One of the
moments that struck me most in Professor McPherson’s extremely timely chapter, “Reload:
Liveness, Mobility, and the Web” was her understanding of the web’s liveness (or,
it’s “feel” of such) associated with a “sense of casuality”
(202). Drawing from Jane Feuer’s influential work, McPherson argues that one of
TV’s most defining factors (especially when comparing the medium to film) is it’s
sense of “liveness,” and, as such, this liveness is touted heavy-handedly by
the television industry (despite the fact that most of this promoted liveness
is, in fact, an illusion). In contrast, the internet is immediately read as exemplifying
liveness, many interpreting liveness “as an essential element of the medium”
(202). This casuality brings with it a feeling of control for the web surfer, a
feeling that their cursor, in real time, is their exclusive guide through the
immense World Wide Web- a feeling that McPherson names “volitional mobility”
(202).
When thinking about
what to write for this post, I pursued MSNBC’s website, curious about the
inevitable change that had occurred on the site since this particular chapter
was published in 2002. Once on the site, to my surprise, a bright red button
announced to me that a COVID-19 update from Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti was
happening live. Excited and amazed to see such an instantaneous and impossibly well-timed
moment of the ever illusive “liveness,” I immediately clicked on the button. As
I watched Mayor Garcetti answer questions about homelessness relocation and
implementing the new “Slow Streets” program from reporters calling in remotely,
I realized that in this moment, there was no sense of “casuality” associated with
this piece of liveness.
Screenshot of my computer screen during Mayor Garcetti's live COVID-19 update
I realized that I
was so struck by this argument because so many of the moments of liveness on
the internet at this moment- from this update from Mayor Garcetti to my
favorite chef cooking meals with other fun people on Instagram live to donation
based dance classes coming live from closed studios all over the country- are
in response to the global pandemic we are all facing, and the social distancing
practices that are required as a result of it. The virtual closeness replaces physical
closeness, and no longer does “the cursor seem. . . to embody our trajectory,
an expression of our movement and our will,” but it instead becomes a constant reminder
of our inability to physically move in the ways we once did (203). The feeling of control so vital to the concept of volitional mobility has vanished, at least for me, as a result of this pandemic. Perusing the internet now may sometimes "activate [my] very desire for movement and change," but I'm in the midst of understanding how to mobilize that desire elsewhere (207).
I just found out
that Joe Exotic’s life is being made into a scripted TV show starring Nicholas Cage
as Exotic, and this is not even the first scripted series on him announced within
the last year (https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/joe-exotic-nicolas-cage-series-tiger-king-1234574979/). It is fascinating that three serialized
projects are being made about the same person in a year, which makes me wonder
1-What else they are hoping to add to an already spectacularly excessive
entertainment content that is the Tiger King 2-What does this
glorification of a documentary that has so many ethically questionable practices
in it tell us about the contemporary landscape of TV production?
In her article, Lisa Parks rightfully points out how we should think the technological convergence between TV and internet in relation to the politics of gender, race and class. She calls the resulting new industrial model around personalized TV as “ flexible micro casting” (Parks, 134), and argues that this model functions by turning a certain mode of individuality into profit. It commodifies social distinctions and creates a cycle by pushing certain content to the viewers who are assumed to fit into a social group or niche, while keeping the illusion of individual choice at the same time. She analyzes the classical network response to this new convergence era through a case study of the return of quiz show, then looks at two other examples of convergence era TV, the Oxygen Media and Den.
Even though her argument makes sense, I find myself a bit disappointed at her analysis of Oxygen Media. She claims that differences between classical TV and internet are perceived in a gendered way: the former is associated with a passive female audience whereas the latter is directed towards a masculine viewer who is tech savvy enough to take charge and navigate the territories of digital entertainment. According to Parks, we can see Oxygen Media as an attempt to overcome this distinction and emphasize the presence of female audience in the convergence era. She acknowledges how Oxygen Media represents a mainstream feminism that defines empowerment through consumption and encourages women to shop instead of actually creating space for discussing structural problems and encouraging solidarity. It turns feminism into a profitable enterprise, but Parks is willing to accept that in return for the space they provide for female audiences. Do we need to make such compromises? Projects such as Oxygen Media brand themselves as platforms putting women to foreground and emphasizing how women’s media are “ubiquitous as air”, but all they really do is to normalize the idea that female audiences are only a niche, and do the exact opposite of what they claim to be.
