Ernst writes about the idea of media archeology and reminds readers about the archivability and storage within new media. He question the idea of the ‘documentary truth’ that McCarthy talks about and critiques the idea of liveness. His point is that everything is archived and focuses on the television in explaining that many ‘live’ broadcasts are never really live at all. This in line with Gitelman’s emphasis against the ignorance of people to the fact that ‘media’ is plural because it is always made up of a complex network of mediums that are connected by flows. Because our ignorance of this and how easy it is to look past the medium itself and only focus on the content, everything seems seamless and ‘live’.
Likewise, Williams emphasises on the idea that devices of media, specifically the television, are always made up of a complex series of past inventions and innovations. He argues against the idea of media determinism and puts forth his point that it is a two way causality flow between media and society. In this sense, he argues against McLuhan’s perspective that media and technology shape the other aspects of culture and of culture.
Tham E-lyn
What I feel was most relevant about the readings was the presentation of television as a storage medium. Also, the concept that “no medium has meaning independently, but only in relation to other media” – this goes to emphasise the whole point of this course; how we must look at the various forms of media in intersection, with the whole point of realising that every medium is interconnected (perhaps even interdependent, in some ways), and that it will not do to study each in isolation.
Mcluhan contends that the content of new media is actually the content of old media; there is no distinction whatsoever. For example, cinemas now disseminate knowledge that only books could provide in the past. In turn, the content of old media is also actually the content of new media – the internet now can provide whatever information previously only supplied by television. Yet, there is also a certain degree of dependency – as per the example given, when a natural disaster interrupted power and telecommunications, there was a dependency on storage batteries to maintain communication. Technology depends on technology to be maintained.
Ernst explores the concept of what it means for a show to be “live” – a large portion of it is “transmission of video-streaming on the internet”; something filmed in the morning in Asia could be shown on the evening news in the United States. Television often has an ability to make us forget that it is in fact a “storage mechanism”, especially due to its broadcast flows. Individuals technically have no clue if the broadcast is really “live” or not, they just have to shape their views based on the information they are given. This is particularly true if the users had no other way to verify otherwise.
Tan Yuan Ting
Ok, this captcha thing sucks. I typed a whole bunch of stuff and now it’s all gone cause they said it expired.
Tutorial discussion talked about agency between YouTube and TV, and how YouTube has more agency than the TV because of the Search function, allowing users to view their videos there and then as they like, unlike the TV where you have to wait till 7pm before watching your favourite drama.
Hypnosis function of the TV makes one have a sense of placeness, forgetting that their watching the TV, and allowing people to see the global in the local because of TV programmes, travel shows and stuff. It not only redefines space, but allows people to travel the world in the comfort of their home. Also allows for a sense of community between some individuals, say people who watch Teen Wolf or something. They don’t necessarily have to be physically together to watch the show to be able to talk about it when they meet, they can just watch it at home on the TV and yet receive the same kind of content. (Standardisation, in a sense).
TV programmes however are still largely controlled, keeping in mind that most, if not all, media objects gives us a sense of reality, or rather of how the world should and ought to be. But probably of a more prominent nature of the TV and maybe in the news. I think news has a more special effect because people tend to think, “hey if it made it into the news, it should be factual, it should be real, it’s not possible they will report fake stuff”, and so this is a way of reality manipulation.
Convergence of various media would lead to all sorts of development with existing media, for what it’s worth, who knows one day we will be able to control the lighting of the house using the TV, or have it play music all around the house in the hidden surround sound system, or turn on the stove in the kitchen .. and the list goes on. Whether or not such integration is for the good or for the bad, I think it swings both ways.
