The History of the Present
It's always difficult to write the history of the present. However, if you were attempt to look at television today through the lenses used in this course, how would you describe it? Take one example of a current trend in television and analyze it.
Television today could be seen as a conglomeration of the past and what society is today. Specifically looking at the U.S., television is more focused on what is relatable to Americans. Audience segmentation is targeted for more specific audiences as shows such as Duck Dynasty, Pawn Stats, Ice Road Truckers, etc. are targeted towards a very specific audience. Those who are interested in sitcoms would probably not follow these shows opposed to their favorite weekly sitcoms. Instead, the intended audience would follow these shows more closely.
ReplyDeleteOne current trend in television is the change in how the media is viewed. With the expansion in technology, there has been an increase of television viewership through the Internet. Sites like Hulu and Netflix provided viewers new methods of catching up on shows that they may have missed when it went live. Other sites also stream shows, but often are considered illegal. With the topic of legality in the sites, people are more concerned about whether they get to see their show over the method of how they obtain it. Compared to television in the past, viewers could now watch their shows in an instant. In the beginnings of television, viewers were restricted to only a few channels. As networks were formed, more options were available, but still limited to content. As cable grew, more variety in genres, audience and content became accessible. Now, both television and the Internet provide new avenues for viewership.
The reason that evaluating the present state of anything, especially a changing industry such as television, is so difficult is because we cannot know the future importance of anything. We can make educated guesses on the current state of television by following the past trends, and logically follow those to the future. At this very moment, we know the most about television that we ever have, but it pales in comparison to the knowledge that will come in the future. The content of television is reflective of societies values because of the consumerist nature of the television and so we can also look at the current state of the country and world and juxtapose them onto the television landscape. These two factors lead us to a very good guess, but with no guarantee. No one can predict success before it happens, we can only guess. True, we can tell that the importance of shows like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black is that television is moving towards online television, but in what exact direction we don’t know. These shows follow the trend of the “clip” on Youtube, and the success of online television, so it makes sense that entirely online show would succeed, especially one that was released with the intention of viewers binge watching, as Netflix supports. Societies impact is evident in the moving towards previously unexplored topics, such as political dishonesty, and women's prison (to go along with meth dealing and series murderers), and we can speculate that televisions content will explore more taboo subjects. Our current depiction of television is merely a guess, and thats what makes current history so exciting.
ReplyDeleteTelevision today is going through an interesting phase of change as it tries to reinvent itself and navigate the obstacles that new technologies have caused. Measuring ratings has become a problem and a concern in today’s day and age with DVR, Hulu.com, and Netflix. Ratings are not what they used to be because there is less of a need to watch it live when you can watch it whenever it is most convenient for you. That raises the question of are people not watching the show or are people just not watching it when it airs? It is a peculiar situation that the networks are in especially when it comes to funding from advertisers. No one is going to want to pay for commercial spots if no one is watching the program. In the past years networks have attempted to keep up with the Internet trend and remedy it by offering the episodes on their own websites and include advertisements that way. However, most Americans do not enjoy watching commercials, which is why they record shows or watch them online. Commercials are being implemented more heavily on websites like Hulu.com but soon enough there will be another website that doesn’t have as many commercials that consumers will use instead. That is one of network’s biggest challenges today. How do they keep funding for their programs without losing audiences trying to avoid advertisements?
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