The following review of BoingBoing TV isn’t an entirely positive one. But in the interest of full disclosure, it’s only fair to mention that

1. I’m not nuts about online news shows in the first place,
2. as a commenter below pointed out, it’s the first episode — give ‘em time to develop, and
   
3. I am probably just mad that I’m not doing something similar myself.

BoingBoing TV‘s not necessarily bad. Not bad like the idea for the BoingBoing reality show, as mentioned in the LA Times article about BB’s new venture. Christ, that would have sucked. A reality show about four people who, by definition, spend a lot of time staring at a glowing screen? And an “American Idol”-style show (also mentioned in the Times article) would have sucked worse. Each round would be 30 seconds long with hundreds of people auditioning. Call it what you want, but four uber-nerds approving posts is never going to make for action-packed TV.

BoingBoing TV’s not bad at all … it’s just really not that good, either. It just doesn’t do anything special for me. At least Rocketboom‘s got the pretty lady with the hot hot accent, but I’m not nuts about that show, either.

I love the Web because I don’t get my news spoonfed to me in tidy, advertiser-friendly gulps. Sure, blogs are clotted with advertising and PR spin, but by clicking and jumping around, I can get a bunch of different input and make up my own mind.

I love BoingBoing for being a resource for Web weirdness in tiny, separable chunks. I don’t mind a day where only one post works for me and the rest are crap. But a TV show — even a five-minute one — with only one good story is a lame show. Rocketboom has the same problems. It’s linear. You have to sit through the boring stuff, even if it’s only 15 seconds long.

Ever try talking to a garden shrew about something that’s not edible? That’s my attention span after a career spent online. Fifteen seconds of boring is fourteen too many.

Admittedly, I’m not a traditional TV watcher. I use Netflix as the poor man’s TiVo and get all my news online. I only catch the Daily Show in its chunks on Crooks and Liars when Digg brings it to my attention. I don’t like talking heads coming at me through the ether. I like clicking around, expanding, contracting, making my own opinions.

Apart from its mainline to the pulse of the Web’s weirdness, I love BoingBoing for being on top of evolving stories that matter to me. With production lead times, makeup, whatever, this show can’t do that — no show can.

Whatever I am looking for in a TV personality though — Mark Frauenfelder isn’t it. He’s wooden. Stiff. He doesn’t convey the wonder and weirdness of the material he’s presenting very effectively, and his lines seem canned.

It’s okay, Mark. You have a , you’re a great artist, and you’re responsible for one of the best blogs on the Web. You can’t present on TV and Buzz Aldrin can’t dunk on Allan Iverson. Don’t let this sting you too badly. You’re three for four here, and that ain’t bad at all.

Xeni Jardin’s much better at being a presenter — but she’s been on TV a fair bit and had lots of NPR practice, too. She’s photogenic and telegenic and halfway turned herself into a female Max Headroom by now. For her, bridging the gap from blog to videoblog is like minding the gap in the New York subway — it takes effort, but not on a conscious level.

Not all awesome things transmit well from one medium to another. The Hitchhiker’s Guide series made it from radio to book form pretty well, but that’s about it. Ultimately, the reason BoingBoing TV doesn’t work for me for the same reasons interplanetary teleportation is a bad idea and the Watchmen movie’s going to suck: excellence in one place usually means crapulence in another.

BoingBoing’s one of the best blogs online. It’s transformed the medium, helped blogging mutate and shape into what it is today. Without BoingBoing and its four editors, blogging would be a lot different. It works as a filter for the Web because its four editors are so passionately involved in fusing art and culture somewhere else. These folks have created a blog where the runoff that comes from lives at the forefront of art and technology can be recycled into something beautiful and useful. But making a whole show about it’s a little much.

Ultimately, I’d rather see the blog stay awesome or mutate and improve as opposed to draining its energy into something that’s been done already and doesn’t work for me that well in the first place.

This review is not the people crying when Dylan went electric. It’s not a diehard Batman fan panning Burton’s first film. This review is a diehard Stones fan hearing them dip into disco with “Emotional Rescue.” Nice try, but please get back to rocking.

Take a look at it here, see for yourselves.