Television. Where would I be without television? I’d probably get my uni work done a lot quicker, and for that matter a lot of other things would get done quicker. I can’t help it, I’m addicted to television! The teen dramas, the trashy realities. All of it.
This is why I’ve chosen social TV apps as the technology I will be looking into for the duration of this BCM112 subject.
But the modern television experience is different to the television experience of the 70s, the 80s, 90s and even 2000s. Television has become interactive, and the audience loves it!
How many times have you been watching TV and you see somebody’s tweet roll across the screen? It’d be almost impossible to watch TV now without seeing one!
Twitter has become a part of our everyday lives, and is a new media that hasn’t replaced existing media, but joined with it to enhance the media experience for the audience.
This is called social television, and TV shows all over the world now use social television as a tool to better create shows and appeal more to an audience. Twitter has changed the whole television experience, from creation to consummation.
Television writers use Twitter as instant feedback, and in the case of the show Covert Affairs, frame the series to reflect what the viewers want and what they want to know on the show. The audience is now a part of the creation!
“Viewer behaviour is changing and audiences are multi-tasking” is the view Network Ten COO Jon Marquard has on social television. TV stations have embraced the concept of social TV, with apps like Zeebox, Fango and Jump-In, which allow the audience a have a ‘second screen’, with exclusives like extra interviews about the show they are watching, photos, polls – you can even watch whole episodes through the app! Jump-In in particular has made the audience a part of the show Big Brother. Polls are conducted through the app asking viewers to vote for certain things to happen in the house, directly changing the course of the series. “What should the housemates have for dinner tonight?”, “Which team did better at this task?” And whatever the outcome of the poll is what happens on the show.
The audience isn’t just watching the show any more, we are influencing, changing, making decisions and having a direct impact on the shows that we love! We are now a part of the shows!
New kinds of media have emerged and joined forces with older media to make them more relevant and reflective of how we consume. The audience is involved now more than ever, and personally I love it! Especially when Channel 9 and Big Brother reply to me on Twitter – I feel special.
Even though they reply to almost everyone, I checked. Cheating bastards.
The Better Abbott 