Structuring virtual spaces as television places: Internet television
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Transcript of Structuring virtual spaces as television places: Internet television
RUNNING TITLE: INTERNET TELEVISION REMEDIATING CONVENTIONAL TELEVISION
Structuring virtual spaces as television places: Internet television remediating conventional structures, practices and power dynamics
Internet television remediating conventional television
Abstract:
As all major American broadcast and cable networks now provide some form and amount of
online distribution of their television programming, we are beginning to see more interactive
features being attached to this distribution to remediate the conditions of television consumption in
the physical world. Attaching such interactivity to their online distribution creates cyberspaces of
consumption that become places for virtual audiences to congregate as they view the program. To
illustrate how the virtual environments and worlds are constructed to become places for virtual
audiences, four case studies of virtual places are analyzed in terms of how interactivity is being
managed. Two types of interactivity are used to compare these case studies: social interaction
and narrative interaction. Broadcast networks CBS and NBC separately created virtual places to
imitate “living room” conditions of social interaction. Cable network SciFi Channel produced “live
events” to allow limited narrative interaction. Independent producer Metanomics created a virtual
“talk show” to encourage both social interaction and narrative interaction. The analysis is set into a
larger theoretical framework considering how these Internet-based interactive television examples
demonstrate the remediation of conventional conceptualizations of television distribution structures
and consumption practices, which then indicate the power dynamics of the producer-consumer
relationship. The form in which the interactivity occurs is controlled by the producers of the
programs through the structuring of the online distribution spaces. These structures constrain and
cue how the virtual audience is expected to, allowed to and desired to engage with the program.
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Internet television remediating conventional television
1. TV is not dead, it’s just online
When I moved outside of the United States, I was faced with a problem: I was worried
about my addiction to American television. As there were quite a number of shows I followed
habitually, I was concerned about how I would be able to maintain my fix. So I scouted the many
options: illegal torrenting, legal iTunes downloads, Slingbox, illegal re-routed streaming, legal
corporate sponsored streaming. To varying degrees I have tried all of these options.
For example, my loyalty to Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Under the
aegis of Viacom, the show is streamed with delay on the show's website, www.thedailyshow.com,
even outside of the United States. However, while in the first months of my time as an ex-patriot, I
could stream the entire episode; afterwards, I could only view them in the segments pre-
determined by the producers1. Sometimes when impatient for an episode, I used both iTunes and,
I will admit, illegal torrenting sites to fulfil my need. On the night of the 2008 presidential election, I
was up into the early morning following the live, legal, streaming from CNN and MSNBC, but when
The Daily Show was scheduled to air I found an illegal re-routing website that allowed me to watch
the show live and with other ex-pats and foreign viewers. Because of this ability, when Barack
Obama was announced on that show as the winner, I was immediately able to call – via my VoIP
Skype – my family stateside to join in the news. Only a handful of times have I actually watched
the delayed broadcast of the show on the local television channel.
As with my numerous other television addictions, my addiction to The Daily Show was not
being primarily met by "television" in the sense of a technological object – a box with a window to
the world. The object exists in my room, but it is used to display the entertainment provided by a
DVD player and a Nintendo Wii. It is the window to what those objects provide, and rarely to the
world at large. My computer is my window to the world.
I am not alone. At the time the data was gathered for this study, 11% of adults in the
United States aged 18-34 had gone online at least once to watch television (Brandon, 2008). In
December 2008, there had been at 41% increase in use from the previous year as the total
number of videos watched online was over 14 billion (Fritz, 2009). At the end of the 2008-09
television season, ABC saw their show Lost bringing in 36.4 million video streams; NBC had The
Office at 14.5 million; and CBS had NCIS at 11.6 million.
The experiences I and my fellow television viewers and fans are having is resulting in
rhetoric from industry professionals and academics that "television is dead", that we are living in a
post-television, post-broadcast era (Poniewozik, 2009), where someday, sooner or later, the "boob
tube" will be replaced as the central household media technology by the personal computer.
Whether or not this will be the case remains to be seen; predictions on the centrality of the
1 The use of the term "producers" in this paper is to refer to those media professionals, amateurs and industries responsible for the creation and dissemination of commercial media products, such as television series.
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Internet television remediating conventional television
computer change, as just over a decade ago people argued the Internet would never replace or
completely displace the boob tube (see Havick, 2000; Owen, 1999).
With the uncertainty of the future of "television", the tensions that exist are numerous
(Cover, 2006; Reinhard, 2008): passive versus active; consumer versus producer; author versus
audience; online versus over-the-air; interactive TV versus Internet TV; co-optation versus
reflection. This is an era of change in mass communication, with the rise of nichecasting perhaps
replacing broadcasting, perhaps being supplemental to it. It is a time when the audience, once
viewed as a unified, undifferentiated mass, now must be seen as multiple, diverse, fragmented,
selective, self-directed consumers as well as producers (Livingstone, 1999). It is a time when what
we call television is called into question (Grindstaff & Turrow, 2006), with "television" being
deconstructed into the content it relays, "television-as-text", and the technical interface it is,
"television as technology" (Wood, 2007). It is a time when the changes in the media landscape
and the actions of the audience(s) are changing the nature of what is television, and how we
should think of it and those who produce and consume it (Bruns, 2008; Green, 2008; Grindstaff &
Turrow, 2006; Meikle & Young, 2008; Tay & Turner, 2008; Wood, 2007). There are many
experiments currently going on with how to structure Internet TV to be something consumers will
want to use, either in replace or in supplement.
It is a time of renewed interest in interactive television – and not just as it has been
conceived as being attached to the "television-as-technology". There have been attempts, both
within the industry and the academy, to determine how to make the Internet fulfil the dreams
people have had about interactive television for decades. This paper is an analysis of several
attempts from both industry and academy that I had participated in during the fall of 2008. These
cases provide illustrations of how the dis-embedding of content from "television-as-technology" and
its re-embedding into various virtual environments produces interactive places for audience
consumption – places that become sites for academic analysis of the concepts of television
distribution, consumption practices and the power dynamics in the relationship between producers
and consumers. In considering how these cyberspaces have been structured to provide forms of
interactive television, I will discuss how the structures, practices and power dynamics2 that
currently surround "television" are not dead, they are just online.
2. Internet television
2 In deciding to separate these sections from one another, I realize I am enforcing perhaps an arbitrary separation among structures, practices, and power dynamics given the interconnectedness of the concepts. For the purposes of this paper, "practices" means the activities people perform as part of their consumption of the media; "structures" means the physical nature of the technology that cues/constrains such practices; to “power dynamics” means the analysis of such practices and structures to understand how power shifts between the diametrically opposed positions of consumer and producer.
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Internet television remediating conventional television
At the turn of the century, it was a common for American corporate controlled content
providers to not worry about television being displaced by the Internet because of the difference
between the passive consumption associated with television and the active consumption
necessitated by the Internet (Havick, 2000; Van Tassel, 2001). In 1999, of the main networks
broadcasting in the United States, only NBC and CBS were making synergistically coordinated
strides towards colonizing the Internet for the (re)transmission of their goods (Van Tassel, 2001).
