[Air-L] Family in the 21st century on TV

[Peter Timusk]

Hello all

For me by my teenage years I began to watch TV with peers. So the show  
Friends is aimed at this.

I still watch TV mostly only socially with friends. I can barely sit  
through most shows unless watching with friends.




Even in the 1960's it was only the children in our family who woke up  
early on Saturday to watch cartoons.


Peter

On 16-Sep-09, at 9:14 PM, Paul Emerson Teusner wrote:

> Hi Barry and Jason,
>
> Manuel Castells also mentions this in his The Rise of the Network  
> Society,
> and offers an alternative to the McLuhan idiom: the message is now the
> medium. When channels focus on smaller markets, programming becomes
> increasingly more specific according to the channel that provides  
> it. Or
> something like that, it was like 13 years ago or so.
>
> paul emerson teusner
> http://teusner.org/
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org
> [mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Jason Mittell
> Sent: Thursday, 17 September 2009 11:03
> To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
> Subject: Re: [Air-L] Family in the 21st century on TV
>
> Barry wrote:
>
>> I wonder -- and would love evidence -- if TV watching has become more
>> personal TV watching instead of family TV watching -- so shows are
>> narrowcasting their demographics much more. This would be true if  
>> each
>> sentient HHold member had their own TV, and if many folks were  
>> getting
>> their TV fix thru downloads, podcasts, iPhones, etc. (I know I'm  
>> being
>> quasi-redundant here).
>>
>
> This is a fairly well-documented and not-so-recent phenomenon - a good
> overview (now 12 years old!) is Joseph Turow's *Breaking Up  
> America*, on the
> rise of narrowcasting and market segmentation across media. I'm  
> pretty sure
> that more up-to-date statistical evidence is included in a number of  
> the Pew
> technology use surveys.
>
> At the level of programming, there's no doubt that the full-family  
> hit is a
> rare exception today (*American Idol* is often pointed to as a hold- 
> out, but
> even that's fading), and advertisers are less interested in mass  
> appeal
> across broad audiences than dense homogeneous segments that can be  
> more
> easily sold specific goods. Virtually no scripted program aims for  
> the full
> "four quadrants" anymore (young & old across both genders), so the  
> image of
> the core family as the anchor for television's domestic  
> representations has
> waned.
>
> Interestingly, whenever I teach this topic, my students agree with  
> Turow's
> diagnosis of market segmentation, but disagree with his judgment  
> that this
> is a bad thing - they see very little cultural utility to be  
> watching the
> same programs in the same rooms at the same time as their parents,  
> as they
> have rarely known that experience.
>
> -Jason
>
>
> ---
> Jason Mittell, Associate Professor of American Studies and Film &  
> Media
> Culture
> Chair of Film & Media Culture Department
> Middlebury College
> 208 Axinn Center at Starr Library
> Middlebury, Vermont 05753
> (802) 443-3435 / fax: (802) 443-2805
> Homepage: http://go.middlebury.edu/mittell
> Blog: http://justtv.wordpress.com
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Peter Timusk,
B.Math statistics (2002), B.A. legal studies (2006) Carleton University
Systems Science Graduate student, University of Ottawa.
just trying to stay linear.
Read by hundreds of lurkers every week.
kiitos paljon,  merci,  thank you and muchas gracias for reading.