Without a doubt, the strangest phenomena that I've experienced in relation to television was a partly facetious exercise that turned very real: a bracket made by a friend on Twitter to determine the best television show of all time, culled to a bracket of (if I'm not mistaken) 128 from a very long longlist. From the beginning, it was hopelessly divisive and maddening, which gave people such as myself who weren't nearly as invested a good deal of schadenfreude. Too many turning points came as the competition tightened, but the most surreal moment of all came late: in the round of 16, The Good Place, which was given a top 10 seeding by public voting and which overperformed even with that, somehow came from behind to defeat The Sopranos. Fortunately, the number 1 seeded Twin Peaks barely held on to best it, and no other matchup came close to that shock, but it seemed to define the entire proceedings as some odd mix of campaigning, possible bot manipulation, and plain recency bias. The bracket ended as it was almost certainly destined to: on the final matchup between Twin Peaks and Sesame Street, two immensely incongrous final competitors, the bracket runner left Twitter to a mass of confusion and never resolved the bracket. In essence, the bracket summed up all the contradictions that make up television for me, all of the odd patterns of reception and viewership without which television could not survive.
Perhaps the show that has most marked my development, aside from maybe Twin Peaks, was Mythbusters, which I watched up until the last few seasons, though I likely missed some of the early seasons' episodes. Looking back on it now, it's hard to easily encapsulate what made me latch onto it so heavily. The natural charisma and humor of the five hosts' interactions was a key factor, but just as important was the actual process of testing the myths. Though the show dispensed with a dedicated mythologist relatively quickly and just had the hosts and narrator elaborate on the myths, the sense of a constructed narrative remained, and much of it came out of the pleasingly step-by-step nature of the proceedings. While these were all presumably factual depictions of the Mythbusters' process, the documentary element was often subsumed by the simple narrative pleasures, all opportunities for both banter and extremely technical crafts and problem solving. The answer for my love for the show must lie somewhere in the middle, equally indebted both the human and the mechanical.
While it might be unfair to very briefly discuss a show I haven't seen, it's fascinating to think about how different the reception and popularity two incarnations of The Twilight Zone — the original hosted and conceived by Rod Serling, and the 2019 reboot hosted by Jordan Peele — differ. Without trying to make too broad a statement, the latter seemed to slip away from the public perception almost instantly, while the former was generally well-regarded and moderately successful even while it aired. Of course, the main difference is the sheer amount of competition for attention and viewership, only compounded by the latter airing on the relatively little-used CBS All Access. Even the presence of Peele, bringing both his extensive comedy TV experience and his newfound acclaim as a horror film director fresh off the splash of Us, barely seemed to make a dent, though the question of whether it would have been more watched had he had an actual significant hand in crafting episodes is up for debate. But there's a certain sense of diminishing returns to most any reboot, the idea of going back to the well that only fitfully works in the realm of broadcasting, and none of the episodes seem to land with any individual impact, something which the original show rarely lacked. Of course, my perception is skewed by the circles in which I run, but this sense of reception seems to affect all but a handful of shows.
Perhaps the biggest televisual surprise I've had in a long time was with the A Series of Unfortunate Events Netflix series, which unspooled the events of the thirteen books over three seasons. I watched all of them for the purposes of nostalgia, given the series' prominence in my younger self's book reading and the continued purchase it holds in my mind. While the events are largely reproduced faithfully, it's the surrounding material and added wrinkles that gave the show much of its heft. The creators, in essence, fleshed out and clarified the background, introducing the mysterious organization VFD in the first few episodes and putting Lemony Snicket as played by Patrick Warburton front and center. It's very much a series made for fans and those with a moderate to deep knowledge of the books, but at least from my perspective, it never felt like it distracted or hindered understanding of the most important parts, instead enhancing the sense of the strange world.
