Just a quick post to thank everyone who came out to the L.A. Mashup last night. We had a full house of very diverse professionals from the television industry as well as writers, marketing and web folks. I loved meeting some of my longtime readers in person for the first time and putting faces/voices to emails and IMs. The panel rocked in part because I think everyone was coming from such different places within the television industry, which is in the midst of so much upheaval and transition.

Rob Thomas (who was incredibly sweet, humble and gracious) in some ways represented the old guard -- high quality scripted shows with big budgets (though compared to other scripted shows, I'm sure "Veronica" gets peanuts). VMars is great television - and he has come up with something totally original within the teen TV genre -- a program that doesn't rely on the soap factor (The O.C.) or focus completely on coming of age (Freaks And Geeks, My So Called Life). Instead he has created a mystery series, a teen TV Noir infused with a little bit of both of those elements. And while Veronica Mars has incredibly active fan communities online and maintain relationships with those communities, The CW is still playing catch up when it comes to VMars online. It was funny because when Rob was talking about this cool interactive thing he wanted to do with fans, he spoke about it as a feature on the DVDs first, then kind of mentioned it could be online, too.

Amanda (Current TV) and Kelli (Dreaming Tree Films) represented the movement of giving young people (either teens or in Current's case 18-34s) the opportunity to tell their own stories and be a bigger part of the conversation. I was happy to hear that Current is really expanding its "citizen journalism" efforts (my words, not theirs) and coming up with more easy ways for people to participate from around the world by having people react to news events with short pieces of footage that could be woven together to tell a story instead of having to be able to construct a whole 5-7 minute segment. As long as MTV keeps its news & docs department small and not the primary focus of its networks, I think Current has a nice niche to fill.

Dixie and Rajiv are both part of the MTV family and working on very successful projects. I really think that MTV is going to become a leader in the virtual worlds space - they already have, which speaks to the power television still has. If you build something cool for fans to do, they will come. As much as I'm not a fan of "Laguna Beach" or "The Hills" content-wise, people love these shows -- they are a guilty pleasure for many, just like reading gossip blogs. Give those people a place to go and actually live out that rich, popular, catty fantasy life and they will obviously show up and play (the numbers are bearing that out). The same rabid fan base exists over at The N -- it's the most watched cable network by teen girls. They love the programming - and I mean love the programming. The N's viewers aren't casual channel surfers, they are girls who are passionate about the characters and the storylines, so much so when a character on "Degrassi" died, their website erupted with virtual vigils, arm bands for avatars and a general outpouring of collective grief in their forums. The N has created an online community that caters to this audience (2 million uniques a month). And while they have trailblazed with their Emmy-winning web features like The Video Masher, guess what, they would have the same degree of passion and interactivity if they just had message boards. It's something web geeks tend to forget -- community is about people connecting around their passion -- the tools are secondary.

The coolest part of the panel is that the panelists seemed to be learning from each other. It was truly a mashup in that everyone was really coming from unique and different perspectives within the industry. I also love that Rob was drinking red wine during the panel, embracing the casual spirit of the venue and the conversation.

I also loved meeting the women of Writegirl. Having mentored teen girls in the past at Teen Voices, I know how powerful the experience can be. They even inspired one of the AV guys who told me after the event that he was a writer and wanted to connect with them in some way.

My very good friends at Gorilla Soapbox recorded the whole event (audio and video) and will be posting it online as soon as it's edited so everyone who couldn't make it or doesn't live in Los Angeles can attend virtually. So stay tuned....

Posted by anastasia