Don’t read this Hollywood Reporter article if you’re eating. It’s by Andrew Wallenstein and it’s all about HBOlab, described as…:

…an unlikely off-the-radar experiment under way for nearly a year now at Time Warner’s prize programmer. With an 11-member unit willing to try just about anything online, the TV industry’s prime mover is finding its footing in the amorphous world of digital media. And if you mistake any of them for the rabble on YouTube, you’re excused– that’s where some of the HBOlab staffers were recruited.

The article is packed with one ridiculous quote after another from Michael Lombardo, president of programming and West Coast operations at HBO and HBOlab manager Danila Koverman. Ridiculous, if they weren’t so creepy and manipulative.

HBO has succumbed to the panic that is spreading over the entire television industry with regard to the internet. Fearful of being eclipsed by the new medium, and desperate to insinuate themselves into the relationship between artist and consumer, they are now setting about trying to figure out ways to duplicate that which has caught the fancy of the web-surfing public and/or utilize the talent and methods of the user-generated community to their advantage. HBOlab is just one grotesque example of this pandering.

“There is a whole different group of artists who work in the digital space,” (Lombardo) said. “They’re not performers in clubs, they’re not pitching scripts and they’re not channeled into the mainstream with agents.”

And…

HBO is not saying how much it is investing in HBOlab, but sources say it’s a pittance, likely less than the expense of one episode of its hourlong dramas like Big Love.

And…

“People who are creative in digital space also have ideas that can work on the traditional television landscape, and that’s exciting,” Lombardo said. “What the right way of cross-pollinating is, we’re not clear, but there’s going to be intersection of some kind.”

Now, hearken back to our July 23 posting, (“Whistling Past the Cyber Graveyard“). We had just spent four days in Montreal and we sensed that television was all confused about how they felt about the internet– they feared it, they praised it, they wanted desperately to make it do their bidding, they sometimes seemed to wish it would all go away. And they sometimes wanted to make everyone think they had it all figured out. We said:

They seem to be focused mainly on re-making the new medium to conform to the old model, with superficial, cynical attention paid to the new conventions. And they seem to think that there are terrible flaws in the new model that only they can remedy.

And we also said:

Rather than play to their strengths, the TV people seem intent on bending the new technology to their will and on transposing the old ways onto the new media. You’ll have, for example, hybrid tv/web execs “creating” organic videos.

There are two things that are particularly irksome about the executives in articles like this one: 1) They seem rather proud of the fact that they’re not spending any serious money on these projects and 2) they seem intent on concocting laughable cover stories about how the projects came about and how they were executed.

One of the HBO execs, “went online and surfed around to find people whose work exhibited potential.” And Koverman says, “We’re trying to ‘run away’ from the traditional Home Box Office brand.” And check out the fantasy that they’ve manufactured concerning the “Seven Minute Sopranos” video! It’s at the end of the article! It’s worth reading the entire piece just to get to that part.

They seem to be going about all this the wrong way. And what is with all this fiction? Are they afraid that their target demo will find out just how establishment their “viral” videos are? Do they think that “artistic purity” will be sacrificed if we find out that the folks who created “Seven Minute Sopranos” cooked up the whole idea while sitting around a bowl of fruit with major HBO executives on the 30th floor of Time-Warner Center?

They tip their hand once in a while. One of the lines is particularly telling, “Scrawled side by side on one white board are ping-pong win tallies opposite Web site traffic statistics.” Try as they might to present the image of rebellious, Silicon-Valley, bohemians, apparently it still comes down to ratings, or in this case, “Web site traffic statistics.”

We’re of the opinion that the folks who create real, honest, heartfelt videos for consumption on the WWW should continue to do so and continue to view it as yet another creative outlet. Ignore the television execs. Ignore the hit counts. Continue to appreciate the tremendous opportunity the WWW offers to produce and distribute your art without the help (or the hindrance) of the gatekeepers that are the major MSM conglomerates. Don’t panic. Because of the technology, the internet is, quite literally, boundless. Try as they might, the studios and the networks can’t crowd out the little guy. And take what the execs say about “user-gen” content with a grain of salt. They seem to be simultaneously in love with it, but they also seem to want to diminish the public’s opinion of it.

And, as long as we pay careful attention to the ongoing Net Neutrality debate, there will continue to be a wild, open space, free of restrictions and free from the dominance of major studios, networks and others.

You’ve been buzzed.