ABOUT ALTERNA-TV.COM

alterna-tv.com is an online journal and blog that offers reviews, features, essays and opinions on Television and New Media.

Launched in September 2007 by Pittsburgh writer Anthony Letizia, alterna-tv.com has a vision of the television future that goes beyond the traditional. It believes in quality programming that challenges the intellect and resonates with the viewer. It does not accept that ratings alone should factor into a show’s long term prognosis, because in this day of the Internet and a fragmented television market, a streamlined approach to marketing can result in revenue generation different than the traditional “broad” approach of the past.

It also believes that, in the same way the motion picture and music industries have experienced grassroots-movements, television is positioned to experience one of its own. The Internet offers anyone with a quality idea to produce their own webseries, and recent independent television festivals in New York and Los Angeles give industry “outsiders” additional opportunities.

Thus although alterna-tv.com offers traditional reviews and essays, it likewise strives to focus on the industry and the changes that both should and will come in the future. It is this “focus on the future” that distinguishes alterna-tv.com from other online websites that report on television.

Specific areas that encompass the scope of alterna-tv.com include:

—Innovative television shows of an intelligent quality that help “define our times” such as 24, 30 Rock, Battlestar Galactica, Chuck, Gossip Girl, Grey’s Anatomy, Heroes, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, Jericho, Lost, My Name Is Earl, The Office, Pushing Daisies, Reaper and Ugly Betty.

—Innovative television shows that break the barrier in terms of utilizing other mediums, including webisodes (Lost), webcomics (Heroes) and fictional websites that add value to the overall experience of the series.

—Quality television shows that are no longer on the air but “officially” continue in other formats, such as comic books and graphic novels (Angel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly).

—How the television industry operates, changes taken place within it as well as the changes that should due to challenges faced.

—The online webseries and the New Media practitioners who create/produce these innovative television-style shows, as well as the future of this budding industry.

—The independent television movement epitomized by the recent rise of independent television festivals.

—Television essay anthology books and how they demonstrate that quality shows do indeed challenge our perspectives and intellect, makes us think and feel as well as entertain.

—Quality shows from the past and how they influenced and paved the way for current incarnations (Moonlighting, Twin Peaks).

Although still relatively new, alterna-tv.com promises to build as it goes along, and hopes that its readers will join in on the journey at hand: a journey leading to a new and better television landscape in the not-so-distant future.