New, but Not Improved

This is a new blog post. The one I wrote yesterday--that one is already old. If you'd opened this website about half an hour ago, before I posted this, you'd have started re-reading yesterday's entry and then quickly stopped yourself. "Shoot," you'd have said, "what am I doing? This is old. It's a waste of my time."

Old is a waste of time. It just is. We value new because it relieves the boredom. New gives us something to do. We have to explore, experiment and become familiar with new. Once we've done those things, of course, it becomes old. That's the way it is with things. People are different. People are not like cars and iPods. People can make themselves new. My wife does this. New attitudes about herself, about life, new ideas about what to do with her life. She is constantly offering up things to explore, experiment and become familiar with. This is a good thing, and certain people are able to do it.

A mistake many people in my business--TV comedy--make is confusing people with things. They don't make shows for old people to watch (and old to them means anyone over 35--sorry) because they believe old people are done. They are through changing. They know what brand of toothpaste they like, they know the kind of detergent they want for their clothes, and you can show them commercials from now until the cows come home and nothing will relax their grip on that tube of Crest.

But that's just not the way it is. Look at me, for example. I'm 51, well past what TV defines as old, but I'm doing something new. I want to dunk. That opens me up to a whole new line of dunking-related products. A year ago, at 50, I would have had no interest in a pair of jumpsoles. But now, at 51, when I'm even older, I'm looking at ads for the damn things, trying to find the lowest price. Imagine. An old person wants something new.

TV executives also do not like to hire old people to write their shows. They believe that, like a windup toy, the older person has been sitting on a shelf, unchanged from the last time they took it down to fiddle with it, and when they wind it up and set it on the floor, it will do the same old tricks. But people can have new ideas. They can have new experiences that give them new things to say. Couple that with the experience and expertise to know how to say them and you'd think you'd have a pretty hot commodity on your hands. Sadly, no.

TV executives have had these attitudes about their audience and their writers for a long time. They haven't changed. It's getting old.