What wireless can learn from The Wire

The HBO drama The Wire ended its five-season run Sunday with a brilliant, deeply moving finale that affirmed the series, at least to my mind, as the creative zenith of American narrative television. A number of heartfelt and insightful media eulogies have already popped up--New York magazine's exhaustive is particularly worth your time if you're a fan--so I won't bother adding to the chorus here. But in the hours following Sunday's broadcast, I've continued thinking about the final episode as well as the series as a whole, in part to distill what it is that made The Wire such a resonant and immersive viewing experience…and in part to determine whether that kind of experience can ever unfold on a mobile handset. Here's what I concluded.

Content is only as good as its platform allows it to be. The five seasons of The Wire tell one extended, densely interconnected story--over the course of roughly 60 hours, the show documents nothing less than the irreversible decay of the American inner city and the institutional structures that long ago failed it. More than any series before it, The Wire exploited the serial structure of the primetime television format, with each successive episode zooming further back to illustrate a larger and more complex world. Simply put, it's a story that could only be told on cable television. Mobile has its own inherent strengths and weaknesses as a narrative medium, and content providers must understand, navigate and exploit them to deliver a compelling experience. But translating the epic scale and sweep of something like The Wire to mobile? No way. The size of the screen will always dictate the size of the story.

Mobile content will never generate water-cooler buzz. The minute The Wire faded to black Sunday night, I called another diehard fan to discuss the episode. It was the first time all season we talked immediately after the credits rolled, because during the previous nine weeks, HBO opted to make each episode available on-demand the Monday prior to the episode's scheduled Sunday primetime premiere--only the finale was withheld from the HBO On Demand archive. And while it was gratifying to watch each episode nearly a week in advance of its scheduled premiere, it killed the communal experience that usually accompanies great television--with fans watching The Wire at all different times of the week, and with some viewers shut out of HBO On Demand access entirely, it became virtually impossible to discuss the show without divulging potential spoilers. Water-cooler buzz is dependent on everyone watching the same show at the same time the night before: On-demand content, for all its obvious appeal, makes that impossible. Mobile, with its own wealth of on-demand content and a consumer paradigm predicated on "snacking" at various moments in the day--not to mention differences in content availability from one operator to the next--simply can't recreate the collective viewing experience that gets people talking. Which, like it or not, is a decisive factor in whether programming is a hit or a miss.   

Mobile content won't replace broadcast television, but it can complement it. Prior to this season's January premiere, HBO debuted three digital shorts spotlighting the origins of some of The Wire's most intriguing characters. The vignettes--first aired on an Amazon.com page promoting the DVD release of the series' fourth season before moving to HBO On Demand, the HBO website, podcasts and affiliate portals--were produced by The Wire's creator David Simon, and in the span of mere minutes they managed to tell a complete and satisfying story that further enriched some of the most compelling personas on television. If you care about The Wire, these shorts were mandatory viewing, because without them, you're not getting the whole story. This is the essence of what a mobisode should be about: Not only should it serve to promote a regular primetime series or feature film, but if done well, it can expand the mythology of a fictional world, enabling creators to explore plot and character details otherwise eliminated by the formal constraints of the storytelling process. Among its other triumphs, The Wire proves the creative possibilities of multi-platform narrative are limitless--once other producers see the light, perhaps consumers will as well. -

P.S. Want to discuss The Wire in person? Join me and my colleagues Sue Marek, Brian Dolan and Lynnette Luna at the annual FierceWireless bash taking place April 1 at The Palms in Las Vegas during CTIA Wireless 2008. Click to RSVP.