Do not expect an immediate explanation for this “greedy” headline. You may want it all as well, but let me remind you, that “all human wisdom can be summed up in two words – wait and hope.” Ok, let´s not dwell on any old school quotes and let´s start with the things that really matter. When one platform is not enough, then the content overflows. Even if this introduction may sound a bit odd, there is nothing false about it, hopefully it makes you a little bit more curious.
What exactly overflows and where?
The term "overflow" is still rather unknown in Czech Media Studies. At least that is from my own personal experience. When something is a terra incognita, it usually helps to use the dictionary first. But what if we are not interested in „the annual overflow of the Nile“, or an overflow of applicants for the job“? „The tank which is equipped with an overflow“does not seem to match our field either. It looks like that this will take some time, but finally we are lucky! What exactly is behind this term, explains Will Brooker. Someone may wonder who he is. For those who are a little bit confused, there is nothing easier than to check this out: http://fass.kingston.ac.uk/faculty/staff/cv.php?staffnum=354. Of course feel free to search the web for further information…
From couch potatoes to active viewers
Hopefully, you are back here already, so we can learn more. First of all, this short article should explore issues of the relatively new experiences related to television viewing. Actually, it could easily include all audiovisual content, because nowadays in many cases you are welcome to do more than just stare at the screen. What is currently happening (not only in the changing concept of television viewers) could doubtless be called a participatory engagement of the audiences. If you imagine terms such as interactivity, you are very close to the heart of the matter. Now, you might easily guess that we will not be discussing only the television viewers, but especially the current efforts of the people who are on the others side of the barricades – by these we mean the producers of TV shows and series. These are the people who create the mysterious “overflow” in addition to making their products more attractive and building audience loyalty. If we want to be less informal and more academic for a while, we can quote the aforementioned Dr Brooker. According to him, “contemporary television increasingly ´overflows´ from the primary text across multiple platforms particularly onto dedicated internet websites.” (Brooker, 2001: 456)
Why one is not enough?
The reasons for this active involvement of the internet are obvious: it enables further promoting of the particular series, the producers (respectively) giving more information about the main characters (+ often pretend as if they are not fictional characters, but, in fact, real beings…) It is quite clear that we are not talking about some act of “blind” generosity. These certain programmes and their overflows invite the audience to create some extended experience and they do it for strictly financial reasons. The aim of these marketing activities is to broaden the potential audience, to effectively support the current two-way interaction, better promote the lifestyle that is presented in the TV series and of course sell more products that are related to the particular programme (usually DVDs, clothes… almost whatever you can imagine). If we return back to Dr Brooker, we will find out that activities which could be labeled as "overflow" obviously exist in more than only one form. As an example the author describes the show Big Brother, whose fans had the opportunity (at the time the show aired in Britain) visit the website
Everybody´s changing
From all that was said above it´s quite clear that the experience of being a fan/or just following a television series has become different. The wider multimedia context obviously enables the viewers to extend their viewing habits. Now everything doesn´t revolve around the regular “one week” wait, if you go online, find the right website, you can easily watch the episodes you have missed, some series offer you active participation on the content, you can write comments for the TV protagonists as if they were real life characters, add your opinions on the discussion board and share them with other people who are interested in the same programme. To put it simply, on these platforms people are involved to “create” the show and retain the best viewing experience. The reason is clear. In this society it is quite common that “if I want it all”, there is usually someone who is trying to accommodate my needs. But apparently not for free.
References:
BROOKER, W.; JERMYN, D. (2003). The Audience studies reader. London: Routledge
BROOKER, W. Living on Dawson´s Creek: Teen viewers, cultural convergence, and television overflow. International Journal of Cultural studies [online]. 2001, 4, 456, [cit. 2010-03-14]. Available from WWW:
No comments:
Post a Comment