Crowdsourcing Gets An Emmy

I’ve used the example of Star Wars Uncut for a lot of things, both on this blog and in my professional life. To me, it’s one of the coolest examples of what the long tail can do when it works together (plus, I also thought it would have made a really nifty use for the soon to be defunct(er) Google Wave). Well, add one more notch in it’s belt – winning an Emmy:

The finished product, “Star Wars Uncut,” won an Emmy last week in a relatively new category, interactive media, heaping new attention onto a project that its producers call a “user-directed broadcast.”

The award is all the more remarkable because, in a world in which television heavyweights likeHBO and NBC mount big-budget campaigns to win Emmys, “Star Wars Uncut” is just a hobby for its creator, Casey Pugh, a 26-year-old Web developer who lives in Brooklyn.

“I’m just so happy that the Internet is taking this step into the broadcast world,” he said in an interview, adding, “It’s partly because broadcast is letting it in.”

The cool part of the story here is how the Television Academy is embracing the interactive channel – truly blurring the lines between content and channel in terms of defining what is considered produced. The new category is a graduation from the pat-on-back events (which are worthy, by the way) like the Webbys. These are all very valid awards, but just as journalists have been forced to recognize bloggers for their value, it is great to see professional television writers do the same with Web producers.

As the producers mentioned during their acceptance speech at the Creative Arts presentations, held just before the main broadcast, “I guess the force was with us.”  That, and hundreds and hundreds of really engaged fans who have the power of content production.