TV OD starts tonight, and seems pretty much right up our street. Hosted by Matt Edmondson, it's about all the online comments people make about television shows. Since we love Twitter and telly, we have a sneaking suspicion this could be one of our new favourites. Still, we wanted to know more, so we got Matt on the phone to find out...
People online can get very angry about television.
"Digital Spy isn't the worst offender for people getting angry and leaving comments. I think it's partly that thing of people getting passionate about TV, particularly with cult things. People get very opinionated about it. And I think people think they know what they are talking about. If someone disagrees then it's nice to have a lively debate, isn't it?
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"Will I be getting comments from the DS forums? I don't know, sometimes they're a little bit worthy on there. We will be looking at many different places but I think predominantly our main source most logically will be Twitter. People do tend to tweet along with TV shows. I'm as much of a fan of doing that as the next person, so when we're all watching Britain's Got Talent or Ex On The Beach we will be tweeting about those shows. I'll be doing my, 'Here is my funny stuff that I've found', but also, 'Here is what everyone else thinks'. So we will be looking at Twitter mostly because people's reactions to TV shows are generally quite pissy. You really get to the heart of what people think or feel about a particular show."
TV OD isn't really anything like Telly Addicts - but that's not a bad thing.
"Sadly I am not going to be the new Noel Edmonds. I'm sorry to crush you there. Our show is not really a panel show or a quiz show. It is more like a funny Points of View, that's the best way to describe it. It is me doing what I have done a couple of times before on The X Factor and The Apprentice. It's a little bit like what they did on TV Burp, but we sort of have the added advantage that we are not just looking at clips of the TV show, we are looking at what people in social media, online, the forums like your own, were saying about those shows."
It's not about naming and shaming commenters.
"We will have people who are obsessed with a show and love it, people who hate a show and are passionately or amusingly articulate about the reasons why they hate it, and everything in between. So weird observations about things, people who may find someone fanciable, an unexpected weird crush. Whilst we may be focusing on one element, someone may have unintentionally noticed something else. It would be quite boring if it was about people who slag this show or that show off.
"If you think about a show like Ex On the Beach, it generates really polarising views; some people love it and think it's the best show they have ever seen, some people hate it and think it's the worst thing they have ever seen and some people really enjoy making jokes about it, so it's taking all of that stuff and finding the best examples to give a recap of a particular show."
Celebrity guests will be shown comments about themselves (awkward).
"Our plan is to invite someone who has been on TV that week to have a chat with me. It will be sort of an interview with them being led by what people think of their show or them on TV or their character or an actor in a show. That will again range from people who adore them and are their biggest fans to people who cannot bear the fact they are on TV and have pedantically picked out that they always pronounce a particular word a certain way or they love their choice of socks or they had a weird dream about them. We'll find the most interesting and most diverse range of comments.
"I think we live in a world where people are quite robust about stuff. Whether or not it is me presenting it to them, they've already seen it. If someone tweets you to tell you that they love you or that they think you're a s**t, you're going to see it. So all of this is giving people their right to reply. We'll be using the tweets as a springboard to interview them about whatever is the crux of the tweet."
Matt has had his share of weird comments on Twitter.
"Sometimes people draw me and send pictures of me, which is a bit weird. The best time I get abuse is when I cover someone else's radio show. People don't like change. You know when your Facebook changes and people go, 'Argh, I hate the new layout, it's awful, I'm going to leave Facebook again.' Then a week later they can't remember what the old Facebook looked like. It's a bit like that. If you cover someone's radio show they're so used to hearing the same person every single day that it's almost like you've broken into their house, office or car and forced them to listen to you. You could do your best show ever and they will hate it because you weren't the person they were expecting.
"Some of the tweets I get are so funny because they're so outraged. 'Who is this man?' 'Why are you on the radio?' 'Where is the normal DJ who is meant to be here?' Those are my favourite ones in terms of abuse, I like those ones. They're written with such anger and bile that it's really hard not to find that amusing. Linguistically they are written in an indigenously funny way. You have to distance yourself and think, 'They are calling me all sorts of things but they have done it in a very articulate and funny way'. I don't mind it at all."
TV OD isn't just the new Gogglebox.
"I think Gogglebox is brilliant. Our show is really different from it. I think because it's the only other show in TV currently that's talking about what's on TV, it's quite easy to go, 'It's a bit like Gogglebox'. I guess in the sense that we're talking about what's on TV and what people have been saying about it, yes they are similar. But when you watch the show, you'll think this couldn't be further from Gogglebox. I would say ours is more similar to what Harry Hill did with TV Burp or what Charlie Brooker does, or a show like The Soup in the US. It's more that sort of execution, it's man and clip plus Twitter comments, rather than going to film actual people with their responses."
TV OD begins tonight (June 6) at 10pm on ITV2.
