ShineReveille, Brillstein Developing Twitter-Based TV Show

ShineReveille International and Brillstein Entertainment Partners revealed Monday that they are partnering with Twitter to develop an unscripted TV show that will revolve around the latter's microblogging platform. According to the companies (which provided few details about the new show), the show will "take the global Twitter phenomenon to the next level, putting ordinary people on the trail of celebrities in a revolutionary competitive format." It was conceived by novelist/screenwriter, Amy Ephron (sister of Nora), and will be distributed by ShineReveille.

However, after the show generated a significant amount of buzz online (much of it negative: for example, a "#notwittertv" hash tag was listed among Twitter's "top trending topics" on Monday), Twitter co-founder, Biz Stone, in a posting on the company's corporate blog, downplayed its involvement in the project. "The Web is abuzz today with talk of a 'Twitter TV show," Stone wrote. "I'm even getting folks asking me if they can audition. Indeed, there are a lot of interesting developments happening in the television space--MTV, G4, CNN, E! and various independent production companies are all leveraging Twitter for fun new projects. There are probably a bunch we don't even know about yet...There is no official Twitter TV show--although if there were it would be fun to cast!," Stone continued. "In dealing with networks and production companies we sometimes have simple agreements. Regarding the Reveille and Brillstein project...we have a lightweight, non-exclusive, agreement with the producers which helps them move forward more freely...Twitter is very open. As a result, thousands of different applications, Web sites, and mobile interfaces have been created by developers. These different approaches add variety and relevance to Twitter and in general make the ecosystem more interesting. However, Twitter's openness is not limited to the Web or even to mobile phones. During the 2008 presidential elections, Hack The Debate [see [itvt] Issue 8.06 Part 3A] showed us how Twitter could make television interactive and possibly even have a democratizing effect on the medium. The power of Twitter was harnessed to create new, compelling, and engaging programming. CNN was an early innovator with Twitter too. Our openness made it all possible. Twitter's open approach might have the power to transform television--the dominant communications receiver worldwide. We're very excited to see where these experiments take us."