetoric about executions for younger people who run red lights and shit.

That was Patrick Henry, in probably the most memorable speech of America’s early years, declaring, “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

But that was back when Americans cherished their freedoms and didn’t take them for granted, before they didn’t care what happens to their civil liberties and constitutional protections provided they can still watch “American Idol” and have air-conditioning, while bitching about having to go vote every two years.

Meanwhile, want to meet a country whose citizens appreciate their freedoms and don’t take them lightly? According to the State of the World Index, the freest country in the world is …

Estonia?

I know I was like, “Estonia?”, but on reflection, it makes sense — here you have a satellite “vassal” nation of the Soviet Union, a state it existed in for some forty-odd years, and to which liberation and democratic rule only came within the last fifteen years or so. Those who remember the darker times appreciate that which now they have. In other words, this country is sinking faster and faster into the can.

HT: Hammer of Truth