I posted this on http://www.streamys.org/2010/04/12/open-letter-from-the-executive-producers/ but I’m waiting for it to be accepted by moderators, so I’m posting it here.

Guys (referring to the Producers) this is so hard for me to say because I consider you all my friends. But this apology is simply not enough. I really tried to come to peace with all that went down, but ultimately the problems are too great …

I had the wonderful chance to catch a Hammer Don’t Hurt Em improv show when I was visiting the states last, and their treatment of their web audience gives Sandeep’s response a great deal of credibility in my eyes. (Sandeep is the creator of “Legend of Neil” http://www.effinfunny.com/legend-of-neil and an actor in The Guild)

Sitting the small and intimate theatre setting, they had set up a live stream for a web audience to watch too.

At one point, they let the web audience be the catalyst for the next segment of improv. Despite the small delay in time and extracting a response from the users who watched online, they paused amiably, and waited. Several ADD members of the audience began yelling things, getting ever so slightly impatient, but Sandeep and Brooke both let it ride out, and let the web audience have their say.

At the end of the show, they thanked the web viewers as heartily as the people present in person. Sitting in the theatre myself (a strange reversal for me, since I was never around or in the vicinity of these events), I loved that I would have loved to be online for that show. It gave the viewers online the feeling that they were genuinely part of the show, and appreciated.

Isn’t that one of the points of creating for the web? To touch people (hilariously or emotionally) directly, instead of going through the machinations of the bloated media machine?