One of the few shows that I've seen while it aired in recent times was the second season of Big Little Lies; I had seen the first three or so episodes of the first season the fall after it first aired, but didn't come back to the show until just before the second season began airing. Though I didn't watch most of the episodes live, I did strive to watch them relatively unspoiled, and it provided an interesting dynamic in terms of the various narratives/tones that the showrunners tried to juggle. To be clear, the season felt like a mixed bag; on the one hand, the central storylines of fearful regret over the killing that the first centered upon felt like a rehash, with a too-clear antagonist embodied to the hilt by Meryl Streep. On the other, what I loved was the more conventionally pleasing, potentially meme-machine-tooled Laura Dern storyline, which embodied the "campy" pleasures that the show otherwise so studiously attempted to avoid. Was it the creators' intentions for this secondary plotline to take up most of the attention? Probably not, but these intentions felt mostly lost in translation.
One of the more fulfilling experiences I've had with a TV series in the past few years came from a rewatch of Arrested Development's unfairly maligned fourth season. As someone who loved the first two seasons of the show but felt a certain weariness for most of the third, I had initially approached the fourth with some trepidation. From my dim recollection, I remember liking it the first time, with the notable caveat that I found the show drastically increasing in quality as it went along. This time around, I loved it from the beginning, and indeed much of the greatness of the fourth season comes from its inherent rewatchability. The structure only becomes funnier when the viewer is already aware of it, the constant recursiveness of each main character experiencing their mishaps mirroring the essential sense of farcical doom that the series could capture at its best. I haven't seen the chronological, conventional recut, but I'd doubt that any configuration could be as funny as the gradual revelation of every single main character in Lucille's apartment through the course of the series.
I spent a few hours a week back or so experiencing the 2010 Tonight Show conflict between Conan O'Brien and Jay Leno, and it was in many ways revealing about the ways in which TV history can be told, especially considering I had little to no awareness of what was happening at the time. The first method was via an edited compilation of TV shows that explicitly dealt with the conflict, combining various sources, while the second was the extensive Wikipedia article, itself sourced mostly from Bill Carter's The War for Late Night. As might be expected, the latter was more in depth, carrying all the behind-the-scenes meetings that the former necessarily couldn't capture. And yet, there was still a good deal of merit to the former: not only were there moments that the latter didn't include for one reason or another, but there was also an engaging aspect to simply watching it unfold visually. Moreover, despite the video's jumbled chronology, there was a sense of watching the events as they happened — aside from a few clips used throughout, all were broadcast live, and thus gave the opportunity to experience these events as they were at the time. If television is inherently transient, we have the ability nowadays through YouTube, Internet Archive, and other formats to experience that transience in a retrospective fashion.
I hope you are all hanging in there! I am in the TV Studies scholarly Interest Group at SCMS, and they are currently holding virtual events since SCMS was cancelled. On Thursday, May 7th at 2pm CST/12pm PST, Eric Hoyt will be talking to Elana Levine about her new book Her Stories: Daytime Soap Opera and US Television History. I can forward the email with the details to anyone interested. Relatedly, Duke University Press, who published Levine's book, is having a 50% off sale until May 1st!!!!
I know the next couple of weeks are busy for people, but I figured I'd share!
Zoom Meeting ID: 985-7149-2863
Password: television
Has anyone else noticed that YouTube videos re-presenting or re-purposing TV content is interestingly material? Take Binging with Babish, for example, a cooking channel dedicated to making iconic dishes from film and TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzd0mLf366I. It is as if the Internet fulfills the desire for yummy 2D food to materialize into reality, even though it is itself a digital simulation. It also adds to the iconicity of the dish, sometimes in ways that the show itself had not anticipated. While the Krabby Patty is likely an intentional symbol for Spongebob, it's harder to argue that Carmella's ziti from the Sopranos had the same function in mind. And yet, when these shows go through the meat-grinder that is the Internet, they come out the other end with material symbols extrapolated. There are other channels that make miniatures of iconic TV sets, for example. I don't really have a conclusion or answer to this, just thought it was interesting and ironic that the Internet is material-driven in its remediation of TV.
