Television in the Public Space

Although we tend to think of television primarily as a household fixture, TV monitors outside the home are widespread: in bars, laundromats, and stores, cafes, bus and train stations, airports; conveying flight arrival and departure times; uniting crowds at sports events and allaying boredom in waiting rooms; and helping to pass the time in workplaces of all kinds.

The roles television has played in different institutions vary from efforts to transform waiting room populations into advertising audiences and the use of point-of-sale video to influences brand visibilityand consumer behavior. While the capacity for cultural infrastructure such as flagship museums to break cycles of urban and regional decline is now familiar through the ‘Bilbao effect’, the potential for public screen technologies to address social and urban issues is yet to receive sustained critical attention. The ‘Public Space Broadcasting’ project in the UK utilizes a growing network of large screens predominantly based in northern urban centres such as Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds. The project involves a series of partnerships between the publicly funded national broadcaster, the BBC, various city councils, cultural and educational institutions and technology providers.  It recognizes the potential for large screen technologies to play a key role in urban regeneration by providing a new dimension of public space and civic agency.

Within a policy framework of urban regeneration, public screens are becoming policy tools for a variety of purposes, from enhancing social cohesion, emphasizing the role of culture in constructing positive urban images, developing the tourism industry, attracting inward investment, and strengthening the competitive position of host cities.  From this perspective, it can be seen that public screens represent a new intersection of social and economic interests in the public realm, bringing together diverse stakeholders, including different levels of government, cultural funding bodies, arts institutions, artists, broadcasters, media hardware companies, local businesses, technology providers, content makers and audiences. These partnerships need to be mapped, and their outcomes critically assessed.  The capacity of large screens to contribute to a robust and inclusive public culture needs to be evaluated.

Australia behind the times. . . Again

The TV and movie piracy issue seems to be causing many to take sides, but according to Jonathan D. Rose, intellectual property litigator with Bradley Arant Boult Cummings, a law firm in Nashville, the issue may not be entirely as cut and dry as some think.

On the one hand, there are real dollars being lost to piracy with an Independent U.S. film distributor, Wolfe, has had its profits halved due to piracy and costs to mitigate damages from piracy, according to The Wall Street Journal. But, according to Rose, in the larger picture, a free stream of a show or movie does not necessarily mean the viewer would have paid for the show had it not been available for free. The rise of streaming video content hubs like Netflix, Amazon and iTunes has, to a certain extent, recaptured some users that may have resorted to piracy because in previous years there was no other way to find an instant feed of a movie or show without resorting to piracy.

However, for Australians there are many reasons we resort to watching TV shows, most notably, Game of Thrones, online. First and foremost, the time difference. Australians often have to wait months for an American or British TV show to be broadcast on our networks and with the Internet creating a global village, we feel ripped off and so seek other methods of keeping up to date on recent episodes. Platforms like Netflicks (which is not available in Australia), Amazon and iTunes do not make the episode available for purchase until it has been broadcast on Australian networks and the cost is another major reason for illegal online viewing. The technology juggernaut often charges different prices for content on its digital media store in Australia, compared to the pricing on the same content in the US. At times, Australian consumers have had to pay more than double the prices for the same content that is available in the US.

As for HBO’s Game of Thrones, the most popular free-streamed show of 2012, director David Petrarcam claims It’s a not a big deal. In the 24 hour after the Game of Thrones season three finale aired on Sunday, one million people illegally downloaded it and at one point 170,000 people were sharing the episode simultaneously on BitTorrent, breaking the show’s own piracy record set after last season’s premiere, TorrentFreak reported. Shortly after season two’s DVD set a record high for the network, HBO programming president Michael Lombardo told Entertainment Weekly piracy wasn’t hurting revenue. “I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but it is a compliment of sorts,” he said. “The demand is there. And it certainly didn’t negatively impact the DVD sales. [Piracy is] something that comes along with having a wildly successful show on a subscription network.”

Fanatics?

The concept of fandoms are a truly weird phenomenon. Based on 20 years of varying degrees of involvement in famdoms I can see both positive and negative behaviour of fans as well as positive and negative ramifications for individuals and entire fandoms. According to Lisa Lewis in her book ‘The Adoring Audience: FanCulture and Popular Media’ heavy involvement in fandoms involves writing fanfiction or articles for fan newsletters, attending fan get-togethers, calling other fans on the phone or writing emails to them, participating heavily on mailing lists, and most importantly thinking about or engaging with material on a very regular, almost obsessive level.

Lewis discusses that peripheral involvement consists of recreational engagement with a topic such as reading occasional stories, checking the occasional website, talking about that particular show only if it comes up and she attributes this semi-participation as the reason it’s possible to see the shows, and fandoms, from the ‘outside’. Lewis adds that observing fans and fandoms from an outside perspective allows us to easily separate negative fan behaviour and trends from positive. Fans with a great passion for a TV show, movie series, games, novels, comic book, etc, can also become competitive and often cruel, forming cliques and shutting out ‘newbie’ fans o order to prove their own dedication. Now of course, I understand that this happens in real life as well, however, it’s not so easy to detect and much easier to ignore, with the mind set that as long as it doesn’t directly affect me ‘what do I care?’

On the other hand, Internet fan community communication resembles gossip in a small town: it gets around. This goes for both positive and negative trends and with the latter it’s easy to see when ‘fannish’ behaviour mirrors the worst behaviour from the real world. Fandoms are extremely enriching endeavours when wanting to connect and share with other enthusiasts, however, I think many fans participate in and perpetuate the ugly side of fandom without even realizing it. We should be aware of our actions in any given fandom so that we don’t make the mistake of subscribing to a clique or mob mentality without even knowing it. I will now leave you my personal favourite fandom and the reasons it will never die.