Minor Post #3 - Josh Martin

I've been thinking a little bit lately about the intersection between personalized algorithms and the broader excesses of the streaming age. The review embargo broke today for Citadel, a new Amazon Prime show with Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Richard Madden; I only knew of its existence thanks to a handful of ads when I saw John Wick at the AMC Century City theater. Other than that, I had encountered no ads, no promos -- it was completely out of the loop of my streaming algorithm. Suddenly, my Twitter timeline was flooded with reviews -- almost all negative. Amazon apparently spent $300 million on that show. At what point does that become unsustainable? Are we already at a breaking point? Will the Writer's Guild Strike change this even further?

Core Post # 4 by Kate Hanson

Shanti Kumar’s chapter Is There Anything Called Global Television Studies? discusses the idea of the East-West discourse and the cross-demographic communication that is happening in television.  Specifically, Kumar refers to Raimundo Panikkar’s argument that “the main difficulty in comparative studies of East-West discourse is that one always starts – consciously or unconsciously – from an initial philosophical position, or a stance, influenced by the images and the myths of one’s own culture and location.”  Panikkar goes on to describe a thesis (subjective ideas of a scholar) with the antithesis (which is “judged in terms of the theories and practices of the guiding thesis”).  Kumar further applies Panikkar’s ideas to Albert Moran’s theories about “copycat television:”

 

“The radio game show What’s My Line? Moves from the NBC Radio Network in the US to BBC Radio and later becomes a popular television program; the British sitcom Men Behaving Badly is adapted as a US television series It’s A Man’s World while the Australian soap The Restless Years gives rise to Goede Tijden, Slechte Tijden in the Netherlands and Gute Zeiten, Schlechte Zeiten in Fermany.  It is indeed a copycat world in the international broadcasting industries.

Upon reading this I had to stop and laugh as one show immediately came to mind: Making It.  Have you ever heard of this show?  No?  Let me tell you all about it… Making It is the NBC knock-off version of the The Great British Baking Show except sugar, flour, and butter are replaced with wood, screws, and nails.  It is quite literally the Home Depot version of Bake Off. 

Don’t believe me yet?  Here are a few of the many ridiculous similarities between the two shows:

1. Bake Off takes place in a perfectly decorated, colorful tent in the middle of a field.  Making It takes place in a perfectly decorated, colorful barn in the middle of the woods.

2. Both shows are hosted by two comedians and have two expert judges

3. Both shows have a few challenges, where contestants must make something within a certain number of hours

4. Each week the shows crown a Star Maker (or Star Baker) and send someone home

5. For every challenge, the hosts count down and say “3, 2, 1, BAKE” or “3, 2, 1, MAKE IT”

6. I could go on forever

 

Still don’t believe me?  Look at the trailers and the photos on the IMDB pages, it’s wildly similar

·   Making It: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6874206/

·   Bake Off: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1877368/

 

Moran and Kumar raise an excellent point about cross-demographic communication taking place in the form of “copycat television.”  And this of course makes me think further about the idea of recycled stories.  I’ve been told by many professors that every story has been told, the difference between them is the angle from which the story is told.  Everyone in the industry these days is looking for something they haven’t seen before.  But if every story has been told, how do we tell new stories?

 

While Making It could be viewed as a fresh perspective on British Bake Off, in my head it is essentially a form of plagiarism where the entire idea for the show was copied and pasted with wood slapped across it to replace the cake.  And I have to wonder how they’ve gotten away with it for three seasons.  How is Bake Off letting it happen?  Or do they have to let it happen because the shows are just barely different enough, after all one is about carpenters and one is about bakers.  Again I don’t have an answer, but it makes me think about the stories I want to tell: stories that are new and have not been seen.  How do I use the films that I’ve watched and loved to be without creating the copycat version of my favorite films? 

core response 05_jacqueline maldonado

Lotz does well to recount the evolving technologies of television in her chapter, moreover their relationships and how that impacted eventual growth and change. I found it interesting to consider the finite ending of 2007 as the mobile television combating the quality programming on it, and the very iPod Lotz refers to from an airplane passenger aside her as she writes (78). Mobility and technologies have become second nature; I recount the start of the semester where I was itching for a monitor just to have another screen as a specified viewing-screen distinct from my working-screen of my laptop, because a laptop is unfit to watch in the context of home for some distorted reason but is totally fine outside of the house. Meanwhile buying movies and shows from iTunes for the screen of an iPod Classic was always meant to be a travel plan, whether that travel was a short car ride to the grocery store or a plane ride to the grandparents. Different screens meant different things which we are well versed in applying to modern programming (save for Quibi, rip).

So how do we get from 2007 to 2023? The streaming wars is clearly at the forefront of minds with mergers galore, but what sets this apart other than adding to sources on our ever moving screen experiences? Even the change in ‘the box’ as what once was a cable box can now be reduced to an actual stick you just pop in the TV input and, again, select from sources galore. While we arguably remain in the post network era (unless she said something different in We Now Disrupt This Broadcast I cannot remember that is on me) but refined, maybe all that’s left is to somehow jam television straight into our brains to maximize mobility.