In 1999, several private firms, not associated with any of the major corporations, began to offer
"netcasting" of genre programming like talk shows, contending that the active nature of the Internet
allowed for greater audience interaction than possible with conventional OTA talk shows (Vonder
Herr, 1999). Such attempts at "microbroadcasting" or "nichecasting" could be seen as providing
the framework for future internet TV business models, interested in aggregating the disaggregated
audience around specialized topics (Tay & Turner, 2008).
Professionals and academics point to several occurrences as the triggers for prompting
corporate content providers to take netcasting seriously: the rise of YouTube and Web 2.0; the rise
of Apple's iTunes and video iPod, and the diffusion of broadband technology into households
(Conhaim, 2006; Smith, 2005; Streisand, 2007). With increased broadband networks, online
streaming and downloading could be more effectively and efficiently accomplished, reducing
buffering time that would cause frustration for the consumers (Edwards, 2009). Then with its 2005-
06 season, ABC began offering downloads of its most popular shows via iTunes, which prompted
other networks to see the potential for this distribution route (Fritz, 2009; Streisand, 2007). By the
2006-07 season, the Big Four networks in the United States (ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox) were
offering their most popular series for free via online streaming, either directly at their website or on
related, corporate-controlled sites (Setoodeh, 2006). Episodes were even being offered online
before being broadcast OTA as a means to further promote a show, such as CBS's Jericho
(Streisand, 2007).
The threat from YouTube prompted NBC/Universal and News Corp to jointly produce
streaming website Hulu.com in 2007, which would serve as an archive for their television series as
well as a library of films (Fritz, 2009). Since the initial joint venture, in 2009 Disney signed a deal to
use Hulu.com as a streaming distributor (Littleton, 2009). The tactic against YouTube has had
some apparent success, as it has been steadily increasing in the amount of streams viewed since
its inception (Gelman, 2009). In less than a year Hulu.com went from start-up to logging over 300
million video streams (Fritz, 2009). In the fall of 2008, when the case studies in experimentation
discussed in this paper were analyzed, 235 million videos were streamed in October alone at
Hulu.com (Brandon, 2008). Nielsen's division dedicated to measuring online audience ratings
found that both OTA and online television consumption are increasing in the United States
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population (Edwards, 2009); the online trend was indicated as being the result of spending time
with the corporate-controlled streaming websites. Media professionals agree that consumers who
want to time-shift are willing to sit at a computer and watch a full episode just to catch what they
have not yet seen (Holahan, 2007).
The presence of Internet television, and particularly corporate-controlled versions of
netcasting, is both increasing and potentially stabilizing as an alternative, supplemental, or
replacement distribution source. With more and more people going online for their daily television
programming, Internet TV becomes increasingly a part of people's everyday lives. As such, the
usage of Internet TV produces sites of distribution and consumption for analysis. Specifically, for
this paper, the sites of analysis are considerations for how the newer television compares to the
older. How does the distribution structure of Internet TV compare to the conventional distribution
of over-the-air broadcasting? How do the consumption practices of conventional television
compare to those of internet television? And what does the structuring of cyberspaces to become
places for distribution and consumption tell us about the relationship between television producers
and consumers?
2.1. Purpose of this paper
The purpose of this paper is to look for answers to these questions by considering four
case studies where several corporate and academic producers have been experimenting with how
to provide television content that is more than the basic streaming and downloading currently
available. It may seem that focusing only on four experiments does not provide any insight of
value as it excludes the majority of internet television distribution and consumption activities
currently driving the growth of internet television. However, the purpose in examining these
experiments lies in what the analysis can tell us about how content producers are considering what
to do with interactivity – that elusive concept and tension for the television industry in the world of
increasingly networked computers.
Distribution and consumption places like Hulu.com and TV.com, and other streaming sites,
have the format of YouTube.com. The video is at the top of the screen and you scroll down to
add/read comments to the content that are gathered asynchronously and without any direct link to
any particular point of the content. There is interactivity in the sense that the individual user can
time-shirt, control what she wants to consume and when and where. However, there are other
conceptualizations of interactivity that go beyond the ability of the user to access a database of
readily available archival content (Mcmillan, 2002); notions of interactivity as synchronous, dialogic
communication between human and human or human and content (Cover, 2004, 2006). The first
has been alternatively called conversational and interpersonal (Mcmillan), and in this paper is
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referred to as "social interaction". The second has been discussed by Cover (2004, 2006) without
labelling, but has been discussed as content interaction (Mcmillan, 2002); in this paper it is referred
to as "narrative interaction".
What I discuss in the next section of this paper are four experiments in providing social
interaction and narrative interaction. My interest in these experiments focused on how the
producers were attempting to distribute "television-as-text" by creating cyberspace locations
(websites and virtual worlds) to become places structured to cue and/or constrain consumption
practices to specific acts; which specific acts could be inferred by analyzing the type and amount of
social and/or narrative interactivity utilized to craft that place3.
The experiments will be discussed in three sections, based on what type of structuring of
distribution and consumption they attempted. First are the attempts by CBS and NBC to produce
"virtual living rooms". Second is the attempt by The SciFi Channel (now The SyFy Channel) to
produce "virtual ghost hunting" with a live investigation of a haunted location. Third is the attempt
by Dr. Robert Bloomfield to utilize the virtual world Second Life for his own talk show.
I should first make clear my position to these experiments. I call them experiments not
because they were the product of a study conducted by myself or any specific research entity.
They were experiments in the sense that the structuring of these virtual spaces for online
distribution and consumption were unique in form as the producers attempted to offer new
interactivities to potential consumers. As they were public offers, I approached them as interested
consumer and researcher. Thus I approached these experiments with the methodological tensions
of participant observer and fan-scholar. In analyzing the structure of these experiments I
manoeuvred my dual identity by alternatively immersing myself in the experience and withdrawing
to take notes and screenshots, which are displayed in this paper.
In this way I engaged with the experiments as often as I could from late September to late
December in 2008. This period was chosen for several reasons. First, one of the experiments
discussed here is a special event that only occurs once a year, on October 31; I had had
experience with it in 2007, and I knew I wanted to analyze their subsequent attempt as part of this
study. Second, this was the period in which CBS rolled out their experiment, which also
highlighted NBC's attempt at something similar. Third, through my post-doctoral research project,
we had been visited by the scholar who was experimenting with television broadcast in virtual
worlds. What follows then are my observations on how these experiments have structured their
distribution of television content and their conception of what should constitute interactive
consumption practices.
3 I take my understanding of the distinction between space and place, as they relate to virtual environments and worlds, from Jensen's (2008) discussion and analysis of the structuring of the Second Life grid space to become places for human interaction and meaning-making to occur.
