From the TV to Your Classroom

For those who were huge fans of the show "24" it will be a sad spring. It has been declared that the show will show its final season and end in May of 2010. This show has been broadcasted for nine years, after September 11, 2001. According to Brian Stelter from The New York Times, this drama series on Fox, "offered counterterrorism as entertainment" as Jack Bauer would do whatever he could to protect the lives of Americans.
This show was a huge trademark for the Fox network and really brought in a lot of viewers, the entertainment president Kevin Reilly said that it was a hard decision for all of those involved in the show.
The show really captured America's attention during its first season after the September 11th attacks. This season included an "explosion of a passenger plane and an assassination attempt on a presidential candidate". At the time of the premiere, a review in the New York Times said that this show was a "deadly convergence between real life and Hollywood fantasy".
However, lucky for fans, '24' has gone beyond the television screen, in more ways than one. Even after the season's finale in May, "24" might possibly become a feature film, and definitely will be brought into the classroom and textbooks. "The series enlivened the country’s political discourse in a way few others have, partly because it brought to life the ticking time-bomb threat that haunted the Cheney faction of the American government in the years after 9/11" (Stelter). A professor at Georgetown University taught a class called "The Law of 24" and said that "24" acted as “a tool to foster public debate to help the public and the government of all nations to consider the proper limits on democracies in their efforts to combat terrorism.”
This goes to show that there are some television shows that aren't just pure entertainment, but also informative. Even so much as to have courses on it at top universities shows that it really is about of real life stuff. While a lot of shows use the idea of "interactivity" it has never really come to this point, where it has been taken outside of the home and into a classroom. There are shows that have become films and a lot of classes require watching shows for a discussion, but never an entire class. I think this type of interaction and taking the television show outside of the home (where its mostly watched) and bringing it into the classroom is a great way to promote a television show, but also to discuss real life situations.