Office comedy is a niche that has been evolving since Scott Adam’s Dilbert cartoons essentially created the genre in 1989. For many people stuck in boring jobs, working with idiots, or otherwise feeling underappreciated at work … office humor has provided an antidote. The trend towards poking fun at office related dysfunction has inspired the highly popular TV show The Office, as well as the new line of highly entertaining ads (and Monk-e-mail website) from CareerBuilder.com. Clearly, office humor is in. ScriptThis is a new site building on this trend to launch an interactive television show written by anyone and designed to "bring the funny." Their blog describes the show as:
An interactive internet television show based in an office. What makes it interactive is that the scripts for every episode are entirely user-written. Anyone can write a script using our characters and send it in, with a chance to see it come to life. Each month, we pick the best three scripts, professionally produce them (at NO cost to the writer) and put them on our site. The world votes on these three shorts, and the best wins a prize – in addition to having their cool idea come to life!
The first episode is online now, and they are currently accepting scripts from aspiring screenwriters, or anyone else interested in contributing a short episode. According to David and Frank, creators of the show, the concept is meant to roll out gradually over the next two months with the eventual idea being to get new episodes out as quickly as every two weeks. While this time lag may present a roadblock to generated a large loyal audience, the team at ScriptThis hopes to launch other concurrent efforts to keep the level of buzz going and also try to tap the world of consumer generated video as well as just script writing. For now, check out ScriptThis, watch the first episode – and then submit your script for your very own chance at online fame. Fortune to be determined …
Note: This piece was originally posted on my marketing blog at the Digital Media Wire site.
I think the Mary Tyler Moore show, which took place the a television newsroom predates Dilbert in the office comedy niche.
Good point – I don’t think I’ve ever seen that show, but assuming that Dilbert created the genre is probably an overstatement on my part anyway …
My goodness – how kind of them not to charge the writer for turning their script into programming that generates ad revenue;)
I wonder what they would get if they promoted a wiki-based collaborative scriptwriting model? Based on a similar experiment at zefrank.com, I think it would probably be a case of “Too many cooks DO spoil the broth!”
But it could be interesting.