The Impact of Actor Blogs

The following was an excerpt from a great article called “We’re In This Together” from Stylus Magazine. I thought you all would enjoy it.

Today, NBC’s The Office looks like the luckiest show on television: it grew from an underdog, underwatched late-season replacement last spring into a mainstay of NBC’s slowly recovering “Must See” Thursday nights, all in less than a year. But think back to the start of the fall, when the show started its second season and struggled in the ratings. As part of the show’s promotional efforts, writer B. J. Novak—who also plays Ryan the Temp—started a blog, which ran for a few weeks on TV Guide’s website before he handed it off to Jenna Fischer, who plays Pam the Receptionist. You might think this was a publicity stunt set up by their marketing department, like dozens of other show blogs (see: the “nurses’ blog” for Grey’s Anatomy) but I can say with 99.9% confidence that both Novak and Fischer are the real authors. Why? Because the blog is really dull.