Dramamentary
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[edit] Melding Journalism and Entertainment
dramamentary's drama-mentary drama-mentary's
An unconventional pairing of fiction and news in media content. Complete with product placement, dramamentary's are being billed as the latest product from US broadcast networks to engage viewers in the Internet generation.
Pioneered by CBS Entertainment and hard-charging television producer Susan Zirinsky (48 Hours), dramamentary's (or drama-mentary's) are on the frontier of melding journalism and entertainment in online projects for prime-time shows. This unusual hybrid offers a new model for "webisodes," a genre the broadcast networks are scrambling to master in the YouTube age.
Zirinsky says merging the genres doesn't undermine the series' journalistic value. "What we want is, in an interesting way, to impart a nugget of information," she said. "The drama? It's just the appetizer. The meat of the course is still what we do for a living.
"Are some people going to feel squeamish about it?" she added. "You bet. But I think as the world evolves, there is the ability to bring in a dramamentary, if you will, into existence, if the people behind it have their moral compass intact. We are genetically newsmen. We are genetically incapable of abandoning our core values."
"A lot of the Internet stuff is a recitation of what we already know," said Ghen Maynard, the CBS executive vice president who oversees the network's new media programming. "To do it in a way that's really original to what is airing, but not a boring recitation of facts — that's really what we're going for."