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3. Cases studies of experimentation
3.1. Virtual living rooms
The first two case studies are examples of experiments similar in both distribution structure
and consumption practices. They are attempts by CBS and NBC to structure online spaces to
become virtual “living rooms” for retransmitting content that has already been transmitted via
conventional OTA and cable. The observations come from the fall of 2008, but the services
continue to run with minimal change to either distribution or consumption structures. These
attempts are technically not original, as ABC Family, MTV, and an entertainment portal Lycos had
attempted something similar years before (Kaplan, 2008; Walsh, 2008). However, they are unique
these were the first attempts to produce ongoing services directly tied to on-demand libraries the
content providers could offer on their websites.
The CBS and NBC experiments have in common the idea of providing synchronous
communication between viewers for the duration of the video stream. That is, while the video is
playing, people are linked to each other via a chat function so that they may engage in dialogue
with one another as if they were in the same room watching the show on a television set – hence
the conceptualization of the virtual "living room". Where the experiments differ is in what videos
are available, how to find people to be "in the room" with you, and how to interact with each other
in these rooms.
3.1.1. CBS Social (Viewing) Rooms
This experiment began in October 2008, as part of the CBS Labs and CBS Interactive
attempt to find innovative ways to display television online by promoting the ability to interact with
people as if "he's sitting right next to you." (Walsh, 2008). When I started participating in this
experiment, these spaces were called Social Viewing Rooms. Their name subsequently was
shortened to simply Social Room, accessible via http://www.cbs.com/socialroom. CBS, with its
partnership with Viacom, and extensive libraries from Paramount and Spelling Entertainment,
offered a variety of series from all the dayparts as well as classics, such as: Survivor, NCIS, Young
and Restless, The Late Late Show, Star Trek, Twilight Zone, MacGyver, Love Boat, Family Ties,
and Melrose Place.
Scrolling through the selection of series offered, however, I found an imposed limitation. As
seen in Figure 3.1.1a, I could not choose any episode I wanted from a particular series. Each
series had a particular episode being played when I would visit the website, and if I wanted to
participate by watching that series, then I had to accept watching that episode. Moreover, the
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episode could already be in progress by the time I entered the Social Room; if I wanted to see it
from the beginning -- say if I had never seen the episode, as was the case when I watched one
from the series Numb3rs -- I had to wait for the next screening to begin. Going into a Social Room
while the show was in progress made little difference to me when the series was the original Star
Trek; I knew from memory the episode that was airing.
On the list of what was available to watch, each entry offered how many other people were
currently "in the room", watching the series, at that time. I found this useful to locate rooms where
there would be people. As mentioned above, and shown in Figure 3.1.1b, there was a
synchronous chat field, similar to chat rooms, underneath the video as it streamed. Each person
would be represented in this field by a pictorial icon of their choosing. In these chat fields I could
talk to the other viewers about what was going on in the show, make comments about the series in
general, or talk about some non-related topic. All of this happened in real time, with my text and
their text appearing as cartoon dialogue balloons above our icons, actually overlapping the video
being played. There were also asynchronous communication possibilities, with a message board,
and quizzes that were offered regarding the series being watched.
One feature set apart the Social Room from NBC's experiment. As well as interacting with
fellow viewers, I could superficially interact with the content of the video. Rolling over the video
field, a menu appeared with a series of cartoon icons, as seen in Figure 3.1.1c. These icons
represented a series of actions I could perform at the video stream, even to particular spots on the
screen that I choose. These actions included showing love, kissing, throwing a dart or tomato,
and, most telling, putting on the screen an image to reflect the corporate sponsor of the Social
Room. The first sponsor I encountered was Intel, who was even highlighted by CBS as being a
partner in their experiment. A subsequent sponsor I encountered was Coca-Cola.
3.1.2. NBC Viewing Parties
I will confess I could not spend as much time in NBC's experiment, the Viewing Party. At
the beginning of my data collection period, the CBS Social Rooms were viewable to people living
outside of the United States, such as myself. NBC/Universal, on the other hand, prevented access
to their video streams outside of the United States; thus, I was only able to participate in this
experience at the end of my data collection period, when I had returned stateside. Since I had
been made aware of the NBC experiment by looking into the Social Rooms, I felt it necessary to
see how they compared.
NBC's Viewing Party structure is located as part of MyNBC and NBC Video Rewind, which
they label as a way to combine community, personalization and video on demand. The service
was launched in the spring of 2008, but it appears to have been kept more secretive than CBS's
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Internet television remediating conventional television
Social Room. The service is accessed not as directly as CBS, through one central webpage, but
through the shows that allow Viewing Parties to be formed; http://www.nbc.com/shows/ is the place
to find the option "Start a Viewing Party", as seen in Figure 3.1.2a. There is no central list as is
found on CBS Social Room. It appears more that you have to know that the service is available for
the series you are interested in; perhaps this is a function of being part of the MyNBC community
that fans and users will communicate about Viewing Parties. However, as there is no list saying
what is available when you log on, and the focus is more on the series than a particular episode
being available, there is a wider selection of episodes from the library that can be viewed at any
time. Unlike CBS, the user has more control over what to watch and when – and indeed, even with
whom.
As with CBS, I could go into any party already started by going to the lobby and finding a
party in progress. However, NBC structured the service more towards those individuals interested
in creating their own unique parties – to become a host in a virtual living room, so to speak. As
shown in Figure 3.1.2b, a person could initiate a Viewing Party by choosing the episode to watch,
then sending out invitations by selecting friends who are also members of MyNBC or sending
emails to individuals not part of the community. This structure is similar to the physical world
phenomenon of gathering friends to watch a series, perhaps week after week, making it a ritual.
Giving individuals this control is what leads NBC to call such spaces "viewing party". With CBS,
the space is simply a place to watch video, or a room. With NBC, the space is a place to be with
your real friends, or a party.
As with CBS, there is a chat field to allow synchronous communication between all viewers.
There are also polling and quizzing functions, but unlike CBS here the host could potentially create
one to test his friends. Again, this can be understood in terms of structuring the experience as a
"party" and empowering the user who created the party as a host. Unlike CBS, there was no
superficial interaction with the video's content.
3.2.3. CBS, NBC, and interactivity
These two experiments share in common their allowance for consumption practices that
control what to watch and when and with whom, although CBS restricts these controls more than
NBC does. However, such time-shifting capability is increasingly a common feature for television
consumption in the United States. With DVRs and various websites that stream video, time-
shifting appears to be the central interaction promoted and used with interactive and Internet
television. Where innovation occurs in these experiments is that both structures promote the
incorporation of a synchronous communication capability. This social interaction feature is
provided, and rhetorically promoted in press releases and the labelling of the services, to reduce
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the feeling of watching alone, as Internet use is often described as a physically solitary experience
(Poniewozick, 2009).
