The Culture of Three Screens

Randall Stross, in the New York Times, has just written about the resilience of TV in the age of the Web. As he writes, when print subscriptions are on the outs (do I have to tell you about the budgetary concerns of all print media–magazines and newspapers), it seems people are still watching TV, in spite of the growing number of hours we are spending “online.” (I hate this term because I believe there is no such thing as “offline.” If you shut your laptop and try to relax in front of your TV with your cell phone still on, it’s not getting “offline.”)

Here’s Stross outlining what he sees as a rather peculiar juxtaposition of facts:

Why is the newspaper business losing readers at an accelerated rate while television viewership is stronger than ever? Here’s a speculative idea: A tipping point has been passed in the competition between print and screen that has been under way since the beginnings of broadcast TV and now continues with video and other media.

Consumers are increasingly avoiding newspapers — and books, too — because the text mode is now used so infrequently that it can feel like a burden. People are showing a clear preference for a fully formed video experience that comes ready to play on a screen, requiring nothing but our passive attention.

I apologize for the extended quote but I think it is crucial to see what Stross is getting at. In point of fact, it is not TV as a medium model that is resilient according to Stross but video (moving images) and screens. The bottom line here is: people no longer look to text for “immersive” experiences.

You now hear talk in the advertising trade of our “three screens”: television, the Internet and mobile devices. When I asked representatives of major ad agencies about how they chose the optimal mix of media for clients, I was led back, again and again, to television. That’s not just because it remains the one place where an advertiser can gather a truly mass audience for a single commercial message, but also because it provides what advertisers call an “immersive experience.”

Stross thinks the beginnings of the “immersive experience” is TV because of his clear bias towards advertising revenue. What film did not readily do for corporations is provide a platform to advertising, at least prior to the adoption of pre-feature ads which are very common today. But as most media theorists would now agree, the grounds of “immersive experience” is not TV at all but cinema. Again, not simply the actual film itself but the entire cultural and technical apparatus of cinema, which includes the system of the Big Five studio system in Hollywood and also the fact that movies are watched via projection and in the dark.

TV has never attempted to jockey for that central position of attention as did film. While watching a movie, you’re not supposed to talk with your neighbor and sometimes take your eye off the screen. Film’s “vocation” was to fill the entirety of consciousness, which it was able to do through technical means–large aspect-ratio, surround sound, etc.

Stross is not only a poor media historian but clearly in the bag for corporate advertising. He may do himself some good by reading Lev Manovich’s The Language of New Media.