I've been giving some thought to Tara's question at the end of class. After a semester of surveying the history of television criticism, how do I define television? The scope of "Television" makes this question nearly impossible to answer. We've seen how technological definitions of television are susceptible to deterministic assumptions. We've discussed how "flow," once so apt to describe the televisual experience of broadcast and cable, falls short of explaining modern phenomena like platforms and binge watching. We've tried to categorize Television based on form, content, and audience, all of which fail maintain their distinctions in the face of full-season releases and hybridity. It seems that "Television" has come to describe such a broad spectrum of contemporary media experiences that it loses most of its utility as an analytical term. I do, however, have a definition to push forward:
"Television" describes any electronic apparatus capable of receiving signals and decoding them in such a way as to present the intended audio-visual programming on a screen, or the programmed content itself.
I apologize for the delay in posting; Blackboard was being resistant.
Here we are! At the climax: post-tv. I'm glad that one of today's presentations will be about Tik Tok, because I can't help but think about Tik Tok and its creators in relation to the texts we read today. The 'top creators' of TT collect several million followers within a couple months. Many seem to be about sixteen, eighteen at the oldest. There is an unfortunate and much commented on prevalence of white faces among the most popular names--but as our presenter points out, there are important exceptions.
How does the explosion of TT revise the articles we read for today? Or does it represent an unrelated stream of post-television video content? Raphael's presentation takes an excellent first stab at this question, by drawing on the Parks & Christian pieces. One of the major points of comparison does seem to be the extant feature of the "archive" versus an experience of "liveness". When thinking about the turn to Netflix, Hulu etc as TV providers, the observation of a move to archive seems very accurate. Tik Tok does seem to recuperate "live" experience, however, with an algorithm that can freshly update you on trends and conversations that you're interested in. I don't regularly feel as if I'm reviewing work from a long time ago, it's rather that I'm rocketed into the middle of a party that doesn't really stop.
Which brings me to Professor Mcpherson's article, which I think points the way for TT's development much more accurately. It's about the "lure" of the illusion of "volition", in which a relatively pre-determined path would confer an experience of soft interactivity. Could anything describe TT's interface better? The ultra sensitive AI watches me watch the videos, and in doing suggests new content for me: I am interacting with a live-ish event mainly through the passive activity of scrolling. No 'likes' or 'cursor' necessary, and the breadth of content covers the tracks of this algorithmic guidance.
Speaking of 'post-TV' this week, has anyone seen 'Murder House Flip'? I am this close to getting into Quibi and was recommended this show, apparently a mind-blowing intersection of true crime, home renovation, and all the crazies imaginable... which is exactly what I need right now. I also heard one episode involves psychics that feng-shui the angry spirits out of the house, and despite losing all respect for this show after hearing this, I am still curious and intrigued.
Has anyone tried Quibi? What is it like?
In your small group, answer the following two questions. At least one group member should be prepared to discuss your answer to number 1 when we reconvene. We'll discuss number 2 in a more freeform way.
1. Pick a key concept or argument from one of the essays by Parks, Lotz or Christian. Summarize the concept/argument and find an example that illustrates the argument/concept in some way. Your example can confirm and reinforce the argument, or, alternately, it might function as a counterargument.
2. We've now spent 14 weeks collectively thinking through the history of U.S. television studies and about TV itself. Has your thinking about television and TV studies shifted at all and, if so, how? How would you define television as the semester draws to a close?
Amanda Lotz’s article provides highly detailed analyses of emerging technologies that enable viewers to have much more control over their personal television experience in terms of time and space and therefore redefine the medium from its network-era norm. Furthermore, she considers cultural implications of portability and mobility enhanced by this convergence of television and internet, and focuses on how mobile technology reconfigures concepts of home and work in both emancipatory and constraining ways. She contends that, after technology permeated work into all aspects of life, mobile television could be envisioned as a counter-way to tether entertainment to the integrated pattern of work and home.
Likewise, Tara speaks of the intensifying “dissolution between the spatio-temporal borders of work and leisure” towards the end of her article. She astutely points out a new phenomenon in the post-network economy, that is, television fans being more and more exploited for their free labor on the internet, which further structures viewers into the flow of corporate capitals. She contextualizes this experience in relation to the neo-Fordism. One thing I particularly like about this article is a constant vigilance that runs through phenomenological analysis of the experiential modalities of web-surfing, and this is what I find Lotz’s piece lacks when unpacking the ideas of mobility and immediacy without a cautionary note.
