CBS may soon eliminate the need for screenwriters entirely; the network has begun creating entire shows out of Twitter accounts.
After the strong debut of S#*! My Dad Says, CBS has agreed to launch a second sitcom based on a Twitter feed. Shh … Don’t Tell Steve, based on the Twitter account of the same name, will follow a 20-something as he tweets about the escapades and sayings of his drunken and unemployed roommate Steve. Sample tweets, and potential plot lines, include:
- “Steve, just now, yelling from our bathroom: ‘Total Asparagus pee, bro! Come smell!’”
- “Steve meekly playing Modern Warfare. He’s using the sniper rifle, his go-to hangover weapon because his character doesn’t have to move much.”
- “Steve on what he did while I was gone: ‘Took a chick home and fucked her on your bed. Just kidding … nothing.’”
To orchestrate such layered material, Twitter maestro Ashton Kutcher has signed on as an executive producer.
When a network snatches shows from social networking sites and signs on the guy who hosted Punk’d to take the helm, it has reached a new low. But—because we’re good souls here at Good Feed—we’ll help CBS out and pitch some of our own ideas for Twitter-inspired sitcoms:
Ryan Seacrest—The 13th most popular man on Twitter, Seacrest could use some more visibility. He only produces a handful of shows, hosts a daily national radio program and a nightly television news program, and American Idol. On the Ryan Seacrest Twitter program, an esteemed and seasoned anchor, like Charlie Rose or Brian Williams, would sit and read Seacrest’s tweets of the day. We would get to the core of the renaissance man with tweets like “Cute vid of a dad teaching his babies how to dance. I mean … who doesn’t like dancing babies??” And, “Insane day, will have 12 mins to get from radio studios to idol shoot today … it’s gloomy in east and out of this world hot in west today.” At the end of the half hour, Andy Rooney would commiserate on what Seacrest’s tweets said about the American zeitgeist that day.
The White House—Who has time to watch a five-minute news segment? If CBS adopted a news program that stated everything The Whitehouse Twitter posted verbatim, we would know everything we needed to know about Washington in 140 characters. At that rate, the news anchor could rifle through 30 news stories each minute.
Ashton Kutcher—This could air immediately after Shh … Don’t Tell Steve. With almost six million followers, Ashton’s Twitter feed would fit right in to prime time TV. CBS could even counter Glee by working his tweets into a cappella songs. Like Glee and American Idol, Ashton’s Twitter show would have varied theme music for different tweets. They would sing new wave singles for his posts on fantasy football, diva classics for when he tweets about Demi Moore, and Beatles songs when he tweets about his bowel movements.