Lee Cheong Khi
This week’s readings centered around the study of television. McCarthy argued that many studies on television attempted at looking at its immateriality and placelessness, missing out on the importance of materiality. These include failing to look at where televisions are placed, decorated and how it is placed. She described three aspects of television’s technological form in which it innovates ways to think about place. The first is the ideology of liveness, how television is space-binding. It keeps readers attracted to the idea of viewing live, emphasizing and sustaining this intimacy and personal experience. It functions in both micro and macro ways; keeping the experience personal and intimate, and drawing everyone closer, in other words, space-binding, that is “ the abolition of every possibility of remoteness.” The second aspect is the idea of site-specific which examines television as a physical form, emphasizing how it differs from site to site. A television watched at home differs in communication from a flat screen displayed on the streets. The third is the ability of screens to “dematerialize at the point of its encounter with philosophy.” In short, McCarthy was trying to look at the materiality and commodification of television, holding a rather Marxist stance that television “transcends sensuousness” and only by analyzing the materiality of the television would the spell of “immaterial and the unreal in the philosophical encounter with television” be broken.
Similar to McCarthy, Williams maintained a technical view of televisions, looking at the cause and effects, technological history and history of uses of television. He too, like McCarthy attempted to focus not on the immateriality of television. To him, many failed to understand specific meanings of various statements relating to television, such as the idea that television has changed the ways we see the world. Hence, he looked at why such statements were spoken and tried to understand the meanings of them. He too, like Lynn White traced the developments and inventions, how it led to the invention of television. As such, he associated the inventions with numerous previous developments. He ended the article with the major use of television; broadcasting. To him, power relations are involved in the distribution of ideas through the mass media like television.
Ong Yan Ting
According to Williams, television can be seen as an object that changes society or as one that is reflective of larger social forces. Also, television is not an entirely new invention, it is a set of technology made up of existing pieces of technology that were assembled together to form the television. The result of television viewing is the promotion of a certain form of domesticity, an intimacy that cinema does not have. Cinema going is a social act, such that a viewer’s reaction can be affected by the people around such that they laugh along when others do, even if they may not understand the content in the same way others did. In television, one’s reception is more an individual act that would not be influenced by others unless they are watching it together. However, that being said, the idea of sitcoms can be a social act even if watched separately. Sitcoms include a ‘laugh track’ that is played during punch line moments, which may act as a socialising factor, audience know they are expected to laugh, or at least see the humour in the situation.
Yeow Xinyin Christy
The rise of national brands and retailing chains following the emergence of TV commercials during Fordism created a form of placelessness which makes us focus on the immateriality of the television. McCarthy reminds us that the television is an object that shapes its immediate space through its material form and she shifts our attention from television as a household fixture, to television monitors in public spaces. Applying various theories of scale and place, such as the Aristotelian ontological plenitude and Marxist geographers’ notion of place, she maintains that television is a surprisingly flexible medium and constitutes spatial differences rather than essences. The geographers’ notion is that “place is always a reflection of wider social forces”. An example chosen to illustrate was a video installation for a shopping mall in Atlanta. The video installation that was supposed to “take” an ontologized place, was eventually subordinated by the place itself. She mentioned approaching “place as an active and dynamic form of materiality, quite capable of overpowering technological modes of spatial rupture”.
In Williams article, technology is seen, not from the technological determinism or symptomatic technology, but looked for and developed with certain purposes and practices in mind. He brings us through and to look at historicization and the forces behind the emergence of technology. He described how new societal needs created new communication systems. However, he argues through the perspective of Marxist cultural criticism, that not all appropriate technology will be found for a social need that has been demonstrated. Instead, the need which corresponds with the priorities of those in power will be given to resources to be worked on. Profitability, not social use, is the driving force which is still evident today.
Annabel Su
Williams’ rejects the idea that technology shapes society (technological determinism) and questions the statement, “the television has altered our world.” He looks at technological determinism and symptomatic technology before coming up with his own hybrid way of looking at the television. Under technological determinism, Williams explains that technology has consequences for its users and society. When viewing technology as symptomatic technology, Williams posits that the media is adopted by a societal order to manipulate other members of society for its own motives. However, he argues that these two concepts assume technology and its development to be independent and self-generating. Hence, he comes up with a hybrid of the two and acknowledges that technology was both anticipated and sought after. His idea sees a reciprocal relationship formed between society and media, and encourages the examination of the television from not just a myopic perspective, but from a combination of social, economic and cultural angles.