As far as narrative interactivity, neither CBS nor NBC offered the ability for the user to
control the content of the video in these spaces. However, CBS provided a means to express
emotionality towards the content, perhaps attempting to replicate the perchance for such outbursts
in other viewing contexts. For all but the last icon, these activities represent what could be
considered as conventional audience reactions to content – conventional in the sense that they are
examples of a parasocial interaction that is either positive (showering with love, blowing kisses) or
negative (throwing darts or tomatoes). These restricted activities represent a conceptualization of
how audiences in their own living rooms may emotionally act out towards the content. The last
activity is akin to product placement, but it is product placement at the control of the user. Rather
than be subject to either covert or overt advertising integrated into the content, here the user has
the option to place the advertisement wherever the user desires. Including it with the other
activities may be an attempt to treat ironically the idea of product placement, as you can throw an
ad at the screen as easily as a kiss or a dart.
Meanwhile, the lack of such superficial interactivity in the NBC Viewing Parties can be
understood in how these two experiments differ regarding with whom you watch the video. With
CBS, unless you have negotiated a coordinated viewing external to the Social Room, you are most
likely watching with strangers. In that instance, if you do not find your fellow viewers to be
interesting enough to speak with, then you may be glad to have some other activities to perform
while watching the video. With NBC, unless you wander into someone's party, you are most likely
with people you consider to be friends, partly because of being able to talk to them. In that
instance, if the content does not hold your attention, you have your friends to talk to, and no other
interaction may be necessary.
3.2. Virtual ghost hunting
This next experiment is also an attempt by a corporate producer. However, unlike the
experiments from CBS and NBC, this case describes a special event in the season of a television
series, Ghost Hunters. Airing on American cable network The SciFi (SyFy) Channel, Ghost
Hunters is a reality series where a documentary crew follows The Atlantic Paranormal Society
(TAPS, http://www.the-atlantic-paranormal-society.com/) crew as they investigate potential
hauntings with pseudo-scientific methods. The series began airing in 2004. In a typical episode,
the crew investigates a potentially haunted location with several teams of two to three people,
collecting audio, video and other data that would be analyzed for any activity that could not be
explained. Since premiering, the series has produced three live shows as Halloween specials, all
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called Ghost Hunters Live. Each year they select a specific location, either well-known or
supposedly high in paranormal activity, from which to broadcast.
Starting with the 2007 special, The SciFi Channel created a webpage, hosted at their main
site, to promote viewers to also be online during the show to give the crew feedback about the live
investigation, including asking viewers to become "part of the hunt". The website featured live
video streams of the investigation, with footage not airing on the cable network, and a "Panic
Button" that viewers could use if they saw something suspicious to send the crew suggestions for
those places to investigate. I am focusing on the 2008 event because it occurred during the data
collection period. It was similar to the 2007 event in terms of promoting participation and offering
non-cable broadcast footage for such participation. The 2009 event continued the gimmick of
providing additional footage online for individuals to monitor for possible evidence, including
allowing the user to choose which of five cameras they wished to monitor. The 2008 event differed
from the other two in that the producers attempted to stream the actual episode online to
compliment the cable viewing.
The 2008 event aired October 31, Halloween night, starting at 8pm EST. The main
broadcast was on The SciFi Channel, with video streaming at www.scifi.com/ghosthunters/live/.
The seven hour long event followed a return investigation to Fort Delaware, a location that had
been investigated earlier with purportedly good results. A SciFi.com press release, dated Oct 28
2008, indicates the various interactive features they hoped would entice cable viewers to become
online users:
"SCI FI.COM INVITES FANS OF SCI FI CHANNEL'S HIT ORIGINAL REALITY SERIES 'GHOST HUNTERS' TO "JOIN THE HUNT" WITH NEW SOCIAL NETWORK … And once again, SCIFI.COM will serve as the online destination on Halloween night, offering a multi-layered digital experience for fans including an exclusive, multi-camera online video feed and thermal imaging camera views, exclusive access to photos from the live event, live Q&A with the TAPS team members and the return of the "Panic Button" for web watchers to alert the team of something they are seeing live on TV."
In the press release we can see promise of narrative interactivity as the corporation promoted the
idea that viewers could vicariously or virtually join the crew on their investigation by helping to
monitor the live feed and make suggestions about possible paranormal activity. But that is the
promise; what of the execution?
Going into this experience, I was worried the licensing embargo that prevented me from
watching video streams on corporate websites would be in effect here as well. I was fortunate,
and amazed, that this was not the case. The live stream worked; however, the audio did not. The
website informed me I had to update my Windows Media Player, but in trying to do this I was
informed by the program that I had the most updated version. Thus, I only had video. However, I
could use RealPlayer to record the live stream so that I would be able to compare it with the
content that was broadcast on the cable network, which I obtained via an illegal torrent.
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Additionally, during the show, I was using my Yahoo! IM program to chat with my mother, another
fan of the show, so that I could keep apprised of what was happening.
Had the audio been functioning, I most likely would not have been chatting with my mother;
however, in doing so, the ability to talk with her pointed out something the website was lacking.
Unlike the experiments by CBS and NBC, there was no structure to allow synchronous chatting
with other viewers. Given that the promoted purpose of the website was to allow fans and viewers
of the series to "join the hunt" by incorporating the Panic Button and watching footage online that
was not being shown on cable, the producers may have felt that providing conduits for
communicating with other fans would have distracted them from their vigilance.
The webpage was divided into four parts. The main feature of the website was the video
streaming of live feed from the investigation site. This live stream was promoted as being different
from what cable viewers would see, calling it "exclusive access to view locations in the Fort that
won't be shown on TV". The live stream provided footage that appeared shot from security
cameras – high angle, very still -- for viewers to monitor and thus feel like part of the action. By
comparing what I recorded from the live stream to the cable footage, I could see that when the
show was not in commercial, the live stream tended to show what was being broadcast, although
not always. At times when the cable broadcast was focused on one team as they investigated, the
online footage would follow different teams. When the cable broadcast would be in commercial,
the live stream would show the exclusive footage, which consisted mostly of the security camera
footage from various spots around the location.
Besides the live stream, there were channels to allow three types of asynchronous
communication. As mentioned, there was the Panic Button, actually designed to be a big, red
button, as seen in Figure 3.2a. Using this feature, the user is prompted to indicate what the
investigators should look at and why. Users were also given two fields to send comments or
questions directly, supposedly, to three crew members, as shown in Figure 3.2b. One field was to
ask questions to Amy Bruni, a new TAPS crew member, who was tasked for the night with
answering these questions and posting the answers online, shown in Figure 3.2c. Amy and the
producers saw the questions asked before they were posted with the answers. The other field was
designed to allow users to send questions to the two founders and chief investigators of TAPS,
Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson. No answers from Jason and Grant were posted online, and there
was no indication of what happened to the questions.
3.3.1 Ghost Hunters Live and interactivity
As indicated by the event's producers, the goal of the online distribution was to promote a
type of consumption whereby fans and loyal viewers could feel they were having impact by being a
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part of the investigation. With this intention, the producers structured the virtual space to promote
ways of interacting with the investigating crew, such as the Panic Button and the two fields for
asking questions. The producers promoted an ideal of narrative interactivity, leading users to
believe they could potentially spot the big piece of evidence that will become the focus of the
investigation.