It is crucial not to overlook the ways that ideology masquerade as ontology in promoting and even hyping terms such as control and choice as well as discourses around them. Unlike Lotz’s embrace of the possibilities opened up by the post-network technologies, Tara, while deconstructing a distinct kind of liveness specific to the Web, keeps describing it as an illusion both in the fact and the feel of it. This rings true, especially in recent years when television becomes more and more associated with concepts including interactivity and agency, and one of the best examples might be Black Mirror: Bandersnatch that deliberately seeks to enhance participation of viewers and promotes the interactive experience. It is much easier to recognize the limits of agency under the disguise of a series of choices in this case as compared to those experiences of free will in video games, but it is difficult to see how far the medium would go to explore its possibility to establish itself as a pull medium. Anyway, it would be important to always keep in mind the shaping of discourses over what television looks like in the post-network era.
FromFleabag(Amazon) toMrs America(Hulu) to Insecure (HBO) toShrill(Hulu) to My Brilliant Friend(HBO), it's been a treat to watch high
quality programing, across genres, centered on complex and compelling female
characters with cares and realities that reflect various angles on women's
experiences. I find the limited series format really is a great bridge
between film and TV (from someone who doesn’t watch much TV at all). I also think we needed to reach the
era of narrowcasting for these stories to come out in our patriarchal society.
My take-away from this class might be that when it comes to the
ontology of TV, "Because conditions such as choosing among predetermined
options came first, they appear natural, and many theories of television
unreflectively assumed them to be inherently characteristic of the medium"
(Lotz 77). With the advent of interactivity and the slow death of broadcast TV,
TV reinvents itself, channeling the new opportunities and managing to stay more
than revelant. TV is on the web, TV is on streaming platforms, TV is at the gas
station, TV is online, TV is a bundle you pay for to animate the large
monitor(s) in your home with liveness. The stakes of the circulation of ideas are
too high and the concept of “TV” is embedded in people’s personal
information flow, so TV morphs through time and along with our technologies. I
am convinced it will never become an obsolete medium, but will rather chameleon
itself into the media needs of the era, both top down and bottom up. Thank you for a thought-provoking semester of TV Theory!
Professor McPherson notes that "emergent modes of experience are neither innocent nor neutral" (207). This reminded me of the promises held by so many technological advances and that inevitably have been absorbed into human-consumer lifestyles and turned into constraints and subjugation. The freedom of having a car turned into people having to commute for hours everyday to make it to their jobs. The internet allowing one to be connected at all times blurred the lines between work and leisure time, entrusting workers to be prompt and effective around the clock. Amanda Lots writes about the evolution of TV and its paraphernalia: "convenience, mobility, and theatricality redefined the medium" (50). As "Viewers gained greater control over their entertainment experience" they also become "attached to an increasing range of devices that demanded their attention and financial support" (51). Emergent modes of experience, Prof McPherson says, "model particular modes of subjectivity which can work all too neatly in the service of the shifting patterns of global capitalism" (207). Bottom line, "We might see out web-enhanced experiences of volitional mobility, scan-and-search, and transformation as training us for a new neo-Fordist existence" (McPherson 207). At the end of the day, the new devices and experiences that shape our lives are embedded in our capitalist economic model. Behind the convenience and ideals that may motivate us to create and adopt them lurk the new lifestyles that they shape for us, for good and bad, and always for capital's efficacious outcomes. There are empowering aspects to these changes, and our challenge is to not lose sight of them: as the freedom ideation of innovation becomes disorted by capital, we must remember the core ideal and not lose track of the freedom/empowerment at its root. Or as Professor McPherson writes, in conclusion of her analysis of the web's volition offerings, "While the 'click and buy' logic of DEN certainly overrides the ontology of volition mobility with an illusory ideology of volition, that these modalities are also part of the forms of the Web suggests a redemptive possibility, if only in the ways they activate our very desire for movement and change, a desire that might be mobilized elsewhere" (207).
