Puberty Blues takes Australian television drama to a new level and becomes interactive
SOMETIMES a show needs a little boost to back up it’s great cast and story and Puberty Blues may have hit the mark.
SOMETIMES a great cast and good storytelling just isn’t enough.
Following the innovative, interactive techniques employed by US network ABC to help propel Scandal to the No 1 show in the country, Channel Ten is following suit with the second season of its award-winning drama Puberty Blues.
Beginning with tomorrow’s episode, fans will be able to access materials from the show online in the form of letters shared between characters, diary entries and school reports, with new items added every week.
It’s a nifty tactic which has proved hugely popular on various shows in the US — including the cable smash Girls — and Ten hopes it will boost ratings for Puberty Blues after it premiered last week to a national audience of 533,000.
According to one of the show’s head writers Alice Bell — who penned a lot of the online material, including letters written by Debbie (Ashleigh Cummings) to Sue (Brianna Harding) — it’s a way to take viewers to a new level.
“It just seemed common sense really ... to have all of this technology with the internet and social media and make the most of it,” says Bell.
“It was actually a lot fo fun to create this whole other interactive world and for me it was interesting to try and get inside the minds of these teenage girls and go back to that time when you’re young and at school.”
Various content will be released every week by Ten and made available to fans on the Ten website tenplay.com.au.
A similar tactic proved a massive success for the ABC network in the US last year when the characters from the hit political drama Scandal began live tweeting throughout every broadcast.
The show subsequently jumped from the middle of the ratings pile to become the No 1 show in the US.
The network’s Entertainment boss Paul Lee later described the new move into fan interaction as a breakthrough in broadcasting.
“Social media is simply the most powerful tool for direct engagement ever created,” he said during an address at the Australian Broadcasting Digital Media Summit, adding; “Viewers are passionate about their shows and not shy with their opinions. They want to be a part of the story.”
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