McCarthy maintains the importance of linking television with site-specificity, and the need to understand and question television’s material form. She also asserts that we should think about the omnipresence of television in consumer culture, and dig deeper into how the television has been absorbed in the ambient flow of everyday life.
Khrisha Chatterji
From what I gather, McCarthy is trying to say that we should not examine television as something immaterial, we should look at the materiality of television and how it affects its environment. There are three important aspects of our understanding of how the materiality of television answers questions of being and perception with the modern preoccupation with the everyday. (1) The indexical force of formal ideologies of television techniques that allow for representations that create temporal simultaneity into a sense of spatial collapse (e.g. the idea of ‘live’ television) (p.98). (2) The material form that is site specific (p.99) and (3) the screen’s ability to dematerialize at the point of its encounter with philosophy. The television takes place (e.g. the idea of being a TV addict) (pp. 99-100). Television affects the way we interact with people. The television is an object and it shapes its surroundings. McCarthy sees the importance of understanding the television as an object and how it reorganizes what we think of space and time.
Williams is trying to analyze television as a type of cultural technology through a socio-historical understanding of television’s development, its institutions, its forms and effects. His approach to analyzing television, I would think, is similar to Lynn White’s essay about the act of invention as he views technology as being accidental and television as having altered our world.
I think the main takeaway from “Between real time and memory on demand” by Ernst is that television is a form of memory storage where everything is recorded and kept. He goes on to write about live broadcasts and pre-recorded broadcasts and how such storage works and what it does.
Frances Tan Wei Ting
McCarthy calls for a conceptual framework involving the components of “site” and “sight” in thinking about television. TV encompasses inherent tensions which provoke thinking about modernity and new ways of thinking about space and semiotics. Related terms include: materiality, immateriality, scale, networks, global generality, local specificity etc. TV enables the “spectacular reorganization of time and space” and encourages “placelessness”, which causes the medium to “disappear” in the act of allowing to “appear” (dematerialization), leading to sense of derealization. This idea echoes that regarding the apparatus of the cinema.
The ideology of “liveness”, sustained and filtered temporal simultaneity and spatial collapse, creates two fictive spaces for viewer simultaneity: (1) “space of imagined co-enunciation signified in the direct address of the talking head on screen” and (2) “familiar imagined space of the nation looking in on its key sites”. TV is space-binding. The material form of TV is site -specific, usually seen in dominant discourse as present in the private, when actually it is more malleable and heterogeneous. McCarthy points out assumptions about TV’s production, transmission and reception processes and agents. Discourses about the media, and associated others, are circulated by the media, in the media e.g. viewers as homogeneous suggestive mass.
Ontological conception of place is compared to the geographical conception of place. The former speaks of place as existing (immanent, stable, contained and motionless) before meaning (political, social, economic) is attributed to it. Place is acted upon by technics. The Marxist geographical conception views place as always a reflection of wider social forces. Social construction based on the principle of dialectic materialism (forces and relations in things).
*TV in the private when re-publicized becomes mundane.
Williams was trying to address the relationship of “cause” and “effect” in technology and society, the social history of TV and the social history of the uses of TV. There are two views of causal relationships of TV technology and society: technological determinism and symptomatic technology. Technological determinism views TV as a technological accident with also accidental consequences, created by essentially inherent processes of research and development. In turn, such progress “creates” the modern world and the modern man. Symptomatic technology also views TV as a technological accident but with uses (or consequences) reflecting society or human nature, being less deterministic.
Williams suggest a new interpretation to restore “intention” and recognise the needs, purposes and practices that are reflected by or shape technology are direct, not marginal. Another part of this new interpretation is to recognise that the invention of television “depended on a complex of inventions and developments” in other media technologies. As such, the functions may overlap. The critical difference was in their specialized spheres of application. The development of technology is a “response to the development of an extended social, economic and political system and a response to crisis within that system”. They may be separate inventions, but they reflect new forms of mobility, among other characteristics, and vested interests of modern society, and form a communication system (and institution(s)) of their own.
