Recently I had a very intelligent lunch conversation with peers about the MTV show Punk'd. For those of you who don't know, Punk'd is a show that Ashton Kutcher started that is kind of similar to Candid Camera, but with celebrities. Kutcher hires actors to put celebrities in really ridiculous situations and usually worries them or makes them very angry and then walks out and laughs at them.

Anyway, our conversation began because someone had recently seen an episode in which Ellen Pompeo (Meredith Grey on Grey's Anatomy) was punked and said some pretty weird things. The episode involved a waitress (actress) hitting on Pompeo's fiance while serving them lunch. Pompeo goes on to say some pretty malicious stuff about stabbing the woman and watching her bleed everywhere. Pretty weird. The link to that on YouTube is here:

One of the things that was brought up last night in class was the relationship between television and online content. I believe Murray was hoping for a relationship where viewers can directly affect and change content. Although this is apparent in shows such as AMERICAN IDOL, I really don't see it reaching beyond that. However, shows DO listen to input from their fans in order to better accomodate and attract their fan base. For instance, XENA Warrior Princess developed a large following of lesbian viewers who read deeply into the "subtext" between Gabrielle and Xena. Once producers realized this, they tended to play out this subtext more and more, subtly giving viewers more to work with. The last two seasons of XENA are COMPLETELY different from the first two due to this change in target audience.