Blank Slate Blurs Web/TV Series
Oldteevee just got a little more like newteevee as cable network TNT announced Blank Slate, a new “microseries” that will debut in September. Variety reports that the 80-minute crime thriller will be chopped up into twenty, four-minute minisodes that will air during primetime.
Blank Slate is about an amnesiac who gets implanted with memories of the recently dead; it’s produced by Dean Devlin (Independence Day) and will star Eric Stoltz. Acura has signed on as a sponsor and will have its cars featured prominently in the minisodes (to get those sneaky commercial fast forwarders).
The show will have an overly-complicated release schedule on the network: It will be spread out over five back-to-back hours of Law & Order over two days, across two consecutive weeks (I know, it’s confusing). But Slate will also be available on TNT.tv and on Acura’s site, where the “microseries” will become a web series.
Other than Acura getting primetime ad time, it’s difficult to see why the show is being released this way. To get the full story, you need to watch the series in order, but who wants to sit (or sift) through hours and hours of Law & Order? It’d be much easier just to watch it online, where you could plow through them all as quickly or leisurely as you like.
This is, however, the latest move by a Turner network to be more like the web. During its upfronts, the company announced that TNT, TBS and TruTV will feature TVinContext ads, which provide relevant ad targeting based on the content of a show.
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[...] microseries ad campaign Lucky Chance during commerical pods on TNT (the network is also doing the Blank Slate microseries). (Multichannel [...]
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— 9:12 AM on July 8, 2008
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[...] there’s two new shows from TNT: Blank Slate from Acura and Lucky Change from [...]
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— 7:39 AM on July 15, 2008
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[...] Chance isn’t the only microseries TNT will be running. Blank Slate, produced by Dean Devlin (Independence Day), starring Eric Stoltz and featuring Acura cars, will [...]
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[...] strategy behind the series (and likely the similar-sounding upcoming series Blank Slate, sponsored by Acura) is to serve as a “Tivo-killer” to keep viewers from fast-forwarding [...]
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— 8:12 AM on July 30, 2008
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I really want to see an Internet series take off and have critical mass and critical acclaim. I’m just skeptical when it comes to cable TV retro fitting TV shows for the Internet. I hope they get this right and hit a home run.
I don’t think this will ever work…something like Apple TV may be the only one thing able to pull something off…traditional TV watchers aren’t interested in these kind of snippet TV.
“Blank Slate”??? What about the already-existing series “Blank Slate,” about an amnesiac with a dark history produced by itsallinyourhands.com??? How can this possibly go on without somebody saying something? This is an outrage.
The series within a series “Blank Slate” is one of the most suspenceful & intriguing crime dramas I’ve ever seen. I hope they make it a series all it’s own!
What is going on? There is already an online mini-series called Blank Slate on itsallinyourhands.com about an amnesiac who is haunted by the memories of dead people! They totally took the idea…