What is transmitted and by whom? “For the transmission of simple orders, a communications system already existed. For the transmission of an ideology, there were specific traditional institutions. But for the transmission of news and background…there was an evident need for a new form…the press became not only a new communications system but, centrally, a new social institution.” Broadcasting can be seen as manipulative, abetted by “mass communication”, and the classic idea of central transmitters and individual TV sets. Where is the TV? The supply is created before the demand. The means of communication is created before the content. The content as “news from the outside” which passes through the medium. Issue of supply being “free” – without profits, there are problems for the investment in media (and content) production. Sources of revenue include: licensing, commercial sponsorship and supportive advertising.
Ernst talks about the effect of digital archiving versus live broadcasting. The former leads to “the medium is the message”, not the man. It also leads to the elimination of narrativity due to editing. The disappearance of the translator (related concept above) is mentioned. He also introduces “white noise”, “a ceaseless particle stream of information in constant motion” that leads to loss of overall “meaning”. This is the enduring flow of TV, the permanent broadcasting, the liveness that enables recording, and the recording the allows tendency for amnesia. There is the conscious use of technological defects. One can observe the nature of media practice in breakdowns, leading to active participation, which may be a response to “dulled criticality” (stopping the mediality of TV from receding). Williams compares Weber and Benjamin’s conceptions of “aura”. The former views aura as dynamic, present even for the reproduced copy.
Storage mechanism within the TV that we do not see.
The internet. Now the content of TV is the internet. According to McLuhan, the content of new media is old media. But here the content of old media is new media. Distinguishing the event and the news of the event (p 631 last line).
Television gesture: talking about what television does without going into what televison is. Interested in effect but not what it actually does. Sort of like a criticism. Regarding Weber and Jameson. Media referred to, is peripheral, not central to their studies.
Lucy Molloy
Television, construction and devices used in entertainment.
Following the tradition of literature and theatre, devices are used in Television to construct, alter and subvert the experience of the audience.
On B roll-
B roll, is pre-prepared content which is there in case of a change in events. E.g. a obituary for a prominent member of society.
This is an example of the failure of the BBC to prepare for all eventualities.
This man was mistaken for an IT expert Guy Kewney and accidentally ended up being interviewed on national news. He was in fact a taxi driver who was supposedly picking up the interviewee Guy Kewney. When the production team called out ‘guy’ in the lobby, he raised his hand and was ushered onto set. Clearly English isn’t his first language, which is probably why the confusion occurred. The production team obviously had no idea about who the real Guy Kewney was because he’s a white British man. Anyway, its probably the funniest thing I’ve seen on TV in years. You just couldn’t make it up.
In relation to other TV shows, this is similar to the phenomenon of ‘out takes’ TV shows, which give you a glimpse into the production of TV. The concept here is:
That the audience gets a kick out of having access to privileged knowledge. In terms of literature, it is comparable to third person indirect discourse, which writers such as Austen have used to offer the readers a unique insight into the psyche of their protagonist. In TV this is also used in talent shows such as ‘The Xfactor’ where the presenters give the audience a sneak glimpse of whats going on backstage. This is borrowing lexis from theatre, ‘behind the scenes’ ‘backstage’ and ‘waiting in the wings’ are all illusions to the fact that the form of entertainment is a construction.
This varied audience participatory role is arguably more active. In detective narratives, the audience is lead to believe they are not passively receiving factual knowledge. They are presented with a series of circumstances and are given time to make their own interpretation, before the ending is revealed.
There are a range of viewing experiences that are orchestrated by the production team, who have a view in mind for how they want their market to react. These devices only work if the audience is willing to or able to relate on some level to the content. This is why humour is so difficult to reproduce, it’s the most nuanced and subjective art form. Which explains why the majority of made for TV comedies are so unappealing.
