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

Thu Sep 17 02:25:08 PDT 2009

in my childhood years tv started at 5pm (!) and ended at midnight with  
the austrian anthem (late 70s). I was allowed to watch from 5-6:30
now there is a special program for mornings which is aimed at a broad  
spectrum of viewers, than there is program for elderly, at midday  
starts the program for kids and at noon the shows for youngsters,  
teenagers and twens. we live in a country where national tv has two  
channels. one for viewers 50+ and one for the advertiser-relevant  
twens-40s. I think that it is a very true observation, that nowadays  
shows are for different groups of viewers - which was not so when  
shows were made for families (I dream of Jeannie, Falconcrest, Dallas  
to name a few). I do think that the advertising industry plays a big  
role in this change when cartoons are made for TV which are made for  
different age groups and before and between them the ads are tailor- 
made for the program. Also the decrease in the price of the tv-sets  
played a role, because in the old days (60s, 70s) only a few families  
over here could afford more than one tv-sets at home.

dominik m rosenauer

e	dmrosenauer at psycheonline.at
h	www.psycheonline.at
t	+43.1.9135584
m	+43.664.5315478

Am 17.09.2009 um 11:11 schrieb 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.
>
>
>
>
>
>
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