Leaving aside the elements that have clearly shifted or dated, like the infancy and uncharted territory of the Internet and its approval vs. the television, Lisa Parks's essay, "Flexible Microcasting: Gender, Generation, and Television-Internet Convergence," possesses some crucial blindspots that somewhat undermine the main arguments in question. For the most part, Parks's general assertion that television and the Internet are intertwined by dint of both their shared lineage and the continuing efforts of networks and other market forces to use their intrinsic qualities to support one another was and is accurate, even more so considering the prevalence of show-related posts and memes on social media. Her earlier arguments, too, hold water, especially in the case of her use of Lynn Spigel's inversion of Raymond Williams's mobile privatization into privatized mobility, highlighting the inherently different connection that the Internet fosters, and in her citation of the VCR and over-the-air distribution directly leading to certain aspects of the Internet.
Where her ideas fail, however, is in her attempts to apply them specifically to inherent questions surrounding race and gender. Perhaps the most obvious flaw is in her binary categorization of the industry's perception of the Internet as a masculine endeavor, opposed to the sedentary and feminine televisual pursuit. While my view of the active nature of the Internet might be clouded by fifteen years of nerd stereotypes, and it is true that television was largely the domain of housewives and the working class, that ignores the sizable middle-class male audience, along with the bounty of programming intended for men. To instill these binaries feels reductive, and already calls Parks's assertions into question.
Even more damaging, however, is the specific way in which Parks contextualizes her two core examples: Oxygen Media and DEN, especially in opposition to the supposedly ultramasculine game shows like Millionaire. What is particularly striking in the Oxygen Media example is how Parks offers the slightest mention of the main sticking point in her argument: that the venture created by wealthy people is designed for the purposes of profit and enlarging a media empire, rather than as a purely altruistic endeavor. This is not meant to entirely dismiss the benefits of such a structure, but Parks seems intent on dismissing all demerits, including the question of exactly how inclusive something created with the specific parameters Oxygen had in mind can be. On the other hand is the DEN, which Parks perhaps categorizes too strongly as dismissing the entirety of television. More lacking is comment on the specific, hyperintrusive version of advertising involved in the network, which both represents the not-always beneficial innovations allowed by a technological shift and the underlying key idea, largely not covered by Parks: that most of American television is controlled by the market. While Parks does discuss this more industry-based or economic side, it feels critically lacking when it comes to the actual examples that could have illustrated her points.
This week’s reading helped me to contemplate how the television and internet convergence in the era of post-broadcasting relates to the politics of gender, race, and class. Lisa Park’s analysis on “flexible microcasting” explicates the ways in which the method of target marketing provides contents that fits each individual audience’s tastes and preferences, and how this phenomena generated new cultural space for voices from marginalized communities. Park’s emphasis on the potential for a new form of television that serves to democratize the medium parallels with Aymar Jean Christian’s focus on the way that television in the postbroadcasting era opens up new opportunities for marginalized independent creators to produce and circulate their creation to their audience. These arguments are very convincing, but at the same time, there is always this question bugging me when I think about the internet-based cultural formation and especially the issue of consumption and spectatorship.
As neoliberalism has completely changed the formation of power and knowledge on almost every level, the boundary between subjective engagement and subjugated experience has become more and more blurred. For instance, when we use internet, we all experience what the programmed algorithm constantly suggests to us, what we should watch next, and by following the suggestion, our tastes or preferences are somehow structured by the algorithms and there emerges this bizarre situation where we can no longer tell whether it is a subjective engagement or a form of subjugation. Although I am still in the process of thinking about this complicated relationship revolving around the subject and subjugation, I think the issues in relation to the politics of gender, race, and class is that it doesn’t necessarily succeed even with progressive content due to the structuring of the medium for its commercial ends.
What I would like to deepen more is how we can understand the neoliberalism as new forms of technology that are pervasive in our society. I personally think it is important to critically assess what kind of technologies, specifically their ownership, enable and form internet platforms when we try to clarify new possibilities of gender, racial, class politics that performed on/through the platform.