Ernst writes about the idea of media archeology and reminds readers about the archivability and storage within new media. He question the idea of the ‘documentary truth’ that McCarthy talks about and critiques the idea of liveness. His point is that everything is archived and focuses on the television in explaining that many ‘live’ broadcasts are never really live at all. This in line with Gitelman’s emphasis against the ignorance of people to the fact that ‘media’ is plural because it is always made up of a complex network of mediums that are connected by flows. Because our ignorance of this and how easy it is to look past the medium itself and only focus on the content, everything seems seamless and ‘live’.
Likewise, Williams emphasises on the idea that devices of media, specifically the television, are always made up of a complex series of past inventions and innovations. He argues against the idea of media determinism and puts forth his point that it is a two way causality flow between media and society. In this sense, he argues against McLuhan’s perspective that media and technology shape the other aspects of culture and of culture.
What I feel was most relevant about the readings was the presentation of television as a storage medium. Also, the concept that “no medium has meaning independently, but only in relation to other media” – this goes to emphasise the whole point of this course; how we must look at the various forms of media in intersection, with the whole point of realising that every medium is interconnected (perhaps even interdependent, in some ways), and that it will not do to study each in isolation.
Mcluhan contends that the content of new media is actually the content of old media; there is no distinction whatsoever. For example, cinemas now disseminate knowledge that only books could provide in the past. In turn, the content of old media is also actually the content of new media – the internet now can provide whatever information previously only supplied by television. Yet, there is also a certain degree of dependency – as per the example given, when a natural disaster interrupted power and telecommunications, there was a dependency on storage batteries to maintain communication. Technology depends on technology to be maintained.
Ernst explores the concept of what it means for a show to be “live” – a large portion of it is “transmission of video-streaming on the internet”; something filmed in the morning in Asia could be shown on the evening news in the United States. Television often has an ability to make us forget that it is in fact a “storage mechanism”, especially due to its broadcast flows. Individuals technically have no clue if the broadcast is really “live” or not, they just have to shape their views based on the information they are given. This is particularly true if the users had no other way to verify otherwise.
Ok, this captcha thing sucks. I typed a whole bunch of stuff and now it’s all gone cause they said it expired.
Tutorial discussion talked about agency between YouTube and TV, and how YouTube has more agency than the TV because of the Search function, allowing users to view their videos there and then as they like, unlike the TV where you have to wait till 7pm before watching your favourite drama.
Hypnosis function of the TV makes one have a sense of placeness, forgetting that their watching the TV, and allowing people to see the global in the local because of TV programmes, travel shows and stuff. It not only redefines space, but allows people to travel the world in the comfort of their home. Also allows for a sense of community between some individuals, say people who watch Teen Wolf or something. They don’t necessarily have to be physically together to watch the show to be able to talk about it when they meet, they can just watch it at home on the TV and yet receive the same kind of content. (Standardisation, in a sense).
TV programmes however are still largely controlled, keeping in mind that most, if not all, media objects gives us a sense of reality, or rather of how the world should and ought to be. But probably of a more prominent nature of the TV and maybe in the news. I think news has a more special effect because people tend to think, “hey if it made it into the news, it should be factual, it should be real, it’s not possible they will report fake stuff”, and so this is a way of reality manipulation.
Convergence of various media would lead to all sorts of development with existing media, for what it’s worth, who knows one day we will be able to control the lighting of the house using the TV, or have it play music all around the house in the hidden surround sound system, or turn on the stove in the kitchen .. and the list goes on. Whether or not such integration is for the good or for the bad, I think it swings both ways.
