Core Response #5: The Second-Screen Experience and Venture Capital Cyclicality

One particularly interesting transformation of television as incited by Henry Jenkins' concept of digital media convergence is the second-screen experience. For those unfamiliar, the "second screen" refers to the screen of a mobile phone or digital device; applications are used on these devices during the airing of television shows, in a theoretical attempt to further engage viewers with what they're watching. These applications first started enjoying popularity and media attention in 2010, popularity that mounted in significant fashion within the next two years and enjoyed a subsequent surge in venture capital investments. App GetGlue, leading the pack in terms of userbase and engagement, made almost $25 million through venture capital coming from media and tech conglomerates. Many of the corporations that once pushed them, however, quickly disavowed them for several reasons, claiming that users found them "annoying" [1] or that they were a "distraction" that didn't actually augment the act of watching television in a significant way. Most of these applications attempted to incentivize their use in an attempt to maintain their userbase, but invariably went extinct.

A strange reoccurence of this seemingly-failed entertainment paradigm has emerged once again with the arrival of Viggle. Viggle is another second-screen application that presents itself, first and foremost, on the basis of the rewards it can offer to users for checking in to television programs. After accruing a certain amount of points - one point per minute of television watched, "bonuses" excluded - users can spend those point on anything ranging from a $5 Starbucks gift card to a trip to a taping of the finale of The Voice. Services like these are meant to function as databases that can provide content creators and distributors with more sophisticated, tracked information about user demographics and their consumption habits, which presumably inform the decisions of those creators/distributors in deciding what to produce. Despite the failure of the first round of second-screen applications - GetGlue shuttered barely six months ago, for instance - there has been another noteworthy surge in investor confidence around Viggle. This article notes a massive uptick in Viggle's stock value that surrounds its increase in userbase, despite noting that they've posted $20 million losses in the last quarter alone. Divine there notes that the shortsightedness of these investments, acting in spite of a financial calculus that should otherwise dictate their decisions, follows a similar "line of logic" to the dot-com bust that occurred from 1999 to 2001. Is user engagement really a reliable metric for determining whether or not to throw tens of millions of dollars at a relatively new app? Can television monetize sufficiently enough to support both itself and the venture capital that relies on its frequency of content production?

Works Cited

[1] https://gigaom.com/2011/03/15/miso-moves-past-check-ins/

[2] https://gigaom.com/2013/09/11/abc-executive-second-screen-apps-can-be-a-distraction/

If you're looking for a laugh...

I'm obsessed with basketball (NBA and college) and love being able to watch it live. One of my favorite parts about watching the live telecast of basketball games are the halftime reports with Kenny Smith, Shaquille O'Neal and Charles Barkley. The other day, Shaq took a tumble after tripping over a wire and it went viral. While it's really just a silly video, I thought it's interesting to think about in terms of live television going viral. Before Youtube, if you missed something live, you missed it for good. Now we can watch incidents on live television over and over again. This video, alone, already has over 1 million views. Live TV isn't really the same anymore, because there's no threat of not being able to catch it again. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyAxLZfhc38

Bruce Jenner: Keeping Up With the Kardashians Special

Since we discussed Bruce Jenner in our last class, I thought I'd post a link to this. On May 17th, E! will air a two-part special documenting Bruce Jenner coming out to his family as transgender. What do you all think of this? E! didn't announce the special until after the Diane Sawyer interview. Will you watch? Considering "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" is typically associated with fake and vapid issues, it will be interesting to see how E! handles the subject matter.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/05/07/first-promo-bruce-jenner-keeping-up---kardashians-special/70977150/

RIP Mindy

Fox announced this week that it would not renew "The Mindy Project." While there are rumblings that it may find a life on Hulu, I'm really bummed about this. It was one of the only comedies on air that starred and was created by a woman of color. It definitely had it's ups and downs and problems, but overall, I really enjoyed it and am disappointed that Fox decided not to renew it.  Did anyone else watch?

http://time.com/3852518/mindy-project-cancelation-hulu/

Multi-Cam Resurgence?

