In the age of instant gratification and news as-it-happens, the idea of a long-pre-scripted show boasting that its storyline is “ripped from the headlines” is a joke. And when websites and even TV shows like American Idol allow audience interaction to direct content to some extent, a show that merely tells a story is, well, a little bit quaint.

TV shows obviously need to evolve to keep up. To that end, they should occasionally adopt the “Choose Your Own Ending” principle we all learned from children’s books: Just before the last commercial break, the audience is asked how the show should end. Say it’s ER: Does Dr. Kovac miraculously save his hemorrhaging patient, or does he accidentally sew a bedpan inside the man’s stomach? A fat, sweaty clown bursts in to the hospital…does he have flowers to cheer up the kids, or an AK to go after the overworked doctor who botched his meds? (Either way, hilarity/bloodshed ensues.) The audience then goes online to vote during the commercial, the results are instantly tallied like an MTV next-video poll, and after the break the winning ending unfolds.

The possibilities are endless, and would only involve shooting one quick alternate ending per episode. More adventurous shows could film multiple, divergent plotlines and allow the audience to choose a direction at each commercial break (then putting the unaired clips on their website for fans to log on and watch a completely different “what if” storyline to only further confuse fans of Lost).

Sitcoms could take it a step further by broadcasting live, taking audience suggestions in real-time for comic props or situations that throw the script a little off-kilter (sort of a higher budget Whose Line Is It Anyway?, only with much larger audience participation, less sense that you’re just watching the exact same thing over and over, and 150 percent less Drew Carey — don’t ask us how). Hey, it couldn’t be any less funny than a pre-scripted According to Jim.

Sure, the idea would inevitably backfire when Jennifer Love Hewitt snaps after her 5,000th “Show us your tits!” request, but by and large, it would keep TV a lot fresher than it currently is…and tide us over until TV manufacturers catch up and allow us to pick alternate endings directly on our remote controls.

What do you guys think? What TV overhauls would you like to see?

[photo by Isaac White (http://www.cymagen.org/)]

Since we as a nation obviously can’t get enough of To Catch a Predator (it runs so frequently it’s bound to become its own network any day now), and the news media just can’t get enough of reporting on a presidential election that’s still 18 freakin’ months away (um, yeah, we’re kinda guilty of that, too), why not apply the concept of Predator to the political arena? Ashton Kutcher’s not really doing anything, so he’d probably be down for a show that targets politicians in a publicly humiliating, and possibly campaign destroying, way.

Sure, the news media already follow these candidates wherever they go, fighting over every juicy crumb of gossip and scandal looking for the next Monica Lewinsky, but no one’s taking the initiative in creating that scandal. That’s where Kutcher’s expertise comes in — setting up situations that can’t be escaped except through embarrassment and ridicule.

And unlike Predator, not all the set-ups have to be as predictable and illegal as trying to have sex with children (although were that to happen it would probably help us make a more educated decision come November ’08). Some can merely be morally repugnant. A few ideas…

• An actor masquerading as a Yemeni oil baron asks to set up a private one-on-one meeting with a candidate to discuss making a “sizable donation” to the campaign. Once the meeting begins, the oil baron makes it very clear that in exchange for $20 million, donated from hundreds of independent untraceable sources, he needs to be able to tell his “associates” that the candidate promises to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by 2009. Oh, wait until you see the look on that candidate’s face when he’s told there are cameras taping the whole thing!
• As a candidate who might have had a couple of adult beverages is driving away from a fundraising dinner, a hired stunt man hurls himself against the hood of the candidate’s car. Will he pretend nothing happened? Order his driver to step on it? Get out and actually help the poor man (who would then admit to sleeping with the candidate’s wife to make sure there’s no happy ending)?
• As a candidate is going through airport security to fly to a campaign stop in the Midwest, an actor pretending to be a TSA agent asks him to step out of line for a personal inspection. Naturally, the wand has been set to go off repeatedly, and the guard has to ask the candidate to strip down, getting more and more physically invasive with his use of the wand. If the candidate isn’t making for good TV by getting naturally upset, a supervisor will step in, pick up an article of the candidate’s clothing, and remove a small bag of white powder he’s planted inside.

What compromising scenarios would you like to see presidential candidates forced into on national TV? Let us know!

Why the hell are we still putting up with bland network programming censored by standards that haven’t been upgraded in 50 years? The Sopranos, Entourage, Nip/Tuck, The L Word…the best shows on TV all have the freedom to do basically whatever the hell they want. Just imagine how much more entertaining Full House would have been if Bob Saget had been allowed to use his stand-up material instead of the sappy scripts they shoveled on an unforgiving laugh track. We’ve all got cable and DVRs to record shows whenever they happen to air, so please, producers, take your best products off the big networks to media more forgiving of the occasional F-bomb or full frontal nudity. Consider just a few of the unregulated possibilities…

• CSI: Juarez: Forget the glitz and glamour of Sin City — this show follows the real cops south of the border as they investigate murdered tourists, get paid ten times their salary to look the other way for drug kingpins and occasionally report to work to find a colleague’s severed head on a pole. With no rules and characters that mysteriously “disappear” in the middle of an episode, it’ll make you thank your lucky stars you have that cushy rent-a-cop gig at the food court.
• The World Series of Strip Poker: You just know they’d go bare-assed before they’d lose the shades. The producers would need to even out the gender discrepancy a little bit, of course…And for the love of God, Moneymaker, stop bluffing!
• Competitive Eating with the Stars: It’s a game show that’s one part celebrity worship, two parts aggravated gluttony. Can you choke down more hot dogs in 60 seconds than Kirstie Alley? We doubt it! Make sure to save some room to go Manwich-a-Manwich with Stephen Colbert (remember, it’s the skinny ones that can really pack it away). Make it to the finals and go head-to-head with the Great Regurgitator, played by Calista Flockhart.

One of the most common ploys to boost ratings on a struggling show is to hype the impending death of an important (yet somewhat unloved and completely replaceable) character. But the networks have mostly wasted this golden opportunity by operating on too small a scale — stealing a page from the comic book model, they should make the kill-off a huge universe-wide event.

The answer is The Executioner — a hit man or serial killer who travels from show to show, knocking off characters past their sell-by date as he goes. Another week, another unsolved homicide. They could get anyone to play him, really, as long as it’s Ray Liotta. (He’s got some spare time on his hands now anyway.)

We all have specific characters we’d tune in to watch die. Our humble suggestions (don’t make us beg): (more…)

With February Sweeps drawing to a close, we’re grabbing our popcorn, flipping on the tube, and…letting out a collective yawn. We all know TV networks will do just about anything to get better ratings this time of year, so why haven’t they considered trying to make their shows interesting? This year we at Rolling Stone decided to do something more than just complain about the state of affairs: We’re offering up our own ideas for change, a new one each day this week, to make TV worth watching again. Ignore them at your peril, execs!

Episode One: The Mash-Up

Everyone loves a good mash-up, so it makes sense to try to adapt that music model to the TV world. And we don’t just mean having a guest star or two give a token five minutes on a less popular cop show — we want to see full-on blending of plots and characters. We want Zach Braff getting once-overed by SVU’s Chris Meloni for the gruesome triple-homicide of his Scrubs co-stars with a scalpel. We want to see Charlie Sheen as The Bachelor. We want American Idol’s Simon Cowell strapped to a bomb that Jack Bauer just can’t quite defuse in time. OK, especially that last one. Just be sure it’s a reality show.

Episode Two: Come back tomorrow to see how “The Executioner” will spice up Monday nights.