Mar 27 – Emerging Trends.pdf

March 27 – Emerging Trends
 Readings: The TV Reader Introduction to Part 4 - audience commodity - tv networks, advertisers and ratings firms continue to trade commodity audiences - we approach tv as users, drop in viewers, channel surfers, multiple screeners, casual viewers, focused viewers, engaged viewers, members of interpretive communities, fan consumers and self programers - using web 2.0 technology and social networks, millions of tv lovers collaborate and talk about tv shows creating fan sites and full of fan fiction, blog about characters, spoil relegations of reality tv shows and vote for their favourite idol - youtube - youtube is a new medium for making public peoples most private lives; it is also a digital cultural forum in which amateur creators of media content vie for public attention - youtube contributes to a culture of the clip that allows viewers to search and see particular moments from tv shows - by cultivating demands for goods, ads help firms avoid an over accumulation crisis - advertising participates in and promotes an environmentally calamitous and emotionally turbulent consumerist culture in which we are told to assess our status and the very meaning of our lives through commodities - commercial tv primarily exists to serve the interests of advertising corporations - advertising corporations use tv to reach millions of ppl with flowing commercial messages that attract an construct the viewers as consumers for specific commodities - television ads offer them the hope of a commodity induced lifestyle transformation - advertising firms are finding it increasingly difficult to manipulate biers using traditional modes of selling, so they have integrated a postmodern attitude of ironic self reflectivity into their ad campaigns - globalization as transborder flow of scales of people, capital, ideas, technology, and media across national borders, at greater speeds than in the past resulting in cultural interaction and interdependence - transnationals broadcasts give audiences a sense of being able to visually access in real time whats happening in the world beyond their household - tv reinforces local viewers attachment to a national home - since visual images tend to cross linguistic and national boundaries relatively easily, television carries much more influence than other media especially in developing countries where millions cannot read - media imperalism as a process whereby the ownership, structure, distribution or content of the media in any one country are singly or together subject to substantial pressure from the media interests of any other countries without proportionate reciprocation of influence by the countries so affected - block booking deals - by the turn of the 21st century, the US had not only universalized the free flow of information doctrine but also generalized neoliberal policies that call for the deregulation, liberalization and privatization of national tv broadcasters - post fordist tv media production logics including glocalization— customizing products to appeal to local cultural sensibilities and globalization —manufacturing products that are universally appealing across cultures - many tv show shot in LA, runaway to canadian cities where cultural labour costs are low and state subsidies are high - flashpoint, rookie blue, corner gas, degrassi, little mosque on the prairie, trailer park boys are canadian shows US viewers watch Chapters 8 - - battlestar gallactica - homeland security and homegrown terrorism battlestar gallactica originated as a tv series after star wars a new hope - battlestars realism emerges through its combination of military journalism shooting, state of the art CGI effects and adaptation strategies for the script, costume and set that model the imagery and tory of the remake very closely on actual US military and government institutions as well as contemporary fashion media - the remakes major adaptation strategies give the concept not only a timely realism but also a fundamentally frankensteinian premise, as both a cautionary tale of technology run amok and as a trope of geopolitical rhetoric - antagonistic role of the cylons - adama frames the difference between human and cylon in a binary opposition between the organic and the mechanic even as cylon technology gradually revels itself as viscerally organic in many respects - between its security minded content and its insecurely distributed context, the dependence of battlestar on canadian production resources open up a range of mutually articulating translational ironies and new media anxieties—ironies and anxieties localized by the longstanding perception shared by american and canadians that canada is a slightly off kilter reproduction or mimc of the US - the use of BC locations as extraterrestrial settings and more importantly the casting of canadian actors in key roles are extremely suggestive when considering the transnational implications of the series major themes - postcolonial perspective recognizes the hegemonic power of cultural production as a tool of empire, the adoption of imperial structures and strategies by transnational conglomerates and the constant increasing pressure by US corporate lobby groups to liberate trade with canada in everything from cultural products to health care to water - the difference between media and political imperialism seems to collapse when viewed from a canadian perspective - anglophone canadians consume far more US media products than canadian ones - US cultural industries can appeal to global audiences with superior production values, but also because they can can export their products for a fraction of the cost they charge in their domestic market - cheaper for canadian broadcasters and distributors to buy foreign programmes likes battlestar than to produce domestic ones, however popular the domestic products may be - bill c-61 allowing priratcy - BC film industry emphasizes industry over culture and depends heavily on foreign location production, not collaborating but competing with other canadian film centres for the title of hollywood north - the fact that the dominant discourse of canadian citizenship is itself an exercise in self effacing, postcolonial diffidence makes it easy for the citizenship of canadians in us media to get erased - but canadians predominate in the antagonists roles—7 cylons are canadians - the perception of canada as a safe haven for internet pirates seem based on the fair dealing provision of canadian copyright law (which is in ways quite different from, but not necessarily better than US fair use, which grants canadians the right to make personal non commercial copies of music without retiring permission from the copyright holder - contours of the present canada us debate over intellectual property its digital insecurity and the legacy of the napster wars produce another transnational irony in battlestars canadian production context a temporal irony of the shows distribution and broadcast schedule - the canadian cable audiences has had to settle for third place in line behind UK and US arirings in order to watch a show shot in canada with numerous canadian actors - canadas role as a source of sf capital augurs ominous implications for canals more basic ecological sovereignty Chapter 26 - alliance atlantis communications inc announced it as moving out o dramatic tv series production due to decreasing profit potential of this programming sector - close down salter street films - canadian televisions producers have come to rely on access to global markets as a mean to generate revenue for domestic productions - the expectation that CBC produce culturally relevant programming while simultaneously competition for advertisers with private networks who are able to more cheaply import popular american programs for broadcast has placed unique structural constraints on cultural production at the national public network - how will content be developed and produced with fewer workers, less funding, and a new television environment with hundreds of competing channels in need of product - canada has become a world leader in the area of international joint venturers - 1990 canada was the 2nd largest exporter of audiovisual products after US - as science fiction/ fantasy or action adventure genres they escape the cultural discount that affects dramas too closely tied to the social political and linguistic experiences of a particular country - they operate as mimetics of dominant american tv narratives that have increasingly become the lingua franca of global tv markets - format program —the licensing and sale of a tv program that has achieved success in one country - different organizational and purposive logics result in different types of televisual storytelling - implication is that the invisible hand of the market will satisfy the diversity of audience demand and thus the consumer is sovereign - the real target audience for private network executies are advertisers and shareholders—viewers are crucial to the extent that they can attract advertisers whose financing will generate profits for shareholders - profits are dependent on minimizing production costs and risk in an uncertain creative environment - strategy actually militates against diversity in television storytelling as commercial network executives develop defensive strategies to reduce the odds of producing programs that will fail to fulfill the economic logic of tee industry - globally, market oriented programs produce not diversity but plurality wherein there are more products but they're spin offs of a limite