For anyone interested in TV Comedy or comedy writing. Here's an interesting take on the state of the sitcom in the modern TV landscape. Multi-Cam shows like "The Big Bang Theory" have had continued success while many single camera shows struggle to gain and maintain a fanbase. Do any of you have a preference between viewing single camera shows or multi-cam (shot live in front of a studio audience)?

http://www.vulture.com/2014/12/network-tv-sitcom-cancellations-trouble-advice.html

Call it a Renaissance?

My final project will be a radio report critiquing the second season of BET's sophomore hit "Being Mary Jane" which stars Gabrielle Union in a pretty dynamic role as yet another African American leading lady. I'm looking at feminist themes along with melodrama as associated with race and ethnicity. As we've all witnessed, TV has really embraced the black female leading lady in the past several years and this is due in large part to Shonda Rhimes and ABC's #tgit lineup. I am seeing today that Shonda Rhimes is teaming with Dee Rees (director of Focus Features' Independent Spirit Award winning film Pariah) for an FX limited series adaptation of Isabel Wilkerson's acclaimed "Warmth of Other Sons" which chronicles the migration of African Americans from Southern rural town to bigger bustling Northern cities in search of better lives. As The Hollywood Reporter notes, this development comes on the heels of the upcoming remake of "Roots" by A&E, the History Channel and Lifetime (yikes). It will be interesting to see Shondaland's transition into producing for cable television as well as how this new project will be received. Here's an interesting article on the implications from The Guardian... http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/may/05/shonda-rhimes-warmth-of-other-suns-emmys

Amy Schumer

I've never watched Amy Schumer's show, but this article was in my feed so I thought I'd post it because I think it might be enough to get me to watch her show.  I find it fascinating the way she manipulates genres for comedy and that she's seems to not be afraid to address issues of images.  Here's the clip that inspired me to set my DVR....

Is Amy Hot Enough to Have Her Own Show?

Looking for a new binge?

Hey TV lovers, as binge watching is reasonably the fastest growing way people consume TV I thought I'd share what shows the internet thinks we should watch.....
Shows to Binge Watch

I however am still catching up on last year's Shark Week so I'll be binging the old fashion way via DVR.  Plus most of the shows suggested don't really strike me as all that interesting.  What is interesting is that many of the shows listed are on premium channels so it agains poses the question of whom has actual access to these shows?

Roots Returns

I recently read that History, A&E, and Lifetime are putting together a remake of the hit mini series Roots.  I think this comes at very interesting moment in U.S. history in which people are willing to remain uninformed of America's consistently turbulent relationship with race and ignore the incredibly racially charged environment of today in exchange for an imagined "colorblind"/"post-race" narrative.

Here's the link to the article if anyone is interested:
Roots Remake

Calling RHOBH fans!

So on the rumor mill are talks of Lisa Rinna playing Kris Jenner in the upcoming TV miniseries about the OJ trial.  I for one will tune in if Rinna is cast because let's face it, soap opera actress plus Kris Jenner equals TV gold! Here's a link to more info for those possibly interested! Don't be shy, it's ok to say you watch RHOBH. ;)

Lisa Rinna to play Kris Jenner in TV miniseries

Can the Fans bring back McDreamy?

Well I wouldn't personally go so far as to make or even fill out a petition, some very angry Grey's Anatomy fans have taken the space of fandom to vocalize their outrage at the killing off our beloved McDreamy! Based on last night's episode I'm irritated that Dempsey's contract will likely be fulfilled with flashbacks, which will only make me, along with other fans, even more bitter at his uneventful departure from the show.  If you're curious to read the angry petition....here it is:

Fans demand McDreamy's death be a dream a-la "who shot JR?"

