Wednesday, 6 February 2013



An example of the change in relationship between producer and consumer. 



http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2013/feb/06/netflix-house-of-cards-binge#start-of-comments



Netflix's House of Cards invites TV viewers to binge – but are we ready?

Two decades after the original aired, TV is finally delivering on the promise to let you watch shows on your own time
house of cards netflix
Even with the ability to stream the entire season of House of Cards at once, viewers might find themselves savouring it instead. Photograph: Netflix/Reuters
Somewhere among the TV audience – perhaps, even now, looking a little distracted and tired around the eyes – there may be a small subset of viewers who had watched the entire 13-episode run of the David Fincher/Kevin Spacey political drama House of Cards by late on Friday night.
Such a feat would require a peculiar combination of stamina and diary. It's more likely that even the keenest fans of the piece spaced out their enjoyment over the weekend and that many (like me) still have many episodes to go, work and family life having clashed with the desire to be small-screen pioneers.
Even so, the decision by the online provider Netflix to bypass traditional networks and premiere a whole show for streaming at once stands as one of the biggest challenges in the medium's history to traditional patterns of production and consumption. If successful – and Netflix is currently declining to release data on purchase, never mind viewing – this would mark a huge shift in the making and taking of TV.
In this sense, it's particularly fitting that the drama chosen for this bold new start is a remake of a hit from the era of conventional ingestion of television. When the original version of House of Cards – adapted by Andrew Davies from Michael Dobbs's Westminster novel for BBC1 – was screened in Britain in 1990, it went out, in the fashion of the times, on over four consecutive Sunday evenings, meaning that even the most devoted fan had to wait a full three weeks to find out what happened.
But, even at that time, one of the great visions of the medium was self-scheduling. For around two decades, speakers at industry conferences and festivals have held out the dream of a load of programmes being made available in a block, allowing a viewer to watch, say, four episodes of their favourite soap opera in a row at 9am on a Friday, rather than every couple of days at 7.30pm with an omnibus repeat at weekends.
Replay, delay and catchup facilities have made this once-futuristic possibility commonplace, with the rise of first box sets and then archive sites resulting in the biggest social change since the VHS made a good night out compatible with a big TV night in. The phenomenon of binge-viewing – a complete 22-episode box set consumed over one weekend – has become anecdotally standard, at least among those free of dependents and distractions.
The clear drawback of such viewing, however, is that bingers have had to wait until conventional once-a-night or once-a-week audiences finish with the show on their steam-powered linear networks for all episodes to be available. This has created a tension between the passion for completism and the desire to be first, contradictory impulses often likely to co-exist in passionate TV fans.
Now, though, with the Netflix House of Cards experiment, TV has finally offered viewers an equivalent of the options long available to book readers. The buyer of, for example, a new Le Carre novel can decide whether to turn off the phone and close the curtains and enjoy the story in one go; to put in a bookmark and catch up whenever possible; or to wait until a long holiday.
Netflix is encouraging rapid consumption both technically – the streaming on many devices begins to run the next episode without prompting – and economically: there is a clear incentive for viewers to get through the episode in their one-month trial period. But, from my own experience, it may be harder to encourage the psychological adjustment.
The traditional episode format of broadcast drama remains intact, although without any commercial breaks. And, while these can be seen as analogous to the chapters of a novel, viewing began to feel self-indulgent and draining of time and concentration after three episodes in a row. It may be significant in this regard that movie-goers habitually panic when a movie (such as the current Oscar-contenders Django Unchained, Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty) breasts three hours.
In the case of House of Cards, bingeing is also discouraged because of the shape and nature of the action. Kevin Spacey compellingly draws – as did his British predecessor, Ian Richardson – on the experience of playing Shakespeare's King Richards, evilly catching the camera's eye to deliver a TV equivalent of theatrical asides and soliloquies. However, the early episodes end with wait-and-see rather than can't-wait developments, and the suspicion must be that streaming may better suit shorter, sweatier stories.
The economics of the Netflix enterprise remain more mysterious than anything in even the twistiest plotlines of Beau Willimon's script and the show's most crucial reviews will ultimately be fiscal. For reasons of ingrained habit and pressure on time, most viewers, I suspect, will have treated House of Cards as a sort of advance box set or recording device, still watching the show in chunks, though with more control over when they are.
When the original House of Cards went out 23 years ago, many analysts would have bet that self-scheduling on the Netflix model would be routine by now. The fact that the vision still feels a long way off tells us something about the mind and time of the average TV viewer.