However, in the experience, this narrative interactivity was more for promoting viewership
than it was a consumption practice that impacted the progress of the content. The potential
narrative interaction occurred asynchronously, and through the filters of the producers. For
example, the Q&A with Amy. These posts were not terribly frequent during the event, and when
they did occur, they had the feel of being public relations style communication management. The
following examples were typical of the exchanges posted:
William: Amy , will you be doing any investigating?Amy: Tonight I will be in the interactive center only. But I have been investigating with
TAPS for awhile now. I was on the last episode at the USS Hornet and you will see me in a few more episodes this season and a lot more in season 5. :)
Mike: how is the atmosphere amyAmy: Pretty intense actually. Everyone takes this very seriously and of course, with so
many viewers watching it adds a different and exciting element. Of course, the team is always fun, so even with a little added pressure, we have a good time. :)
Dave: Amy. since I've been watching this show I've been real interested in the paranormal. What struck your interest in this field?
Amy: I was actually raised in a house that had a lot of paranormal activity. My family was very open about it and I started reading books on the paranormal when I just a kid. A couple years ago, I decided to take that interest and knowledge, and use it to investigate.
Jon: Amy, where or who do I ask, about the team investigating a tunnel and a trail that is in my area? They are extremely creepy and I've had some weird things happen to me there.
Amy: You can check out the TAPS web site, www.the-atlantic-paranormal-society.com for information on where and when to send case requests to TAPS. Good luck!
The answers concerned basic information about the episode, the series or TAPS. There was no
indication of questions posted challenging TAPS or the veracity of their evidence. There was no
discussion about whether or not ghosts actually do exist. No doubt not all questions posed to Amy
were answered, and as there was no way to verify the existence of those people who did ask
questions, this interactive feature could just as well have been scripted.
Additionally, there was very little acknowledgement of the show's investigators using
comments from the audience during the course of the episode. At many times the cable broadcast
would display in a crawl at the bottom suggestions generated from the online consumers; as seen
in Figure 3.2.1a, the person's name, location and suggestion would be shown, giving the viewer
the sense of having a presence in the show, but with no impact as these suggestions were not
used to prompt any investigations. Several times Amy and other crew members mentioned how
many Panic Button hits they had, but only once was there a pause in the episode narrative to
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address the suggestions. At 3 hours and 55 minutes into the investigation, Jason and Grant
answered live a call from a viewer who claimed his ancestor was a Confederate soldier and thus a
prisoner at the Fort. The viewer suggested whistling Dixie to provoke the spirit; Jason and Grant
both chuckled at the suggestion, but promised to try it. However, the broadcast never showed
them fulfilling this promise.
In all, it would appear that the attempts at narrative interaction were constructed more to
"pay lip service" (Cover, 2004, 2006) to the desires of loyal viewers and fans who may wish to be a
part of the investigation. To gratify this desire, the producers structured the site to contain various
means by which they could interact with their objects of affection – the TAPS team members and
the concept of ghost hunting. But the extent to which those viewers actually had an impact on their
object of affection appears to have been minimal at best.
3.3. Virtual world talk show
The last experiment I report on here occurred within the new media of a virtual world –
Linden Lab's Second Life, to be exact. This experience was with a television series created and
broadcast inworld, within Second Life, as well as streamed to a related website. It is not a
production supported by a corporation; instead, it is the work of a professor of economics, Dr.
Robert Bloomfield of Cornell University. As part of his research interest in the economics of virtual
worlds, Dr. Bloomfield began producing an inworld talk show, Metanomics, in September of 2007.
All programs are archived at their website, www.metanomics.net, for time-shifting consumption.
However, it is the live shows that occur inworld and on the website that are the focus of my
analysis.
I must first clarify that Metanomics was not the first time television production as been
attempted in a virtual world for distribution inworld and through other conventional media. A
decade ago a research group in the United Kingdom, in partnership with a local television system,
attempted to create a virtual world that would be used to create broadcast material via a process
they dubbed "Inhabited Television" (Craven et al, 2000). They designed the virtual world to contain
areas and events they hoped would entice virtual world inhabitants to visit their space; then they
would film the activities that occurred and use the footage for broadcast content. According to the
researchers working on the project:
"The defining feature of this medium is that an on-line audience can socially participate in a TV show that is staged within a shared virtual world. The producer defines a framework, but it is audience interaction and participation that brings it to life. … Furthermore, inhabited TV extends interactive TV to include social interaction among participants, new forms of control over narrative structure (e.g. navigation within a virtual world) and interaction with content (e.g. direct manipulation of props)." (Benford et al, 1999, p. 180)
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In essence, this earlier research project is similar to what the producers of Metanomics have
accomplished with their creation of an ongoing television series that even operates within standard
television seasons.
I began participating inworld and online with the September 23, 2006 episode, and was
there for seven episodes. All the shows in some way deal with topics about virtual worlds: from the
study to the design of them. At the time, the show was broadcast from an "island", or a region of
the virtual world owned by the show's producers, in Second Life called Sage Hall4. On this island
stood a building designed to mirror a physical building at Cornell University. As seen in Figure
3.3a, in this building was a large hall festooned with virtual objects intended to replicate a
conventional three-camera television studio built for a talk show. There was a stage decorated
with chairs for the host, Dr. Bloomfield's avatar Beyer Sellers, as well as his guests for the show.
Behind the chairs was a basic backdrop with an integrated video screen that could show graphics,
text and video. There were stadium-style stands for the audience to sit in – or, rather, for the
physical audience at their computers to position their avatars at as an anchor in the studio. There
were no objects representing cameras, as the technology allowed for recording to occur either
linked to a user's avatar or to a point in the virtual world of the user's choice.
The production staff of the show was geographically dispersed around the United States,
and at times around the world. For the September 23rd show, Dr. Bloomfield was at our university,
but was still able to conduct his show as if he was doing it from his standard location. The series
was "filmed" and transmitted by SLCN (Second Life Cable Network), which since the data
collection period has become Treet TV (http://archive.treet.tv/programs/metanomics). The show
was broadcast within Second Life to special islands, or event partners. During data collection this
included: MetaPartners, New Media Consortium, Rockcliffe University Consortium, Muse Island,
and Orange Island. As mentioned, the show is also streamed live at their website for those who do
not have access to Second Life, either in general or due to a technical glitch, as happened to me
once.
As part of my experience, I visited all of the event partners to understand how the
transmission worked. At each island, for example MetaPartners and New Media Consortium seen
in Figure 3.3b, a theatre was constructed that allowed users to position their avatars in chairs or
stadium-style stands and orient their avatars, and thus what they could see in the world, towards a
screen that would exhibit the show. Once I was forced to attend an event partner because I had
arrived too late at Sage Hall to become part of the live studio audience. Each island has a limit as
to how many avatars can be there at any given time; by the time I had arrived at Sage Hall, the
studio was full. Also, because this experiment combined both a virtual world and live streaming,
4 The show currently airs from a new island in Second Life in a building not designed to reflect a physical world location; however, it does retain the conventional set-up of stage and stands for studio audience.