KPop and National Policy

Planet Money's digest of the long-term industrial program that brought us KPop's ascendancy:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/10/16/163039109/episode-410-why-k-pop-is-taking-over-the-world

Chance vs. Choice

In her essay for the week, Tara McPherson examines the claims that the world wide web affords a greater sense of mobility and choice to its users. While the industry’s move towards the development of interactive platforms exaggerates the notion that the consumer is in control, she argues that the web does indeed offer a specific modality of experience distinct from that of televisual flows. For instance, while the sense of liveness is common to both television and the web, the latter engenders a sense of choice as the user is able to click and move through websites at their own leisure. She highlights the visceral aspects of moving through the web and contends that time and space are constructed online in distinctive ways owing not just to the interface but also to the nature of code and web-based data. However, she points out that while the user operates under the notion that they are being propelled through space driven by their own quest for knowledge, this movement is actually structured by technological and commercial constraints. Thus, even though the experience of web-based navigation seems distinct from the broadcast medium of television, it is in fact structured to heighten the sense of choice and volition while confining users within a similar commercial logic of consumption. 

While I find McPherson’s analysis of the notion of volitional mobility provocative, I also wonder whether the sense of possibility engendered by the web can be entirely encompassed by the idea that it affords an unlimited array of choices. The corporate rhetoric, as McPherson points out, foregrounds the conception of user control as a liberatory force that allows the consumer to make rational choices based on what they want to see and read. The increasing trend towards personalization operates on the assumption that the consumer has a limited set of interests and knows what they want, waiting only for technology to meet their demands. However, the internet seems as much to be a site of guided navigation as one of random, accidental encounters. How would one begin to account for ‘chance’ alongside ‘choice’ in the experience of the web? While the notion of rational choice-making is at the core of more commercial web-based media, how would we account for encounters in the pirate and informal economies of the internet? While the possibilities for the meandering user are indeed limited in the face of increasing filtering and customization, how can we think through the possibilities of the web through its ability to take us on unexpected journeys?

Core Response #5: Chuck it up to Capitalism

Michael Curtin’s ideas about the logic of accumulation in his piece, Thinking Globally: From Media Imperialism to Media Capital, were particularly interesting.  Kieran Medina gave a presentation recently discussing the enormous popularity of a Snapchat “Our Story” about the New York Blizzard.  Their research covered how with the current culture of second screens, phone applications now have the ability to gain as many if not more eyes than television screens and the valuable market this potentially opens.  

The Snapchat story had over 24 million views, which put it higher than The Walking Dead and even higher than Monday Night Football.  With such a heavy viewership, particularly in the youth market, Snapchat seems to be able to move into a space of contemporary new media and therefore has great potential to be used as an activist tool whether for promoting news, resistance movements, and other social and political issues. While Snapchat is currently ad-free, with  “stories” like the blizzard, how long will it be able to sustain an add-free space? Although Snapchat doesn’t currently offer a necessarily valuable culture beyond perfecting selfies, its popularity does interact with Curtain’s concept that “over time [contemporary media] must redeploy its creative resources and reshape its terrain of operation if it is to survive competition and enhance profitability” (p. 5). 

One of the concerns I was considering when thinking about apps like Snapchat is the ever changing, evolving, and shrinking of people’s attention spans. Snapchats are not only inherently short as their name implies a double meaning referencing both the snapping of pictures and videos as well as the limited, pre-timed, one-time viewing model of the application.  What happens to us when our shortened attention spans start being harvested for information intended for capital gain? It’s a dangerous and slippery slope that has been evidenced by the waning popularity of socially apps or websites that can’t maintain enough traffic to remain competitive.  The capitalist transition ultimately kills diversity and ingenuity.  Capital has bee responsible for the demise of politically charged media across the ages as technology and the capitalist tradition heavy influenced the film and television industry from the levels of production and distribution that forwent many films and shows of social value in the aim of producing what’s popular and safe and guaranteed to turn a profit.  It seems likely that applications, even those with political potential, will likely fall victim to the capitalist machine.

CORE RESPONSE #5 - More TV Than Ever Before

In "Television Outside the Box" Lotz takes stock of the way television has changed as consumers have increasingly had more control over what they watch on TV. It started with the remote control which was available as early as the 1960s then moved on to VCRs, DVRs, cable, VOD and internet.