This week’s readings centered around the study of television. McCarthy argued that many studies on television attempted at looking at its immateriality and placelessness, missing out on the importance of materiality. These include failing to look at where televisions are placed, decorated and how it is placed. She described three aspects of television’s technological form in which it innovates ways to think about place. The first is the ideology of liveness, how television is space-binding. It keeps readers attracted to the idea of viewing live, emphasizing and sustaining this intimacy and personal experience. It functions in both micro and macro ways; keeping the experience personal and intimate, and drawing everyone closer, in other words, space-binding, that is “ the abolition of every possibility of remoteness.” The second aspect is the idea of site-specific which examines television as a physical form, emphasizing how it differs from site to site. A television watched at home differs in communication from a flat screen displayed on the streets. The third is the ability of screens to “dematerialize at the point of its encounter with philosophy.” In short, McCarthy was trying to look at the materiality and commodification of television, holding a rather Marxist stance that television “transcends sensuousness” and only by analyzing the materiality of the television would the spell of “immaterial and the unreal in the philosophical encounter with television” be broken.
Similar to McCarthy, Williams maintained a technical view of televisions, looking at the cause and effects, technological history and history of uses of television. He too, like McCarthy attempted to focus not on the immateriality of television. To him, many failed to understand specific meanings of various statements relating to television, such as the idea that television has changed the ways we see the world. Hence, he looked at why such statements were spoken and tried to understand the meanings of them. He too, like Lynn White traced the developments and inventions, how it led to the invention of television. As such, he associated the inventions with numerous previous developments. He ended the article with the major use of television; broadcasting. To him, power relations are involved in the distribution of ideas through the mass media like television.
According to Williams, television can be seen as an object that changes society or as one that is reflective of larger social forces. Also, television is not an entirely new invention, it is a set of technology made up of existing pieces of technology that were assembled together to form the television. The result of television viewing is the promotion of a certain form of domesticity, an intimacy that cinema does not have. Cinema going is a social act, such that a viewer’s reaction can be affected by the people around such that they laugh along when others do, even if they may not understand the content in the same way others did. In television, one’s reception is more an individual act that would not be influenced by others unless they are watching it together. However, that being said, the idea of sitcoms can be a social act even if watched separately. Sitcoms include a ‘laugh track’ that is played during punch line moments, which may act as a socialising factor, audience know they are expected to laugh, or at least see the humour in the situation.
The rise of national brands and retailing chains following the emergence of TV commercials during Fordism created a form of placelessness which makes us focus on the immateriality of the television. McCarthy reminds us that the television is an object that shapes its immediate space through its material form and she shifts our attention from television as a household fixture, to television monitors in public spaces. Applying various theories of scale and place, such as the Aristotelian ontological plenitude and Marxist geographers’ notion of place, she maintains that television is a surprisingly flexible medium and constitutes spatial differences rather than essences. The geographers’ notion is that “place is always a reflection of wider social forces”. An example chosen to illustrate was a video installation for a shopping mall in Atlanta. The video installation that was supposed to “take” an ontologized place, was eventually subordinated by the place itself. She mentioned approaching “place as an active and dynamic form of materiality, quite capable of overpowering technological modes of spatial rupture”.
In Williams article, technology is seen, not from the technological determinism or symptomatic technology, but looked for and developed with certain purposes and practices in mind. He brings us through and to look at historicization and the forces behind the emergence of technology. He described how new societal needs created new communication systems. However, he argues through the perspective of Marxist cultural criticism, that not all appropriate technology will be found for a social need that has been demonstrated. Instead, the need which corresponds with the priorities of those in power will be given to resources to be worked on. Profitability, not social use, is the driving force which is still evident today.
Williams’ rejects the idea that technology shapes society (technological determinism) and questions the statement, “the television has altered our world.” He looks at technological determinism and symptomatic technology before coming up with his own hybrid way of looking at the television. Under technological determinism, Williams explains that technology has consequences for its users and society. When viewing technology as symptomatic technology, Williams posits that the media is adopted by a societal order to manipulate other members of society for its own motives. However, he argues that these two concepts assume technology and its development to be independent and self-generating. Hence, he comes up with a hybrid of the two and acknowledges that technology was both anticipated and sought after. His idea sees a reciprocal relationship formed between society and media, and encourages the examination of the television from not just a myopic perspective, but from a combination of social, economic and cultural angles.