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there were technical glitches. For the October 13 show, the audio and video feeds were distorted
at the New Media Consortium island, which I had scheduled to visit. Then, in teleporting to the
Rockcliffe University Consortium island, my avatar, and thus myself, became stuck in a blue void
and I was unable to move. That night I ended up going to the website to watch the show and
participate from there.
While the use of a virtual world to produce an ongoing television series is itself innovative,
the experiment's most innovative feature may be the utilization of an inworld feature to facilitate,
encourage, and utilize active audience participation. The series created a "chatbridge" or
"backchat" structure wherein audience members can utilize the world's standard texting feature to
talk amongst themselves and address questions and comments to the host, guests and producers
during the live show. As depicted in Figure 3.3c, this feature produces what Dr. Bloomfield called a
"constructive cacophony".
At each of the locations in Second Life, there were balls in the audience sections that were
treated metaphorically as microphones. If the audience member sat her avatar within a specified
range to this "microphone", then anything she types in her chat field will automatically be included
as part of this "constructive cacophony". Individuals who watched the live stream at the website
could likewise log in and participate in the chatbridge from there. The host and the guests were
also a linked to the chatbridge and would sometimes partake in the conversation. Audience
members were encouraged by producers to ask questions for the host and guests, allowing for the
backchat to actually provide feedback to influence the content of the show. The producers also
used this chatbridge to send out announcements before, during and after the show, such as
information about the show's sponsors, links to websites discussed in the show, and information
about upcoming episodes.
3.3.1. Metanomics and interactivity
The fact that a section of a virtual world was structured so as to produce a television series
is itself an attempt to foster greater interaction on the part of the consumer. More than just logging
in to a website and clicking on the hyperlink for a specific page, the consumer must initiate the
Second Life program, which includes creating an avatar, then orient her avatar to a place where
the episode will be shown and to face the screen within the virtual world so that what appears on
the user's computer screen is that episode. These steps require more activity on the part of the
user, and more reactivity on the part of the medium in order to function.
Furthermore, the producers of Metanomics have attempted to simultaneously promote
social and narrative interaction through their promotion of constructive cacophony. The chatbridge
allows individuals to communicate with each other during the show with the same type of
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synchronicity both CBS and NBC provide. Because the producers, host and guests are also part
of the chatbridge, there is the possibility that any audience member could impact the course of the
show, utilizing the same potential promoted by Ghost Hunters Live.
In one sense it is unfair to include an analysis of this experiment with the others for two
reasons. First, this is an academic program within a less used medium, a virtual world, about a
highly specialized topic; thus, the overall audience size is not comparable to those generated by
the corporate controlled examples. Because of this smaller size, it is possible to generate the type
of social interaction Ghost Hunters Live could not. Second, it is a talk show and not generally
designed for high audience feedback, whereby a solitary question from the audience could
completely change the course of the show. Thus the genre is different than the formats used by
CBS and NBC, which use their virtual spaces for the distribution and consumption only of scripted
material. The genre is also different than that of Ghost Hunters Live, but as with those special
event shows, not every question directed at the producers of Metanomics becomes utilized by the
producers to impact the content of the show.
However, there are reasons to include this experiment when discussing attempts to further
the interactivity of television distribution and consumption. In both the Ghost Hunters Live and
Metanomics examples, the producers act as gatekeepers and decide what communication from
the audience will be passed along to become part of the show's content. From the user's
perspective, there was no one-on-one correlation between the user's actions and the content's
reactions. Instead the content responds to the aggregated audience by reacting to perhaps the
"best" actions, where the actions are determined to be as such by the producers. Additionally, in
the Metanomics and CBS and NBC experiments, individuals alone at home or work, seated before
a computer, can be in conversation with individuals perhaps thousands of miles away, both
strangers and friends; indeed, friendships can be fostered via such communicating, and even a
sense of community can form. Also, in all three of those experiments, there was some attempt for
the producers to bring into the virtual space the practices of a physical space; with CBS and NBC,
these would be the practices of watching television with others in a living room; with Metanomics it
would be the practices of being part of a live studio audience for a talk show.
4. Remediating conventional television online
Through my participation with these experiments, what I have discussed is what I found the
most interesting: how the producers were attempting to provide different types of interaction in the
experience of internet TV. They appeared interested in creating structures that would promote
some form of social interaction and/or narrative interaction. I found such experimental attempts at
increased interactivity interesting for two reasons. First, for what such attempts say about the
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Internet television remediating conventional television
desire of the producers to remediate the structures and practices of conventional television.
Second, for what such attempts say about the power dynamics in the relationship between
producers and consumers. In this section I will elaborate on my observations and reflections
considering both of these points.
4.1 Remediation
Remediation, as originally conceptualized by Bolter and Grusin (1999), is used in this
discussion to understand how to compare conventional television distribution and consumption to
the structures and practices promoted in these four experiments; remediation helps us understand,
as we compare the movement of content from one medium to another, what was or was not
changed in that the meaning of the content and how it was distributed. For the purposes of this
discussion, I am focusing the notion of remediation involving not only content, but the forces that
are surrounding and embedded in that content and its distribution structures.
"No medium today, and certainly no single media event, seems to do its cultural work in isolation from other media, any more than it works in isolation from other social and economic forces. What is new about new media comes from the particular ways in which they refashion older media and the ways in which older media refashion themselves to answer the challenges of new media." Bolter & Grusin (1999, p.15)
"Remediation is, above all, the borrowing and refashioning of the representational practices of one media or media form into another, and such practices are constituted as a combination of technical choices and ideological positions. The measure of these practices is not a standard dictated by any essential features of a technology; it is instead their ability to capture the 'real' with reference to some cultural standard." Bolter (2007, p. 201)
I refer to these two quotes as they seemingly acknowledgement that a media text, new or old, does
not only involve how the content is refashioned, and the ways in which the refashioning speak to
the nature of mediation. "Television-as-text" is a product of the multiple layers of meaning and
behaviours that surround it as it is enmeshed in social and cultural networks. In remediating, it is
possible to attempt to refashion these meanings and behaviours: either to make them transparent,
where the consumer is in relation to them through the new media as they would be through the old,
or to make them aware of the new media's mediation in bringing to the consumer to the text
(Bolter, 2000; Bolter & Grusin, 1999). In this sense, along with comparing the technical structure of
the text that is being remediated, one can also compare the behaviours that are either implicitly or
explicitly also brought into the new consumption space (Crang, Crosbie & Graham, 2007; Deuze,
2006).