Each new wave of technology has brought predictions of the death of TV, and with each new development in technology the predictions have become more intense. Yet instead of killing TV, these technologies have simply expanded the idea of what television means. YouTube and certain types of digital video might be “nuggets” of news and entertainment, but then the highly serialized nature of VOD and Netflix makes increasingly longer narratives possible.

The delayed nature of DVR, DVDs, Netflix and other VODs also made critical buzz and word of mouth more important in a show's success. Shows like Arrested Development that were canceled on traditional network TV have gone on to develop loyal, cult followings on DVD and Netflix. Family Guy was brought back because of strong DVD sales.

It's not all good news, though. In 2005 Lotz writes that we reached saturation in many devices, and while we had much more supply of content than ever before, there was not a significant increase in demand.

Because of this embarrassment of riches in TV content, Lotz also argues that we need better ways to find and gather content, a "killer app". I would also argue that we need more tastemakers and critics to provide opinions on more content, particularly indie, online-only content like web series.

Lotz also paints a certain loss in TV culture as people stopped all watching the same things at the same time. Spoilers became a problem. The way live TV has unfolded has also changed from watching TV of major events in our living rooms to 9/11 when we watched them in offices or restaurants.

I was living in Boston during 9/11, working as a reporter in a small, neighborhood newspaper. When I got into work, everyone was watching the coverage on our one, small TV. We quickly transitioned to the bar and restaurant down the street where we could watch more footage on more screens with a room full of people to help us process what was happening.

Lotz is certainly right that the 2015 version of that event would have us all in the bar, looking at the footage on our phones, but I think we'd still need other people around us to help make sense of it all.

What's More Telling, the Ratings or the Platform?

This morning, Variety released stats compiled by Luth Research, a firm based in San Diego that has been compiling Netflix viewing data as a means of finally trying to crack those mysterious viewer numbers.

The data collected through Luth is composed of a sample of 2,500 subscribers who view access through computers, tablets, or smartphones. This data does not (yet) include TV viewing.

Not only are the numbers themselves of interest, but this choice in sampling is also telling of how current research views the future of viewing. Does Luth Research miss out on a large group by ignoring the television's connection to Netflix altogether?

Check out the stats here:  http://variety.com/2015/digital/news/netflix-originals-viewer-data-1201480234/

Gangsters, soaps and TV rituals

Among the readings for global television, both Shanti Kumar and David Morley argue that globalization is not necessarily a uniform, uni-directional and universalizing force. Instead, they contend that it poses a challenge to neat theoretical categories and pushes us to develop methodological approaches that can contend with the often chaotic effects of the process(es). Key to this re-evaluation for both Kumar and Morley is the need to shift our attention to ‘area studies’ or specific local contexts through which the repercussions of global media exchanges can be concretely mapped. At the same time, they argue for the need to view local interventions in relation to the flows of capital and broader institutional categories that frame these movements. 

Kumar deals with the disciplinary implications of such a move, arguing for the need to shift from a comparative approach that privileges Western theoretical categories towards an imparative approach based on dialogic understanding. Morley, on the other hand, focuses on methodological questions, arguing for a qualitative and empirically-grounded approach that puts pre-formed theoretical categories to test and looks at how exactly different groups participate in global media flows. Questioning sharp dichotomies between public/private and global/local tendencies, Morley argues that the macro-level analysis of ideological processes must begin through micro-level case studies. Focusing on domestic TV-viewing, he asserts that the space of televisual consumption is neither entirely ‘public’ nor ‘private’. Communication technologies are incorporated into the domestic sphere but also transform it by connecting the intimate experience of tv-viewing to a collective national register. He looks at the ceremonial aspect of this consumption, claiming that television is complicit in not only representing the event but performing and creating it. 