  • Manclad
    06 February 2013 11:13am
    Recommend
    8
    Delayed gratification makes TV shows better, not worse
    • thisislewis
      06 February 2013 12:37pm
      Recommend
      0
      @Manclad - Not if you forget what's happened. Go on, get stuck in.
      Fellow Netflixers - if you're using Firefox or Chrome, install Media Hint (give it a google) and you'll gain access to the US version. Stringent licensing means the UK audience gets a limited selection of things to watch - so unlock the US stuff and GET MORE OUT OF LIFE.
      I've just finished off Parks and Rec, now I'm cracking on with Louie. And I've never felt better.
  • SalmonRusty
    06 February 2013 11:17am
    Recommend
    5
    I enjoyed House of Cards and watched it all in one weekend.
    But this is the third article on the guardian site relating to House of Cards andbinge TV viewing.
    It's like the Wire all over again.
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    Instagram’s revised terms of use: Will the Facebook generation fight back? - Lexology

    Instagram’s revised terms of use: Will the Facebook generation fight back? - Lexology

    Very interesting article that hi-lites some of the legal problems associated with social media.

    Posted by at No comments:

    Wednesday, 30 January 2013

    UK Government outlines its response to consultation on proposed expansion of copyright exceptions - Lexology

    UK Government outlines its response to consultation on proposed expansion of copyright exceptions - Lexology
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    Tuesday, 22 January 2013

    The Medium is the Message?

    The Medium is the Message?

     Truly brilliant essay which explains McLuhan phrase Its the medium is the message and help tie it into my dissertation by focusing our attention on the structural changes in our affairs that are introduced subtly, or over long periods of time. Whenever we create a new innovation - be it an invention or a new idea -

    http://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/article_mediumisthemessage.htm

     What is the Meaning of The Medium is the Message?