In this discussion of Internet TV, the analysis is on how the Internet compares to television
in refashioning the distribution structures and consumption practices of and around conventional
"television-as-text" content. In the following three sections I will discuss how the experiments can
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Internet television remediating conventional television
be seen as attempts to remediate three aspects of conventional television: practices, structures,
and power dynamics.
4.1.1. Remediating practices
In this analysis I will focus on a practice that is often used to separate the two distribution
technologies under consideration, networked computers and television sets. Engaging with any
aspect of the Internet, from emails to massive multiplayer games, is typically considered to be a
solitary experience, at least in the sense that in the physical world the ratio is one person to one
computer screen (Poniewozik, 2009). Television is typically considered a social activity, whether at
the time of consumption or later on as a focal point for conversation (Chorianopoulous & Lekakos,
2008; Ryu & Wong, 2008; Wood, 2007).
The virtual livings rooms created by CBS and NBC and the virtual talk show Metanomics
are examples of attempts to remediate the social practices of consumption that happen in living
rooms or any place people congregate in-person to consume the same televised content. The
producers consciously programmed their virtual spaces to promote synchronous social interaction.
NBC and CBS marketed their products to highlight such capability, even labeling them with terms
that would conjure up the physical surroundings and the practices that inhabit them.
The question remains, however, did they effectively remediate the practices? Part of
remediation is determined by the subjective experience of the user; this would perhaps be most
true for the activities that surround the television set and constitute the engagement with it. If the
user does not perceive the social interaction activities in the online spaces to be similar to those he
is familiar with in the physical spaces, then can they be considered the same? Critic Chris Albrecht
(2008) tested CBS's Social Rooms and found the social interaction not a true remediation of those
physical world practices. Albrecht argued there is a difference between virtual and physical social
interaction, and one of his key points is that without the body language and sound aspects it is not
the same type of social interaction.
The lack of such cues is particularly true in the NBC case, but less in the CBS and
Metanomics cases. With NBC, there is only the option of textual chatting. With CBS, the users
can interact with the screen through the various actions, and each user's actions will be visible to
the others in the room. In this way, each person in the virtual living room could comment upon the
actions of the others, as they could do were such interactions occurring within a physical living
room. With Metanomics, the avatars are full bodied representations of humans and other
creatures, capable of making gestures akin to physical body language. In each of the event
partners, where the avatars congregate to consume the live feed, people can use their digital
selves to relay communication other than through the text channel. Of course, none of these
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Internet television remediating conventional television
virtual spaces can completely remediate all the dimensionality of social interaction that occurs
within the physical world, but the virtual world can come closest with the combination of embodied
and text communication.
4.1.2. Remediating structures
As I have discussed, what I consider makes these cases experimental are the attempts at
different types and amounts of interactivity. In the previous section I discussed social interaction.
Narrative interaction was also attempted in two of the case studies as an attempt to refashion the
distribution of television from one-way transmission to a more two-way dialogic model. A more
dialogic distribution model is one of the features proponents of interactive television have
attempted to develop: the ability for the consumer to interact with the content so as to have the
content reacts in real-time to his actions. Since the rise of digital games with increasingly
complicated narratives, there has been growing interest in how to learn from these interactive
media for the production of interactive television (Cover, 2004; Ekman & Lankoski, 2004; Ursu et
al, 2008).
In both the Ghost Hunters Live and Metanomics cases, there was structured into the nature
of the show an attempt to include the consumers in the production process, to limited extents.
Being live shows, both examples structured their virtual space so that the audience could provide
feedback to the producers that could impact the progress of the content as it was broadcast. For
Ghost Hunters Live, such feedback was through specified structures of asking questions to the
producers and providing suggestions to assist the investigation. For Metanomics, such feedback
was through the communal chatbridge that linked audience members with one another and with
producers during the course of the show. By allowing, and promoting, such feedback potentials,
both cases were explicitly indicating they did not intend to distribute their content in the
conventional linear model; instead, they attempted to bring in real-time audience feedback, thereby
creating a dialogic distribution model.
However, the narrative interactivity of these experiments is not equitable with the truest
form seen in digital games due to the lack of a one-to-one action-reaction ratio. What this means
is that the progress of the television content was not reactive to each single user. Instead, the
content reacts to the aggregated audience. In Ghost Hunters Live and Metanomics, the producers
selected only certain questions or suggestions to incorporate into the live content; everyone who
wanted to influence the content could not directly do so. In digital games individuals playing alone
or in groups have the one-on-one relationship as their actions can be shown to directly influence
the game’s content as it reacts to them. Game players can have the experience of having their
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Internet television remediating conventional television
actions matter for the progress of the game's content; such subjective experience is not possible
with either of these experiments.
While these examples show interest in narrative interactivity, there remains the tension
about producing a true one-on-one ratio. Even research studies that have attempted to create
television broadcasts that were interactive also relied on the aggregated response model (Hales,
Pellimen & Castrén, 2006; Ursu et al, 2008). What these experiments reflect is the tension Cover
(2004, 2006) described as the problems involved in overcoming the "author-text-audience"
relationship. With both Ghost Hunters Live and Metanomics, the lack of the one-to-one narrative
interaction can be seen as "paying lip service" to the desires of consumers to fully participate in the
content.
4.2. Remediating power dynamics
The conclusion of the previous section leads directly into the discussion of this section.
Conventional power dynamics in television are based on the producers being empowered over the
creation and distribution of content, with consumers having increasing control over their
consumption. The attempts at interactivity found in these case studies can be read as attempts to
refashion this conventional power dynamic for the new media landscape. In examining the rise of
interactive marketing techniques, I have argued (Reinhard, 2008) that the attempts by producers to
structure interactivity into their offered media products is to maintain the ability to utilize the labour
of aggregated audiences for their own purposes.
I believe we can see a similar power dynamic at work in these case studies. While it is true
that these experiments provide more interactivity than has been found in other internet television
offerings, they are not the type of interactivity that empowers the individual to explore her desires
fully. Instead, the interactivity is limited in terms of the choices available, as predetermined or
determined in real time by the producers – a system that is reflexive to programmed parameters,
but is not flexible beyond that (Kim & Sawhney, 2002). While the consumers are empowered in
certain ways, the producers have determined how, when and in what way those consumers will be
empowered, thereby retaining ultimate power over distribution, and to a lesser extent consumption.
Rather than deconstruct the traditional television model to truly make interactive television,
Kim and Sawhney argue the industry is more interested in maintaining the conventional model
(2002), albeit with adjustments to reflect the increasing active nature of consumers. From one
perspective, maintaining this model is commonsense. The producers have to be responsive to an
audience, an aggregated collection of users, even if it is not numbering in the millions. A
technological medium can be responsive to the actions of a user, but to the providers that
individual user is just one of many. While the user may be able to interact with and respond to the
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Internet television remediating conventional television
whole network, the whole network, in order to be economically viable, must respond and interact
with the aggregated audience (Van Tassel, 2001). Limiting the type and amount of interactivities
can reflect this necessity of responding to larger, variable marketplace of consumers.
