Concepts Of Live TV
In the Article The Concept of Live Television: Ontology as Ideology, Jane Feuer presents the idea of liveness in television. Television as an institution identifies all messages emanating from the apparatus as live. However in the technological advances, the meaning of live has greatly changed. Computerized editing equipment has made editing as flexible as most film editing. Much of this new equipment is used for the recording and freezing of "live" sports events that were supposed to be the glory of the medium. Even in terms of the simplest conception, live television is a collage of film, video, and "live" all woven into a complex scheme. Another point made in her article is the concept of flow as a way of explaining the effect of immediacy the experience of television gives. Television becomes this continuous never ending sequence in which it is impossible to separate texts. This idea of liveness smoothes over text breaks for things such as commercials. This is a fascinating idea because live programs are the most popular, and since this concept makes us not really realize when commercials are going to occur, we end up watching commercials more, creating a large and very tuned-in audience for advertisers. This exper
While she says that liveness smoothes over the breaks of television such as commercials, I argue that in a live program, the commercials are more obvious and seem to interrupt the show more as a whole. I myself greatly agree with most of what Feuer is saying, except for her ideas of flow. I understand the point of a person getting so caught up in the liveness of a show that you don't notice the point of mediation, but how many times have you been watching television and not notice when the commercials come on! All her other points I agree with, especially this fixated notion of live television. A perfect example of how important liveness is to me, is shown in Saturday Night Live. Although it costs a great deal to produce a live show, I agree with the article that many more shows are going to try and produce these live ideals in order to attract a larger audience. ience of flow relates with the television-viewing situation because the set is in the home. So even when the public thinks they are watching a live broadcast of say a sports event, the networks are still cutting back and forth between events, and freezing certain segments and replaying them, not to mention the breaks for commercials. The flow of these programs alternates between different medias and between local and national stories. " This type of television show is another medium of television that I find myself watching a great deal. Television is designed to be watched casually, without full concentration, and only the commercials command attention and try to dazzle you for your attention. The medium of this type of television also implicates the ideology of the family. ------------------------------------------------------------------------**Bibliography**. One key point I found interesting was how the network television never truly exploits its capacity for instantaneous and unmediated transmission. The live interviews that are done on the show are edited in a way to create the illusion of the interviewer and the interviewee being in the same live space together as the audience. Television then becomes an extremely ordinary experience, since the property of flow seems so real and ordinary.
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