In her writing from Television Outside the Box, Amanda Lotz discusses the way in which television has changed and evolved over the years in conjunction with the rapidly changing technology of the industry. While there were many points in the article that I found fascinating, I want to focus on her idea of “convenience technologies” and how they have changed when, why, and how we watch television (and pretty much any other content).
“Viewers use mobile television when they access live television out of the home, as opposed to the time-and-place-shifting characteristic of portable television… In sum, mobile television technologies allow out-of-the-home live viewing, while portable technologies expand viewers’ control by enabling them to take once domestic-bound content anywhere to view at any time.”
Lotz goes on to then explain this idea of convenience technologies and how they allow us to watch more television that is more specifically geared towards our taste, but that it requires more preplanning. Once upon a time people would turn the tv on and then they would choose from the limited options that were broadcasting at that time. Now we can take our tablets anywhere, but we have to know what we want to watch ahead of time so we can download it on the app or make sure it will work on the wifi, etc. Of course many viewers prefer this mode of television consumption because it gives them power to choose what they want to watch when they want to watch it and it eliminates commercials in many instances.
But Lotz also points out that in the development of convenience technology, pieces of the art of television have been lost. And not only is she right, but she is pointing out something that has become a factor in a lot of newly developing television shows. The way we structured episodes for broadcast television is incredibly different than the way shows are now being written specifically for streaming. Commercial breaks used to be an easy way to show passage of time, transition from on act to the next, or create tension with a cliffhanger. How many cop shows have we seen where the police burst through the door, weapons aimed at the criminal, only to find that the criminal has a hostage. And then we cut to commercial and the audience is left hanging for 3 minutes. But no one wants to change because as annoying as those ads are, we don’t want to miss what’s going to happen next, we want to see the police take down the criminal and rescue the hostage.
In a similar way, when episodes end with a cliff hanger, it doesn’t have quite the impact that it once did in broadcast tv where we had to wait a week or two to see what happens next. Now we have access to the entire season (or all the seasons), so when a cliffhanger happens, we move right on to the next episode. And while the immediate gratification feels nice to the audience, I wonder if the ability to move right along to the next episode forces us to lose some of the communication and thought that would happen between episodes. We used to talk about shows when they aired on tv. “Did you see last night’s episode of NCIS? Can you believe he did that? What do you think will happen?” In the weeks between episodes airing, fans had the opportunity to discuss the show with other audience members. They could guess what they thought characters would do next, or how they thought the writers would arc the story. We had creative conversation about tv shows because we couldn’t immediately watch them.
This is something my mom and I still do to this day. She is a massive fan of the Chicago shows (especially Chicago Fire and Chicago PD). I used to watch them with her when I lived at home, but of course now that I live in LA (my family is in NC), we don’t watch them together anymore. But at the end of every week when the new episodes air, my mother never fails to text me and ask if I saw the newest episode. And then of course we dive into a lengthy conversation about how one character is acting like an idiot and “there’s no way they’d kill of this character” etc, etc. It’s one of our favorite things to do and we’ve done it for years.
Today, I feel that this conversation is becoming lost amongst others, especially those who no longer subscribe to cable with it’s increasing prices and it’s lack of mobility. People still talk about television, but it’s no longer episode to episode, it’s season to season. As fans anxiously await the new Euphoria or Stranger Things season, they may talk about what they think the writers will do in the next season. But it’s nowhere near the same level of conversation we used to have; the conversations my mom and I still have. And so while I love convenience television, and development in technology is exciting and new. I still sit in the camp of people who love to watch tv when it airs, and sit through the commercials, and see what re-runs are playing right now. Sometimes it’s nice not to have to pre-plan what show I’m going to watch. I love to turn on cable just to “see what’s on right now.” And if you ask me, nothing beats the next day “did you see last night’s episode” deep diving conversation.
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