McCarthy maintains the importance of linking television with site-specificity, and the need to understand and question television’s material form. She also asserts that we should think about the omnipresence of television in consumer culture, and dig deeper into how the television has been absorbed in the ambient flow of everyday life.
From what I gather, McCarthy is trying to say that we should not examine television as something immaterial, we should look at the materiality of television and how it affects its environment. There are three important aspects of our understanding of how the materiality of television answers questions of being and perception with the modern preoccupation with the everyday. (1) The indexical force of formal ideologies of television techniques that allow for representations that create temporal simultaneity into a sense of spatial collapse (e.g. the idea of ‘live’ television) (p.98). (2) The material form that is site specific (p.99) and (3) the screen’s ability to dematerialize at the point of its encounter with philosophy. The television takes place (e.g. the idea of being a TV addict) (pp. 99-100). Television affects the way we interact with people. The television is an object and it shapes its surroundings. McCarthy sees the importance of understanding the television as an object and how it reorganizes what we think of space and time.
Williams is trying to analyze television as a type of cultural technology through a socio-historical understanding of television’s development, its institutions, its forms and effects. His approach to analyzing television, I would think, is similar to Lynn White’s essay about the act of invention as he views technology as being accidental and television as having altered our world.
I think the main takeaway from “Between real time and memory on demand” by Ernst is that television is a form of memory storage where everything is recorded and kept. He goes on to write about live broadcasts and pre-recorded broadcasts and how such storage works and what it does.
McCarthy calls for a conceptual framework involving the components of “site” and “sight” in thinking about television. TV encompasses inherent tensions which provoke thinking about modernity and new ways of thinking about space and semiotics. Related terms include: materiality, immateriality, scale, networks, global generality, local specificity etc. TV enables the “spectacular reorganization of time and space” and encourages “placelessness”, which causes the medium to “disappear” in the act of allowing to “appear” (dematerialization), leading to sense of derealization. This idea echoes that regarding the apparatus of the cinema.
The ideology of “liveness”, sustained and filtered temporal simultaneity and spatial collapse, creates two fictive spaces for viewer simultaneity: (1) “space of imagined co-enunciation signified in the direct address of the talking head on screen” and (2) “familiar imagined space of the nation looking in on its key sites”. TV is space-binding. The material form of TV is site -specific, usually seen in dominant discourse as present in the private, when actually it is more malleable and heterogeneous. McCarthy points out assumptions about TV’s production, transmission and reception processes and agents. Discourses about the media, and associated others, are circulated by the media, in the media e.g. viewers as homogeneous suggestive mass.
Ontological conception of place is compared to the geographical conception of place. The former speaks of place as existing (immanent, stable, contained and motionless) before meaning (political, social, economic) is attributed to it. Place is acted upon by technics. The Marxist geographical conception views place as always a reflection of wider social forces. Social construction based on the principle of dialectic materialism (forces and relations in things).
*TV in the private when re-publicized becomes mundane.
Williams was trying to address the relationship of “cause” and “effect” in technology and society, the social history of TV and the social history of the uses of TV. There are two views of causal relationships of TV technology and society: technological determinism and symptomatic technology. Technological determinism views TV as a technological accident with also accidental consequences, created by essentially inherent processes of research and development. In turn, such progress “creates” the modern world and the modern man. Symptomatic technology also views TV as a technological accident but with uses (or consequences) reflecting society or human nature, being less deterministic.
Williams suggest a new interpretation to restore “intention” and recognise the needs, purposes and practices that are reflected by or shape technology are direct, not marginal. Another part of this new interpretation is to recognise that the invention of television “depended on a complex of inventions and developments” in other media technologies. As such, the functions may overlap. The critical difference was in their specialized spheres of application. The development of technology is a “response to the development of an extended social, economic and political system and a response to crisis within that system”. They may be separate inventions, but they reflect new forms of mobility, among other characteristics, and vested interests of modern society, and form a communication system (and institution(s)) of their own.