What exactly are the dynamics of this liminal space and how do the domestic rituals of tv-viewing connect to the formation of national identities? Some of these concerns are addressed in the opening sequence of Gangs of Wasseypur (2012), a gangster-epic film that covers eight decades in the life of a small town in Eastern India overrun by the coal mafia. Director Anurag Kashyap, one of the leading proponents of alternative cinema in India, draws heavily on international generic conventions to bring to life a history that has often been neglected in mainstream discourses in this two-part, 5 hours 20 mins long saga. The film’s narration sets up an opposition between a sanitized political history of modern India versus the complex and often chaotic forces in play at the local level by intercutting footage of landmark national events with the semi-fictional universe of Wasseypur’s coal gangs.

The opening shot of the film, set in the present day, begins with the blurry image of the opening credits of the hugely popular soap opera Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (English: Because a mother-in-law was once a daughter-in-law, too), known for its regressive treatment of gender issues. The camera slowly zooms out in a single long take, revealing the setting -a local grocery store that has temporarily been converted into a communal viewing space. The shot ends violently and abruptly as the TV is riddled with bullets, indicating the arrival of gang members in the locality. Aligned closely with a patriarchal and Hindu majoritarian worldview, the soap’s sterile universe of domestic bliss stands in stark contrast to Wasseypur’s visual and verbal excesses replete with sex, drugs and violence. Interrupting the scene of the soap’s ritualistic consumption, the film sets the stage for an interrogation of the common public national identity that it seeks to inculcate. The disruption and de-centering of the televisual thus becomes key to the film’s project of creating alternative mythologies that account for local and regional histories.

Flashing Images and Loud Music

I decided to repost this from Drew's original post, and embed the site.

Core Response: A Look at Empire’s Gendered Convergence

Lisa Parks delivers an interesting analysis of early aughts internet-TV convergence. She provides a pretty-well worn deconstruction of gendered media activity (passive = TV = feminine and active = internet = masculine). In my opinion, however, she undermines her analysis with”

“While it is productive for feminists to discuss and evaluate Oxygen in the popular press, it is unfortunate that these high-profile writers overlook recent feminist scholarship on the historical  positioning of women as consumers within the public sphere. In some instances, consumer practices such as moviegoing or department store shopping were an important mechanism of women’s socioeconomic mobility and were integral to the formation of female communities and even women’s entry into civic/public culture. (146)

This is only true to a point. Firstly, this is shortsighted in that this really only applies to the usual suspect(s): White, middle class / institutionally-educated / upwardly mobile, cisgender, straight, etc etc women. Second, hinging women’s empowerment on capitalist agency and access to consumerism is pretty questionable. In lieu of this, I’d like to offer a consumerist convergence case study in the shape of Empire’s Cookie’s Closet. 

This seems even more intentional than most portals like this. Not only is the viewer / consumer linked to the actually luxury brand outfit that Cookie wears on the show, but they are provided affordable alternatives. This shows a self awareness on the part of the show of as to not only the demographics of the show, but also the ridiculousness of only offering a $6,000 Alexander McQueen dress to the viewing public. But outside of this, what empowerment would this offer a Black woman who wakes up every morning with fear in her heart? Or a Latina who makes approximately $0.57 on the dollar compared to White men?

Economic agency can be fun if you’re part of a community whose oppression fuels the status quo. But offering that as a primary mode of empowerment is foolhardy and misguided.

I’d be interested in a Parks addendum to this essay that takes in contemporary levels of convergence, consumerist attitudes in the wake of the 2008 economic crash, and of course, race.

The FCC and Comcast

So last Friday, Comcast abandoned its $45.2 billion dollar deal to acquire Time Warner. This Wired article intimates that "signals from the Department Justice and the Federal Communications Commission made clear that the merger wouldn’t be approved, and Comcast decided to cut its losses." The article is interesting in how it outlines, very briefly, the looming disapproval of the FCC and DJ as a symptom of a string of agreement violations made by Comcast after it's purchase of NBC Universal had been approved. Thus, Comcast's rejection has opened the door to other corporations "eyeing Time Warner Cable [...] and thanks to Comcast, it [Charter Communications] now has a playbook for what not to do."

http://www.wired.com/2015/04/comcast-can-blame-us-sinking-time-warner-deal/