The concept of willfully collapsing media windows isn't entirely new, or successful. On Oct. 14, 1963, The Advocate, a play about Sacco and Vanzetti written by Robert Noah, father of my colleague Tim Noah, opened on Broadway. The same night, Group W television stations broadcast a previously recorded version of the same play, with the same cast, in markets like Boston, Baltimore, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco. Theater owner John Shubert, who made one of his theaters unavailable to The Advocate after the TV simulcast plan was announced, called it "the beginning of the end for the American theater." But the play's producer, William Hammerstein, told Theater Arts magazine, "I'm convinced that if we can bring the theater to television audiences, we can bring more television audiences to the theater." The TV broadcast didn't kill the theater, or establish a new paradigm. The play closed five days after it opened, a victim of lukewarm reviews.