I hate that I actually like that idea. But it isn’t so much about the spaces themselves that Lotz, or this week entirely, has to leave us reevaluating: it’s the ways in which this constant crave for new content can be satiated next. As Lotz speaks to the HD television in the home in the early 2000’s, emphasis is given to the “required shifts in production techniques and technologies” done to provide for them (72). As viewers begin to take a larger role in determining the space television will occupy it is the industry itself that has to react and provide, and now just as ever, fight to get ahead of the curve. 

jackie non core nonsense_05

As I’m sure I brought up at many times this semester I keep a spreadsheet tracking everything I watch in a year. At the end of our semester, I figured I’d provide the update to my television-specific sheet I know you all are dying to hear.

As of this evening, I have listed 26 unique series that I have begun watching between January 1st and now, and of those 26 I completed 15. 3 of those completes are highlighted as rewatches (Bob’s Burgers, 30 Rock, Nikita), the rest are a collection of reality television (The Bachelor, Joe Millionaire), comedy (Mythic Quest, Romantic Killer), and Netflix (You, The Sandman).

Needless to say I am drastically behind on my goal to watch, and complete, 100 distinct series this year. I have attempted to watch 100 shows every year since 2020 and have only just nearly succeeded last year by reaching 107 distinct titles, yet I failed to hit the mark after only managing to complete 86. By now, I’m sure we all know my answer on how to solve this: more screens.  

Minor Post #5.5 or possibly just 5 because I’m not sure there was ever a #4

I have one follow-up thought about reality dating TV since I previously expressed doubts about my intentions to continue watching such shows. One thing that stuck out to me apart from the fact that everyone was so dressed up throughout the entirety of the show, and maybe this stuck out to me precisely because it’s a blind dating show, was the gender expression seen throughout. I’m sure this observation could be situated in the post-feminism discussions from earlier in the semester, but it’s past my bedtime so I’ll keep this short. I found it interesting how hyper-feminine presenting ALL the female participants were. It made me think back to that trad woman blog we saw in class. The show is definitely pushing a very specific version of sex and gender roles as they translate to the ideals of a successful heterosexual marriage. All of that to say that my ACTUAL favorite part of the season was the trailer at the end of the final reunion episode. The trailer was for a forthcoming show called Ultimatum: Queer Love. I will definitely be tuning in for that kind of reality television gold. Goodnight! 

 

Minor Post #2 -- Alexandra Lavin

So yes I was on top of my core responses but completely forgot about the existence of minor posts, so I am doing my best to throw in some thoughts. I wanted to speak a little of my experience in this class as a non-CAMS student, because I've found this peak into critical studies to be really illuminating. All of us screenwriters have a CAMS requirement, so I chose this one because I like to talk about television. I definitely was not anticipating what this class ended up being, but I am very glad I ended up choosing it. As a writing student I think it's easy to get so bogged down in the constant introspection, the emotional mining, the sitting in front of your laptop trying desperately to finish your second act, that you forget that your goal is to get this work out into the world, that with any luck your work will stop being about you and be under the care of the general public. A complete screenplay is never really complete until its made, but being a student it's difficult to fully grasp that. This class has been a great reminder that becoming a television writer is becoming a part of a long history that is highly linked to the social, political, and economic state of our society. It's helped me understand the history of the medium (television did not, in fact, only get interesting in the 90's) and put me in touch with the economic decisions that dictate what gets made. Basically, it helped me pull my head out of my ass a little and understand the industry I aspire to be a part of. Yes, I was and still am super intimidated by the long, dense academic texts. I am continually impressed by everybody in the CAMS program and their ability to understand them. But I was delighted to be introduced to the unfamiliar way of dissecting television, and appreciate the interesting discussions every week. 

Core Post #5 - Abby

 

In the chapter, “Thinking Globally: From Media Imperialism to Media Capital”, Curtin discusses the principles of media capital that shape media. One of these principles emphasizes trajectories of creative migration. The demand for constant creative innovation “requires maintaining access to reservoirs of specialized labor that replenish themselves on a regular basis.” It is interesting to think about Los Angeles as one such reservoir, especially in the current context of the impending writer’s strike. Curtin’s assertion that artists are drawn to co-locate with fellow creatives who are often mutually influenced by a sense of “spiritual inspiration” to migrate to creative centers is of course ideal for an industry looking to pull employees from a seemingly endless sea of talent. For employees, however, being one small fish in an endless sea of talent can mean stiff competition for jobs and lower wages, often without benefits. The centralization of a pool of talent also brought to mind Marez’s piece we read several weeks ago. As local tax incentives entice productions out of Hollywood and into states like New Mexico and Georgia, what effect does this have on the emerging trajectories of creative migration? Do these states become new centers for creative migration? The reality is complex. Some productions traveling to these states to take advantage of tax incentives travel with their own crew rather than hiring locally. Marez points out what he calls “racial capitalism in place,” which “combines systems of racialized theft and labor exploitation with the production and dissemination of the racist representations that support them.” Furthermore, the wealth generated by the tax incentives and labor exploitation is redistributed back to Hollywood, rather than benefitting the local area where these productions are taking place. It is also interesting to consider how emerging technologies will affect both global and local flows of media capital. Returning to the impending writer’s strike in Los Angeles, one of the issues on the table is the threat AI technology could pose to writers in the near future. What are the spatial logics of this type of technology and what repercussions would it have for capital, creativity, and culture overall?