    by Mark Federman
    Chief Strategist
    McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology
    "In a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology." (McLuhan 7) Thus begins the classic work of Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, in which he introduced the world to his enigmatic paradox, "The medium is the message." But what does it mean? How can the medium be its own message?
    Of all the Internet searches that end up at the McLuhan Program website and weblog, the search for the meaning of the famous "McLuhan Equation" is the most frequent. Many people presume the conventional meaning for "medium" that refers to the mass-media of communications - radio, television, the press, the Internet. And most apply our conventional understanding of "message" as content or information. Putting the two together allows people to jump to the mistaken conclusion that, somehow, the channel supersedes the content in importance, or that McLuhan was saying that the information content should be ignored as inconsequential. Often people will triumphantly hail that the medium is "no longer the message," or flip it around to proclaim that the "message is the medium," or some other such nonsense. McLuhan meant what he said; unfortunately, his meaning is not at all obvious, and that is where we begin our journey to understanding.
    Marshall McLuhan was concerned with the observation that we tend to focus on the obvious. In doing so, we largely miss the structural changes in our affairs that are introduced subtly, or over long periods of time. Whenever we create a new innovation - be it an invention or a new idea - many of its properties are fairly obvious to us. We generally know what it will nominally do, or at least what it is intended to do, and what it might replace. We often know what its advantages and disadvantages might be. But it is also often the case that, after a long period of time and experience with the new innovation, we look backward and realize that there were some effects of which we were entirely unaware at the outset. We sometimes call these effects "unintended consequences," although "unanticipated consequences" might be a more accurate description.
    Many of the unanticipated consequences stem from the fact that there are conditions in our society and culture that we just don't take into consideration in our planning. These range from cultural or religious issues and historical precedents, through interplay with existing conditions, to the secondary or tertiary effects in a cascade of interactions. All of these dynamic processes that are entirely non-obvious comprise our ground or context. They all work silently to influence the way in which we interact with one another, and with our society at large. In a word (or four),ground comprises everything we don't notice.
    If one thinks about it, there are far more dynamic processes occurring in the ground than comprise the actions of the figures, or things that we do notice. But when something changes, it often becomes noticeable. And noticing change is the key.
    McLuhan tells us that a "message" is, "the change of scale or pace or pattern" that a new invention or innovation "introduces into human affairs." (McLuhan 8) Note that it is not the content or use of the innovation, but the change in inter-personal dynamics that the innovation brings with it. Thus, the message of theatrical production is not the musical or the play being produced, but perhaps the change in tourism that the production may encourage. In the case of a specifictheatrical production, its message may be a change in attitude or action on the part of the audience that results from the medium of the play itself, which is quite distinct from the medium of theatrical production in general. Similarly, the message of a newscast are not the news stories themselves, but a change in the public attitude towards crime, or the creation of a climate of fear. A McLuhan message always tells us to look beyond the obvious and seek the non-obvious changes or effects that are enabled, enhanced, accelerated or extended by the new thing.
    McLuhan defines medium for us as well. Right at the beginning of Understanding Media, he tells us that a medium is "any extension of ourselves." Classically, he suggests that a hammer extends our arm and that the wheel extends our legs and feet. Each enables us to do more than our bodies could do on their own. Similarly, the medium of language extends our thoughts from within our mind out to others. Indeed, since our thoughts are the result of our individual sensory experience, speech is an "outering" of our senses - we could consider it as a form of reversing senses - whereas usually our senses bring the world into our minds, speech takes our sensorially-shaped minds out to the world.
    But McLuhan always thought of a medium in the sense of a growing medium, like the fertile potting soil into which a seed is planted, or the agar in a Petri dish. In other words, a medium - this extension of our body or senses or mind - is anything from which a change emerges. And since some sort of change emerges from everything we conceive or create, all of our inventions, innovations, ideas and ideals are McLuhan media.
    Thus we have the meaning of "the medium is the message:" We can know the nature and characteristics of anything we conceive or create (medium) by virtue of the changes - often unnoticed and non-obvious changes - that they effect (message.) McLuhan warns us that we are often distracted by the content of a medium (which, in almost all cases, is another distinct medium in itself.) He writes, "it is only too typical that the "content" of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium." (McLuhan 9) And it is the character of the medium that is its potency or effect - its message. In other words, "This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology." 
    Why is this understanding of "the medium is the message" particularly useful? We tend to notice changes - even slight changes (that unfortunately we often tend to discount in significance.) "The medium is the message" tells us that noticing change in our societal or cultural ground conditions indicates the presence of a new message, that is, the effects of a new medium. With this early warning, we can set out to characterize and identify the new medium before it becomes obvious to everyone - a process that often takes years or even decades. And if we discover that the new medium brings along effects that might be detrimental to our society or culture, we have the opportunity to influence the development and evolution of the new innovation before the effects becomes pervasive. As McLuhan reminds us, "Control over change would seem to consist in moving not with it but ahead of it. Anticipation gives the power to deflect and control force." (McLuhan 199)

    Reference
    McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw Hill, 1964.
    Download a pdf version of this essay.
    Interested in reading more Marshall McLuhan, but don't know where to start? Try On Reading McLuhan (pdf).
    Citation:
    Federman, M. (2004, July 23). What is the Meaning of the Medium is the Message? Retrieved from http://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/article_mediumisthemessage.htm .
    Notice to Students and Teachers:This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa license. This means that you are allowed to use this essay, in whole or in part, for almost any purpose, provided you:
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