8.2: Reading Television - Classroom Activity

Reading Television | Classroom Activity | Duel Screening - TV Through The Decades

How To Use This Material [Instructor Note]

• The opening slides provide a review of Ramon Lobato’s “What Is Netflix?,” one of the suggested reading materials to accompany this activity
• Slides 7 & 8 outline two suggested in-class screenings, which showcase a host of the dramatic formal evolutions brought about by streaming (as Lobato identifies)
• Additionally, both episodes exceptionally speak to the power, potentials, and limitations of television as a means for the dispersion of ideological positions
• Cumulatively, the two should take a little under an hour to screen, leaving plenty of room for class discussion
• Each episode is accompanied by brief lecture notes, as well as other suggested reading material you may want to incorporate
• You are welcome to make a copy of this material to edit and remix as you wish; please be sure to follow the CC license mandates when doing so

Recap: "What Is Netflix?" | Netflix Nations | Ramon Lobato

• Our assigned reading material offered a broad look at how various media studies scholars make sense of the similarities and differences between traditional television and their more modern streaming counterparts, with a particular focus on Netflix
  • “While Netflix is an established global brand with 20 years of history, there is still very little agreement about what Netflix is or how it should be understood by the public, scholars, or media regulators. Netflix—like many disruptive media phenomena before it, including radio and broadcast television—is a boundary object that exists between, and inevitably problematizes, the conceptual categories used to think about media” (20)
• Can’t look at Netflix as something fundamentally new, as “focusing exclusively on the software dimension obscures Netflix’s structural relationships with established screen industries” (22); can’t look at Netflix as too akin to traditional TV, for “if we study Netflix in terms of its similarities to and differences from television, we can miss its connections to other digital media” (22)
• One of the big shifts between traditional television and newer streaming models can be found in their fundamentally different approaches to content selection, the shift from a broadcast-based service to a narrowcast-based service
• As Lobato notes, television has moved from “a mass medium to a niche one,” which serves to “fragment” what was once mass audience into a series of hyper-niche ones (23)
  • Milly Buonanno: “Netflix’s modus operandi has substantially helped widen the landscape of storytelling and has expanded access to what appears to be an almost boundless cornucopia of television narratives to an unprecedented degree. This certainly generates the valuable gain of a greater range of choice that discloses and (seemingly) maintains the historical promise—left unfulfilled by television as we have known it—to ‘give viewers what they want’” (6)
  • At the same time, as Nick Couldry and Joseph Turow argue: this means that we’ve got increasingly less “shared public reference points” (1711) which could lead in turn to “the gradual erosion of a common arena of discourse” (1712)
• Another important shift Lobato traces is the rise of the algorithm, which serves to suggest, guide, and influence viewers on a personalized level. As such, Netflix cannot be seen as a ‘neutral’ force or mere technological innovation: instead, we must acknowledge that the platform “shape[s] the communications, interactions, and consumption that they facilitate— through interface design, moderation policies, terms of service, algorithmic recommendation, and so on” (38)
  • Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO: “One day we hope to get so good at suggestions that we’re able to show you exactly the right film or TV show for your mood when you turn on Netflix” (The Economist)
• Some worry this ability to hyper-target audiences will led to the strengthening of cultural echo chambers: “the rise of predictive personalization might be good news for the study of artificial intelligence and machine learning, but it is bad news for anyone who wishes to encounter what Sontag calls ‘great films.’” (Alexander, as cited by Lobato 41)

Introducing Today's Activity

• Many of us likely say we’re ‘watching TV’ whether we’re turning on MTV or booting up Hulu, but, as Lobato makes clear, there are important differences between the two: “the everyday terminology may remain unchanged… but might refer to quite a different set of practices that are ontologically distinct from what that terminology referred to in the past” (31)
• Today’s activity looks to have us put some of the analytic perspectives and approaches Lobato identifies into action by showcasing two different television programs, with their original air date separated by over half a century
• Not only will these examples allow us to see shifts in the ways television ‘works’ (changes in storytelling, in formal style, in content, etcetera), but also allow us a look at the ways in which television serves as a conduit for ideologies—be them reaffirming the dominant frame or offering an ulterior view

Screening One: "The Birds... and... um... Bess" | The Mary Tyler Moore Show

• Screening Notes:
  • Episode available on Hulu and YouTube TV, both of which offer free trial periods (if instructor/institution does not have an account to either already)
  • This episode offers an exceptional look at the simultaneously radical and reductionist nature of television, but others from the series could certainly work as well
  • Additionally, watching ‘older’ television provides students a chance to experience television in its formal heyday, to better make sense of the changes more common to their own, contemporary televisual experiences
    • The media productions of decades past, too, provide a exceptional chance to see the power of mediated ideologies, as the perspectives and positions that don’t ‘fit’ with our own are much more noticeable
  • This screening pairs particularly well with Kathryn Fuselier’s “‘A Necessary Medium' - Mary Tyler Moore Show & Media Portrayal of the Second Wave Feminist Era,” should you like to incorporate an additional text for homework/group-work/discussion/etcetera
    • Not only does it offer a great outline of first-, second-, and third-wave feminism, but speaks to the ways in which The Mary Tyler Moore Show can be both celebrated and critiqued for its contributions/hindrances to the feminist movement
    • And, even better, it’s a student essay!

Screening Two: "New York, I Love You" |Master of None (2017)

• Screening Notes:
  • Episode available exclusively on Netflix, which occasionally offers free trial experiences (if instructor/institution doesn’t have an account already)
  • While other modern television episodes would certainly work, this piece in particular provides an exceptional opportunity to ‘see’ the many changes brought about by streaming television options; this interview with star and writer Aziz Ansari offers a brief overview, if you’re not familiar with the episode already
  • Amongst other highlights, the episode features multiple compelling narratives, and represents the power of truly inclusive, intersectional media; additionally, it takes a variety of formal risks that would be unavailable to traditional television, making clear the stylistic differences between the two forms
  • This screening pairs particularly well with Milly Buonanno’s “Widening landscapes of TV storytelling in the digital media environment of the 21st century,” should you like to incorporate an additional text for homework/group-work/discussion/etcetera

Works Cited

Buonanno, Milly. “Widening Landscapes of TV Storytelling in the Digital Media Environment of the 21st Century.” Anàlisi: Quaderns de Comunicació i Cultura, vol. 58, 2018, pp. 1-12.

Couldry, N., and J. Turow. “Advertising, Big Data, and the Clearance of the Public Realm: Marketers’ New Approaches to the Content Subsidy.” International Journal of Communication, vol. 8, 2014, pp. 1710-1726.

“How to Devise the Perfect Recommendation Algorithm.” The Economist, 9 Feb. 2017.

Lobato, Ramon. Netflix Nations: The Geography of Digital Distribution. NYU Press, 2019.

“New York, I Love You.” Master of None, created by Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang, season 2, episode 8, Netflix, 12 May 2017.

“The Birds... and... um... Bess.” The Mary Tyler Moore Show, created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns, season 2, episode 1, CBS, 18 Sep. 1971

© J. F. Lindsay, CC BY-NC-SA