The Water Cooler's gone viral

I'm an avid fan of the award show. Yes, in many people's eyes they are overly-long, self gradulating, tedious waste of three hours. But I find them endlessly watchable and always fascinating.

So during last week's Grammy Awards, the celebration of the best in music, I found myself doing more than my usual watching and dvr-ing. I also found myself doing a whole new kind of interaction. I found myself constantly updating my facebook to address my opinions on different performances, clothing choices, and choices awarded.

I was in a mini-facebook war over the opening number featuring some of music's biggest voices as they tried to out-diva each other in a Aretha Franklin tribute. She ruined that song, she shouldn't have sung, etc.

Then as Lady Gaga emerged from her egg, I was commenting on the song versus her attire.

Then Eminem didn't win album of the Year, and there was surely a spike in conversation.

For the last few years, programmers, network executives, and television producers have been increasingly worried and aware that young people (18-34 is the demograhic) are not watching these kinds of large scale event television moments. But I would argue just the opposite. Special event TV has hit a high in terms of viewers over the last few years, and that's entirely because of this current Internet generation.

Instead of merely sitting and watching a show and having something to talk about in the halls or at the water cooler the next day, we talk about it as its happening. That's the kind of thing my mother would argue isn't really possible because she doesn't think multitasking like that is possible, but I think it's become a generational thing.

We've become so inundated with images, sounds, that we've learned to handle so many of them at once. We can text and listen to a conversation, do homework with the TV on in the background, and tweet and watch TV. Network programmers, don't fret, we're still watching your shows, we're just dealing with in a different kind of way.