I’ll assume for a moment that many of you already know what The Skeptologists is all about. Since the start of the blog, many new readers are undoubtedly trying to figure it out. Today, rather than writing a long blog here, I’m going to invite you to take a look at the newly refreshed Skeptologists Website.

This past weekend, I spent a few hours giving our Official Show Site an overhaul, adding details about the theme of the show and giving some never released details about how the program will be presented.

You don’t get it for free however, It will cost you a minute or two. Once you’ve read through the website, please take a quick moment to make a comment on the “Your Turn” page so that those who come through afterwards (including TV execs and agents that we send there) will understand just how much support we have for a skeptically-minded TV program.

Visit the Official Show Website at www.Skeptologists.com

I hope you enjoy the site, and look forward to your comments.

If you see any typo’s or encounter technical problems, please feel free to email me directly.

Enjoy!

I ran across a comment on the blog that I wrote last week. It caught my interest.  

Ejdalise wrote:

Not to say you guys won’t get there, but . . . I don’t know; perhaps it’s where I live, but I don’t often meet people who would be considered your target audience. Quite the opposite, in fact.

I thought about it for a bit, and wondered, why would he make that type of comment?  It didn’t take that long to realize that what is happening at least in terms of Ejdalise, is that many people don’t really understand our goals and intentions for this program, and thus think that we are aiming to create a show that is aimed at our smallish, yet active skeptical community. This is just not so.  

In order for a TV series to be successful in a “real” way that’s judged in the scale that will even make a blip in the Nielsen ratings, one must create a program that is consumable on the national, dare I say, international, scale. Too bad really, because that means that we have to create a show that must be, hmm how to say this correctly well… just easily understood by the general TV viewing audience. 

If we went out and created a TV show “For the Skeptics by The Skeptics” We wouldn’t last a season, probably only two episodes.  Forget the major networks, it wouldn’t get off the ground. As big as the community is, we’re not nearly big enough…yet.

I find most TV pretty dull, and rarely educational.  I have my favorites, generally divided into two categories: Mainstream network sitcoms that I can watch while working away on my laptop without fear of missing an important plot point.. A handful of network weeknight prime-time shows. Then there’s a few shows that I truly anticipate and watch, Mythbusters is surely one of them, I love to learn how things are made, how processes work and I really enjoy learning about new science, though most science shows seem to be re-hashing of pretty out of date science “wow” bits.

This sounds like I’m bashing the very industry that employs me, I’m not.  We all understand that in order to be successful in business you need to provide your customer with goods or services that they want, and in this case, our product is televised entertainment, and our customer just happens to be the majority of the TV viewers.  Well, that’s the hope anyway.

The Skeptologists needs to be a show that non-skeptics can watch and really enjoy.  A show that teachers can comment on in their 5th grade class the next day to their students. That the assembly line worker can joke about to his buddy over the din of the machinery.   And.. I didn’t forget.. A show that skeptics can watch, be entertained and educated by.   That’s a tall order. I want to create more than a show, I want to create a culture, and carefully injected into that culture is hopefully a few small bits of a molecule that will grow within the public.  An idea that thinking things through with different ideas and opinions is good.  Questioning things that are taken for granted, and sometimes just stopping to wonder why.

We all used to do it so much as a young child?  Why this? Why that? At some point along our growth, we stopped asking why, and got concerned with how much? What’s in it for me?

I know what your thinking, “Oh no, the show is going to be boring and dumbed down.” Not so.  My aim is to assemble a program that’s got great, new, relevant science, fun and interesting tests and experiments to determine and come to conclusions right before our eyes.  The show is about a cast of characters who all come from different but amazing backgrounds and a way to watch as they all bring their own perspectives to bear on the subjects.

The show is about The Skeptologists and without giving away the format, it’s about how they interact to come up with solutions to problems and challenges.  It’s not about the things, it’s about the emotions, the wonder and the creativity that’s required to be a good thinker, scientist and skeptic.  It doesn’t matter if they are performing high level equations or simple arithmetic, that’s not the story.  The story is why we do things this way and why some people choose not to take the time to consider why, or how.  

The world is full of people taking advantage of other people in many different ways.  The Skeptologists have the power to show people how to think better, deduce, use logic and critical thinking.  Maybe we’ll start to find that people just need a common ground in which to discuss tricky topics.  It could be that they never gave it much thought, or perhaps, they didn’t dare bring it up for fear that their own doubts would be looked upon by others as negative. By creating The Skeptologists culture within our show, our viewers can talk about the show… but hey, look at that, what they are really talking about is how they’re suddenly skeptical about something. 

So who is our Target Market? I’ll be bold and greedy and say: Almost everyone. That’s a really tough demographic, but I intend to give a bit to everyone, and my amazing cast and crew will deliver the goods… I’m sure of it.

Well, a lot.  As our production team quietly works towards doing just that, the rest of the world is unfortunately left in the dark, at least as it pertains to “The Skeptologists.” I, and  a handful of others are blessed (or cursed) with the knowledge of the what could be in store for our dutiful production.  That knowledge comes with a price. (And I’m not talking about exorbitant production costs)  We know because we are the ones that are actively doing the work to make this happen. We keep the details of the production quiet for many reasons, among those are the fact that the show is evolving, and we’ve got the right amount of cooks at this point.  The other biggie is that we want to protect the hard work that our entire cast and crew has given to this project by making sure that some other company doesn’t come along and grab our format. (Though even if they did, good luck! We’ve got the Skeptical Dream Team so neener neener neener!)

It’s a strange thing, TV.  First you have to come up with an idea that’s exciting fresh and different.  But, yet, not too out of the box, because on-one want’s to take a BIG risk on a show. It has to be like something that’s currently on the air and working …that’s code for getting good ratings and making the advertisers happy.  If you put together this “new fresh idea” The next thing you are going to hear is “Well how do you differentiate your show from XYZ show currently on the air?”  It’s seems you just can’t win.

We must tread a thin balancing rope between being different, but yet being bankable.

We know what sells, It’s what’s on TV now.  The themes and styles of the shows that you are currently watching however, are already old news to the TV production environment though.  Many of us are already onto the new things, they just haven’t aired yet.

As we move into the jingly cheery month of December, virtually all of Hollywood shuts down, save the small glowing screens of a handful of skeptics who are gearing up to write the first eight episodes of the TV series.  While everyone else is bringing on the holiday cheer and ringing in the New Year, Brian Dunning, David Vienna and myself have our work cut out for ourselves.  Powerful forces in the industry have asked us to prepare more detailed information about the show and it’s future.  This is great news folks! We’ve made it past the first several hurdles. And you know what? We’ve found a group of people who really see the merit of the show and are genuinely interested in taking this ball and running with it! Come January 3rd, when the big slick and over-styled wheels of the entertainment industry spin back up, we’ll be there, outlines in-hand ready to fight the battle of mediocracy with our show that aims to bring intellect, science and just plain old common sense to the common TV viewers. Do we have a snowball’s chance in he…  Ah, in er. Well.  Yeah, we do.