NBC.COM, Why do you suck so much?

I’m a big fan of the West Wing. I don’t watch much TV, but this show got its hooks into me and I’m just addicted to it.

So much so that I refuse to watch any of the current episodes. I save them up, and buy the season on DVD so that I can then binge at my leisure. I joke that it’s a problem, but so far I’ve been able to keep it isolated to the DVD’s. God help me if I ever get up to speed on the show, and start basing my schedule around the weekly episodes.

Given how many awards the show has won (and how damn GOOD it is), why, WHY does NBC do such a craptacular job with its website? Is anyone even paying any attention to this shitty-ass site? I’m curious where NBC is throwing its money/time/webmasters – because it’s certainally not here. Whoever’s maintaining this site certainlly doesn’t care about the content at all – they’re just copying and pasting.

I’m not one to really go all apeshit about a television show. So this should say something about how much I like the show, and how strong the writing is. It seems to me if the West Wing excites someone like ME this much (who isn’t that into TV programs to begin with), then there’s got to be some larger fan base out there. A sizeable, loyal one, at that.

This strikes me as a squandered opportunity is all. My guess is that if NBC utilized the media at their disposal (high res photos, inteviews, video clips, portions of the DVD extras) and created a space for fans to interact… they’d get a ton of traffic. They’d create an environment for their die-hard fans to congregate, communicate, and in a really clinical sense… talk about the product.

I’m guessing that were they to spend more time making this site attractive to fans, they’d end up seeing a greater return on their investment. But hey, this is just my thinking. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe they’re making a shitload of money from those 120×90 tile ads that they’ve embedded into the damn page. Shrek 4-D? That’s totally what I was looking for, when I came to this site. And West Wing coffee mugs and holiday ornaments? Hot damn, sign me up.

It’s a sad thing, to see such a strong show get so little love.