As a big fan of internet content, I was very excited for this week’s topic of Post-TV. The readings did a great job at explaining the multiple sides of “open TV”, as Christian calls it, referring to “independent web TV production and distribution” (4). He briefly discusses how scholars have underestimated the value of open TV and although there has been a rise in scholarship unpacking new media and this independent format or style of television - if we can even call it television -, I think the more it evolves the harder it is to define. The internet keeps changing faster and faster and I don’t see how it would be possible for media theory to keep up with all shapes and forms media is taking with the impact of the digital. However, this week’s readings did a great job at setting up a base for theorizing post-TV. I specifically liked how Christian discusses the inner-workings of open TV in terms of how producers make it, what they’re making and to what ends; and how Parks attempts to define a “Television 2.0” by looking at the emergence of new forms of TV related to digital access and the shifting meanings of converging technologies, overlapping with politics of gender, race and class. No matter how blurry lines get, I strongly agree with Parks’ final remarks in her chapter, about not killing television. That if we are concerned about the future of the medium and the next wave of content, we should engage with it rather than kill it. So that’s the approach I would like to take with this “presentation” in presenting a case for a potential Television 3.0 with Parks as a starting point.
Parks’ chapter was written in 2004, so yes, a lot has changed in postbroadcasting, as she calls it. I was fascinated by her description of flexible microcasting and the way our post-TV platforms would (and still do, very strongly) read into the content that we choose to watch to give us a computer-curated menu of shows. While it sounds amazing, by now we can see the limitations in this algorithm. With so much new content being made, that can quickly limit what’s pushed to your menu of options but many of us have also learned how clicking on wildcards can completely mess up the platform’s recommendations. I’ve gotten mad at YouTube countless times for filling up my homepage with recommendations I don’t want to see, only because I felt adventurous and decided to watch one or two (… or thousands) of videos that I wouldn’t normally watch. I also thought it was interesting how Parks discussed more people having access to TV than the internet. The way media conglomerates are quickly making as much of their “traditional content” available online (e.g. talk shows) shows that the tables are turning. But it’s conflicting how as much as they are trying to embrace media convergence, they’re also attempting to hold on to a clean-cut division between television and the internet, where what’s popular online is only popular online, and what’s on traditional media is still superior. A few weeks ago, YouTuber Nikkietutorials spoke about her experience as a guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show after getting a lot of traction online for coming out as a trans woman. She said:
“'Call me naive, but I kind of expected to be welcomed with confetti cannons: 'Welcome to The Ellen DeGeneres Show!' But instead I was greeted by an angry intern who was a bit overworked. I was expecting a Disney show, but got Teletubbies after dark. Every guest at Ellen's had a private toilet, but I didn't. I was not allowed to use the nearest toilet, because it was reserved for the Jonas Brothers. Why do they get a private toilet, I thought. But in the end my item had eight million views afterwards and theirs two million, ha!'” (&C).
I thought this was relevant for our current state of Post-TV because we see traditional media running after “open TV” producers as an attempt to stay relevant while also neglecting its value to maintain a level of superiority, or freshly acquired sense of “high art” now that there’s a new form of “low art” in town. I’m not going to list everything that has changed since “Television 2.0,” but this made me wonder what could serve as an example of current post-TV and an evolution of what Parks was talking about, something fresh.
If “Television 2.0” removed “the spontaneity of the practice of channel surfing” (Parks, 136), we may look at TikTok as Television 3.0, still existing as “more of an archive than a schedule” (Parks, 150) and challenging traditional television with inclusive and innovative representations, but bringing back the flow and discovery viewing mode of channel surfing as the norm, instead of curating exactly what you want to watch. I’ve been spending a lot of time on TikTok lately and it has become my favorite form of escapism. What’s most interesting about it is the main page, called “For You.” It’s a never-ending feed of videos that represent what’s popular and currently “going viral” on the app at the moment. There’s a very fast turnaround, but the way you’re supposed to keep scrolling in search for more content encourages you to stay on the app for longer. You never know what’s next, maybe there’s something even funnier. Addicting as it sounds, it reminds me of channel surfing. In class we often discuss how we don’t practice channel surfing anymore and that we go straight to the TV shows we already know of. TikTok’s For You page encourages users to discover new content, producers and “channels” until it’s 3 a.m. and you realize you’ve been on it for too long, only because a video by the official TikTok account with a smiley teenage boy shows up and he says: “I understand it’s easy to keep watching videos, and trust me, I’ve been there before. But those videos will still be there tomorrow. Go get some extra sleep, turn your phone off, do yourself that favor, and have a great night.” The new generation of “open TV” spectators are channel surfing for so long that the platform has to tell them to go to sleep.