What is transmitted and by whom? “For the transmission of simple orders, a communications system already existed. For the transmission of an ideology, there were specific traditional institutions. But for the transmission of news and background…there was an evident need for a new form…the press became not only a new communications system but, centrally, a new social institution.” Broadcasting can be seen as manipulative, abetted by “mass communication”, and the classic idea of central transmitters and individual TV sets. Where is the TV? The supply is created before the demand. The means of communication is created before the content. The content as “news from the outside” which passes through the medium. Issue of supply being “free” – without profits, there are problems for the investment in media (and content) production. Sources of revenue include: licensing, commercial sponsorship and supportive advertising.
Ernst talks about the effect of digital archiving versus live broadcasting. The former leads to “the medium is the message”, not the man. It also leads to the elimination of narrativity due to editing. The disappearance of the translator (related concept above) is mentioned. He also introduces “white noise”, “a ceaseless particle stream of information in constant motion” that leads to loss of overall “meaning”. This is the enduring flow of TV, the permanent broadcasting, the liveness that enables recording, and the recording the allows tendency for amnesia. There is the conscious use of technological defects. One can observe the nature of media practice in breakdowns, leading to active participation, which may be a response to “dulled criticality” (stopping the mediality of TV from receding). Williams compares Weber and Benjamin’s conceptions of “aura”. The former views aura as dynamic, present even for the reproduced copy.
Storage mechanism within the TV that we do not see.
The internet. Now the content of TV is the internet. According to McLuhan, the content of new media is old media. But here the content of old media is new media. Distinguishing the event and the news of the event (p 631 last line).
Television gesture: talking about what television does without going into what televison is. Interested in effect but not what it actually does. Sort of like a criticism. Regarding Weber and Jameson. Media referred to, is peripheral, not central to their studies.
Television, construction and devices used in entertainment.
Following the tradition of literature and theatre, devices are used in Television to construct, alter and subvert the experience of the audience.
On B roll-
B roll, is pre-prepared content which is there in case of a change in events. E.g. a obituary for a prominent member of society.
This is an example of the failure of the BBC to prepare for all eventualities.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5evS-ApSNQ
This man was mistaken for an IT expert Guy Kewney and accidentally ended up being interviewed on national news. He was in fact a taxi driver who was supposedly picking up the interviewee Guy Kewney. When the production team called out ‘guy’ in the lobby, he raised his hand and was ushered onto set. Clearly English isn’t his first language, which is probably why the confusion occurred. The production team obviously had no idea about who the real Guy Kewney was because he’s a white British man. Anyway, its probably the funniest thing I’ve seen on TV in years. You just couldn’t make it up.
In relation to other TV shows, this is similar to the phenomenon of ‘out takes’ TV shows, which give you a glimpse into the production of TV. The concept here is:
That the audience gets a kick out of having access to privileged knowledge. In terms of literature, it is comparable to third person indirect discourse, which writers such as Austen have used to offer the readers a unique insight into the psyche of their protagonist. In TV this is also used in talent shows such as ‘The Xfactor’ where the presenters give the audience a sneak glimpse of whats going on backstage. This is borrowing lexis from theatre, ‘behind the scenes’ ‘backstage’ and ‘waiting in the wings’ are all illusions to the fact that the form of entertainment is a construction.
This varied audience participatory role is arguably more active. In detective narratives, the audience is lead to believe they are not passively receiving factual knowledge. They are presented with a series of circumstances and are given time to make their own interpretation, before the ending is revealed.
There are a range of viewing experiences that are orchestrated by the production team, who have a view in mind for how they want their market to react. These devices only work if the audience is willing to or able to relate on some level to the content. This is why humour is so difficult to reproduce, it’s the most nuanced and subjective art form. Which explains why the majority of made for TV comedies are so unappealing.