What this points to is the tension discussed by Cover (2004, 2006) and Jenkins (2004) on
the traditionally dichotomous identities of producer and consumer. Producers have attempted to
respond to changes in the marketplace and the media landscape by simultaneously including
consumers more in the production of television (Bennett & Strange, 2008; Deuze, 2007) and
offering them greater control over the distribution and exhibition of television (Becker, 2006;
Holahan, 2007), and then using their ability to maintain aggregating audiences to further grow and
develop their media empires that are ultimately not disempowered in relation to the audience
(Deuze, 2007). The television industry has learned lessons from the music industry that to remain
powerful in a world mediated by the Internet (Holahan, 2007; Seiter, 1999), the industry must
provide some power to the consumers to fulfil increasing interest in interactivity
From a critical approach, these attempts to remediate the power dynamics may appear
oppressive, disallowing the consumer to fully express herself by interacting on all levels of
television content, from production to consumption. I will not argue this is not potentially true.
There does appear to be pandering to those who want interactivity by providing limited forms that
could potentially become accepted as the norm by the majority of users, thereby reducing the
likelihood of truer interaction, and more equitable power dynamics, in the future.
However, to what extent does such an argument celebrate the consumer as being always-
active, or indeed all consumers being as interested in interactivity as the most active fans studied
by Ross (2008). Seen from another perspective, this remediation may be interpreted as basic
"supply and demand" economics, of producers responding to a majority of the audience being
unwilling and/or not ready to embrace a fully interactive television. The majority of consumers may
be more interested in the passive reception of the content rather than having to negotiate and
navigate a highly interactive technical interface (as seen in discussions by Benford et al, 1999; Van
Tassel, 2001). This tension in the marketplace continues when we consider potential consumers
to be an aggregate of a variety of groups, some that may be more or less likely to be in the ready-
to-interact category. Studies indicate acceptance and desire for truer interactivity will come sooner
with younger, more affluent demographics and those experienced/comfortable with computers and
online environments, such as fans of television shows that began colonizing the Internet as a place
for their fandom (Ross, 2008; Sperring & Strandvall, 2008; Ursu et al, 2008; van Dijk & de Vos,
2001).
From this perspective, perhaps what these case studies illustrate are attempts to remediate
the practices and structures of conventional television because these practices and structures can
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Internet television remediating conventional television
replicate the logics of television to which consumers have become accustomed (Green, 2008). As
Ekman and Lankoski (2004, p. 168) discussed in their survey of British people, finding both this
duality of interest and hesitation:
"Although new media may be emerging, people are slow to change. They will prefer the old and reliable to the new and suspect, until the new medium becomes familiar. … interactive television will have to maintain some familiar aspects of television, mainly its broadcast nature, in order to be perceived as television at all."
In providing a hybrid, a middle ground of something familiar combined with something novel,
progress could be made toward that dream of the interactive television that better balances the
power between producers and consumers. However, the assumptions of this perspective require
reception studies analyses of the wants and needs of the aggregated audience(s) in relation to
these experiments and similar attempts to colonize cyberspace to become places for television.
5. Conclusions
As the Internet and broadband technology grow in scale and diffuse throughout the
marketplace, we may continue to see more attempts to bring to online distribution and
consumption of television the type of interactivity that proponents of interactive television had
hoped to bring to the television set. Already all online television structures foster time-shifting;
consumers can visit a variety of Internet applications, both legal and illegal, to find whatever
content they wish. This ability is similar to the control offered by DVR devices for television sets.
What these case studies show is how virtual spaces can become places to offer two types of
interaction that have not become widely available in the public marketplace: social interaction and
narrative interaction.
While we are seeing progress being made towards interactive TV, and the potential such
interactive TV would hold for empowering the consumers, the current experiments also seem to
indicate that the consumer/producer power dynamic and tension continues to underlie much of the
structuring of online virtual environments and worlds for television production, distribution,
exhibition and consumption. The producers are increasingly responding to the interactive desires
of the consumers in the marketplace, especially to those who are Internet-savvy and thus most
likely to go to such places. However, if the majority of the marketplace does not indicate the desire
for that control, then there may be less experimentation that could offer more empowering
interaction, such as true narrative interaction. Then the minority who do wish for such control may
have to continue to colonize virtual worlds like Second Life, which is founded to promote user-
driven innovation, to have their needs met.
In the discussion of these experiments, I have attempted to consider the remediation
occurring as neither completely oppressing or empowering the consumers or producers. Indeed,
indicating either as occurring would be to see a resolution to the tension, and I do not believe such
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Internet television remediating conventional television
a resolution has occurred, or is likely to occur. The experiments illustrate the result of the
intertwinement of structure and agency, as discussed by such scholars as Giddens (1984). The
experiments were developed in response to the changes in the activities of consumers, and these
activities were themselves in response to changes in the media landscape. Perhaps the
interactivity offered in these cyberspaces do not promote completely empowering the audience, but
should the places fail to produce measurable consumption, especially among the corporate
controlled experiments, then these spaces will be restructured. Indeed, their very presence, and
their promotion of interactivity, may foster greater desire in the marketplace for such control,
thereby prompting more manipulations of cyberspace. Or the experiments could be economic
failures, and such attempts to create online places of interactive consumption may stop or be
delayed.
As long as both structure and agency are constituted by changeable actions and material
conditions, there cannot be an either-or resolution to the tension of producer-consumer. There will
only be the tension manifesting in new ways and in new sites, such as these experiments. My
analysis of these sites attempted to focus on their structures in how they relate to, reflect upon, and
are influenced by the surrounding cultural and economic forces at the time of their manifestation.
Situating the experiments in this larger fabric provided a way to speak to both the concerns of
political economics on the positioning of the producer and reception studies on the understanding
of the consumer. As Jenkins (2004) spoke to, these new media sites can provide us the
opportunity to understand the necessity of combining these disciplines, so as not to succumb to the
need for an either-or resolution to what is a very complex situation. Investigating these sites from
both perspectives can help us understand the complexities of these tensions and what and how
they speak to the sociohistorical moment(s) in which they exist.
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Figure 3.1.1a. List of shows available for CBS Social Rooms
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Figure 3.1.1b. Example of CBS Social Room chat
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3.1.1c. Example of CBS Social Room icons
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3.1.2.a. NBC Viewing Party selection process
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3.1.2.b. NBC Viewing Party creation process
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Internet television remediating conventional television
Figure. 3.2a. Ghost Hunters Live Panic Button
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Figure 3.2b. Ghost Hunters Live fields for asking questions
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Internet television remediating conventional television
Figure 3.2c. Ghost Hunters Live Amy Bruni answers questions
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Figure 3.2.1a. Ghost Hunters Live examples of viewers' suggestions
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3.3a. Metanomics Sage Hall stage
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3.3b. Metanomics event partners theatres, MetaPartners and New Media Consoritum
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Figure 3.3c. Metanomics chatbridge at Sage Hall
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