My friends and neighbors have all been
getting into ABC’s LOST lately and have been telling me I’m really missing a great show. I actually don’t watch that much broadcast TV and when I do it’s usually cable networks like science channel, history channel or comedy central. I spend much more time online and watching web TV shows and you tube videos. Now I have seen the Lost parody videos on youtube by the fine brothers.

While I wasn’t interested in adding a TV series to my things to do I decided to google lost and see what’s out there that could at least give me the background on the show so I could have a better understanding and even be able to participate in the conversation.

I searched around the ABC LOST site and found the untangled video they just released

http://abc.go.com/primetime/lost/index?pn=index

As I watched the video I recognized a part that had used dolls that looked just like the ones used by the fine brothers.

At first I thought maybe ABC hired the Fine brothers to produce the web clip, which I thought was cool of ABC. But then I went to the fine brothers site and there was a post on their blog about how ABC basically ripped them of and completely copied the Fine brothers Lost parody series. http://www.ravenstake.com/blog/

Now why would ABC do this? I mean they already have all the budgets and perks and talent. Why would they need to risk trust and credibility by stealing an idea?

This is the part about social media that the big brands just don’t get. They think it’s all about letting the people watch their shows online like at hulu.com. Just take the same shows from TV, throw in a couple of other scenes that were cut and distributed them online. This is all good but it misses the big and more important part about social media – the SOCIAL part.

If I were a TV producer I would as a first step hire the Fine brothers and let them lose. Then I would open up to the social media creators and give them clips and tools from the show to create new takes and mashups. And I mean ABC should open up all the assets and let these people create variants, remixing shows, like a LOST meets Desperate Housewives or something. That could be funny.

But this move by ABC is just bad taste and counter to the spirit of social media.