That era ended a long time ago; nobody on a percentage basis watches legacy media any more, almost everyone clicked off. The microscopic fraction of the population who still watch, actually LIKE the five permitted media stories. So changing what's produced would be very risky; might lose the very last few viewers, might not gain any return viewers.

The author is trying to do "startup strategy" in an industry that's in "shutdown mode", that's a tough one.

Hah! Anecdotally, I've had the opposite experience watching the show and running a startup in the valley. Most of my co-founder friends have seen it and see it as a sort of catharsis.

"We aren't the only ones, this happens to everyone, so much so, there's a show about it"

And then there's the inspirational, "Let's have the team coalesce around a deadline and jam out something that's never been done before", episodes. Also very real.

We were talking about mass hardware production to support shows that we directly produced or contracted.

To be honest, I wish that I was able to go back and tweak our execution: if the Justin.tv show was just a stunt, I would have had a platform ready to go when we launched it instead of waiting six months to build it!!

What worries me though is its only a matter of time until someone figures out they can do this with a startup reality show. If you think the prospect of a silicon valley reality show is bad now (glorifying the supposed "startup lifestyle", launch parties, founder drama, etc.) just wait until the network has a significant stake in the startups that they are promoting...

I think web/tech is more exciting to live and build for the intellectual types, but much like computer gaming, it's just not meant to be a spectator event. 90% of footage would be pale faces behind a glowing computer screen, where as retail is a lot about vendor selection, sales and deal making.

That said, I think you could replace those products with anything — what's interesting is watching them overcome challenges in their respective industries. Who knows, could learn a thing or two. :) Some startups need to stick their neck out of the bubble once in a while and breath something different... Perhaps there wouldn't be less me-too-point-oh.

I have bent over backward to try to stoke his interest in new/social media, but he wants to make the expensive-looking TV show with big-ticket sponsors first and collect money off it later. Nobody wants to cough up tens of thousands to sponsor a media brand that hasn't quite gotten off the ground. If he would give me a free hand and go the Vaynerchuk route I could make this work for him easily. Instead he's wedded to a financially top-heavy business model which combines the worst of all worlds.

He was an innovator back in the 90s of things like diet informercials but he just does not get the idea of audience-building on the internet and is avowedly technophobic. You would laugh/cry if I told you how this plays out day-by-day.

I know it's kind of antithetical to 'hacker news', but does anyone else have experience of dragging an unwilling boss or co-worker into a modern paradigm? How did you get them to let go of the anchor that was visibly sinking the venture?

This is a great example of how funding and connections are more important than a good idea. It gives you the luxury of changing direction if something doesn't work. And ultimately, the proximate cause of every business failure is running out of money. The lesson here is to gain the trust of wealthy patrons who are willing to give you a $50K check just to see how you fail.

It's already started.

http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/04/reality-tv-gets-startup-obs...

[1] https://therealdeal.com/2020/06/08/wework-may-abandon-welive...