This never-ending flow also translates into the nature of the content in the platform. A popular user, @adamrayokay, became extremely popular for his exaggerated latinx character Rosa. Adam has uploaded countless videos of Rosa talking to the camera and users all over social media insert themselves in the stories by making “duets” with the videos. Then, there is not only the channel surfing in the For You page, but also under one video, as it generates a wave of new co-created content. This goes in line with Christian’s theory of how “the Internet brought innovation to television by opening mass distribution to those excluded from legacy development processes, fostering new ways of creating and marketing series” (4). The “duet” feature allows for viewers to find new creators, but it also encourages viewers to insert themselves in the narrative and expand the representation seen on screen. Adam, who was bored with his day-to-day job in Texas (as he describes on his first YouTube video), now has the opportunity to produce and market his own stories (we could consider Rosa to be a series) and has even collaborated with big YouTubers like Zane Hijazi from the Vlog Squad and James Charles, all from a couple of months of major internet success.
I loved reading Open TV. This is my second time reading the intro (I read parts of the book in 2018 when the book was first published, but I did not read it all the way through) and I find Christian’s writing to be excellent. His ideas are clear. I especially like his terms: Legacy TV, Open TV, and Indie TV. TV cannot be defined as the way it has been for the past 70 years. Thanks to the internet (specifically web series) it has become much more expansive. I think that Christian was the first to really nail this research. I love how he discusses Legacy television’s relationship with indie TV. This is especially interesting to me as I am currently researching shows that started as web series and later became sensations on Legacy TV: High Maintenance, Insecure, and Pen15 (hulu show). I certainly do see these texts catering to a diverse population, whereas many of the premium HBO shows were targeted towards middle aged white men. I appreciate what TV is becoming, even if. indie platforms are attempting to subvert Legacy TV. Interesting, it seems as though Legacy TV is advertising indie TV as something that will “ruin TV”–which is what Hulu boasts on their billboards. This begs the question: is legacy TV gloating about ruining their own industry/standards? (I ask this question because web series are becoming flagship shows on legacy channels, i.e. High Maintenance on HBO) If legacy TV is appropriating indie TV for their own gain, is anything changing? Who is ruining what?
I must give J.D. Connor credit for showing me this image as he posted it on his Twitter with the caption “odd flex.” I loled.
Christian mentions that "Hollywood directors, producers, and actors in search of creative freedom or extra work have developed web shows and networks since the late 1990s" (12). This made me think of John Krasinski's Some Good News, a new Youtube show he has started to release weekly shortly after the shelter-in-place orders were given. The first episode dropped on March 29. The show opens with a parodic take on the news segments visual trope of the globe -- only this is the kind of globe that people have at home, for decorative or educational purposes. "My daughters made it," Krasinski goes on to say of the markers-drawn SGN sign that hangs behind him, not far from a "I <3 Dad" sign.
I understand this show as a light-hearted alternative to the news we are receiving through the conventional "legacy TV." The show stays very, very far away from politics, and practical pandemic-related matters, but it screams "enough of the stressful noise. let's shelter in place. and let's focus on the good."
After a mention of the unprecedented times we are in, stating the need for positive news, doing a shoutout to the heroism of the global healthcare community, Karasinski gets on a video call with Steve Carell. They joke around about looking dapper to appear on camera and Krasinski confesses to wearing "jamas" rather than the bottoms that match his top -- relating to the average American's work-from-home circumstances. The two then reminisce about The Office, surely giving their fans a little treat. In other good news, a cancer survivor child comes home, couples don't let corona stop their engagement plans. In another episode, Brad Pitt appears as the weather man. These high profile actors generally appear in very mediated content as performers, but here Krasinski produces and curates content of his choice: kid-friendly news aiming to help keep the "troops'" morale up.
SGN cane read as a pandemic version of what Christian would deem A-list talent frustrated by major brands tapping into the networked television market.
