Television in Transition: The Good Ol’ Days Live On

On March 5 and 6, 2009, the Carleton Communications Graduate Caucus hosted an academic conference called World(s) in Transition: Perceptions and Interpretations. The theme of the event, ‘transitions,’ came out of a brainstorming session between the two organizers (myself and a colleague) in October of 2008, where we reflected on what the prevailing ideas in the academic and real life world have been and will be in the next couple of years. The theme of transition struck us as particularly apt because we seem to be living in a time of great change.

My particular area of academic interest is television. If you review any recent literature on the subject, you are immediately confronted with the notion of change, upheaval, and transition. Some recent popular publications include Henry Jenkins’s 2003 book, Rethinking Media Change: The Aesthetics of Transition, as well as his 2006 contribution, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, Amanda Lotz’s 2007 book, The Television Will be Revolutionized, and Jostein Gripsrud’s 2004 work, Television After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition (Console-ing Passions). This body of work is just a sample of the literature currently being produced on the subject of television, but it is indicative of some of the major trends found not only in academic discourse about the topic, but also in popular discourse.

These books would have us believe that television is going through a period of great transition – and it is pretty tough to argue with this notion. The ways television is financed, produced, distributed, and consumed are changing. The growing number of people who stream and download programs (with or without paying a fee for doing so) is helping to change some of the dynamics of television production. The thirty-second commercial loses its persuasive ability when it is omitted from the program through a PVR recording device, a downloaded program that has those pesky commercials cut out, or through the age-old practice of changing the channel with a remote control.

Commercial spots are a major source of funding for broadcast and cablecast television, and with the lessened impact of that source, certain other funding sources have been created (or re-created) to fill the gap. These strategies include: product placement or integration (using the advertising strategy identified by 30 Rock’s Jack Donaghy as positive mentions or “pos-mens”); large-scale sponsorship of an entire series or episode, similar to the advertising used in early radio and television (such as The Colgate Comedy Hour, NBC, 1950-1955); contests; and viewer rewards programs (the Wheel of Fortune “Wheel Watcher Club” that allows home viewers to win the same prizes as contestants). So yes, it can be argued that things are changing in the world of television entertainment.

I see “transition” as a fair way of describing the processes that are affecting television today; however, I take issue with the popular argument that television is, in fact, undergoing a “revolution”. This article from New York TV Magazine, this one from The Independent (London) and this one from The Telegraph each speak to an impending revolution in the world of television. They outline how technology is driving the changes we see and the substantial impacts this will have on the way we consume television products.

The keynote speaker for the CGC Conference, Dr. Toby Miller of the University of California at Riverside, has some major problems with this assumption. He argues that television is not fundamentally changing: it is still a broadcast medium where a handful of owners disseminate their preferred brand of information to the entire viewing audience. Big networks and studios still dominate viewing schedules and dictate the types of entertainment we see. Some would argue that the rise of cable television and niche markets has given more power to different business entities that create content for television. Perhaps the programs are more specialized, but the companies that control these cable networks are certainly not.

Let’s look at NBC, one of the “big three” networks in the United States, which is owned by GE. The company is actually ‘NBC Universal’ which also owns Bravo, CNBC, MSNBC, mun2, Sci-Fi Channel, ShopNBC, Telemundo, Sleuth TV, Chiller, Universal HD, and USA Network. Therefore, the people who own NBC have also covered the market for independent artistic types, news junkies, science fiction geeks, compulsive shoppers, Spanish speaking viewers, mystery enthusiasts, and old movie buffs. NBC Universal also owns some big name websites for film and television junkies like www.rottentomatoes.com and www.televisionwithoutpity.com (among many others). The idea that markets are actually fragmented and independently addressed is a strategically crafted myth.

The other topic that Dr. Miller debunked in his keynote address is the idea that technology is changing the way we interact with TV. Notice the terms being used here -- interact with (not watch). Watching television denotes a one-way relationship where the producers of media give us a message and we willingly and unthinkingly receive it. The “new” experience of television is a supposedly interactive one where we can talk to the characters through their blogs (Dwight Schrute’s blog from NBC’s The Office is a good example of this), and one where we as the audience have supreme control over plotlines and characters. Obviously, this is not the case. Dwight Schrute is fictional and not actually talking to us. And even if we choose to participate by answering online polls about which character on Lost we think should be removed, there is no guarantee that our choice will be reflected in the plot. All 15 million viewers of Lost view the exact same program, and by the very nature of a broadcasted medium, the show cannot incorporate every viewer’s ideas.

Has the computer equipped with high-speed internet changed television dramatically? I don’t think it has, and neither does Dr. Miller, who calls the computer “a television with a typewriter attached.” His point is that most people use computers for word-processing and occasionally viewing television content. We, as the television audience, have no more control over what that television content is now then we did in the 1980s. Fans of well-made shows that lacked a dedicated audience (at least during the time they were aired on major networks) like Arrested Development, Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies, Firefly, and Veronica Mars have all had to sit by while networks cancelled the shows long before they had run out of quality content.

Our ability to “interact” with television doesn’t change the power structure of broadcasting, and rhetoric by the industry that tells us otherwise is just business speak attempting to bring investors into a (fictional) Web 2.0 environment. The next time you read an article that heralds the arrival of the television revolution, ask yourself what kind of revolution they are talking about and whether or not you see the changes they report in your everyday interactions with television.