Paul Frosh

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• Paul Frosh
• Dept. of Communications and Journalism
• The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

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The Owl of Minerva

• Irony of holding first meeting of television
  researchers forum in current climate.
• As TV appears to fade, never been a more
  productive and fruitful period for researching
  television. The end of TV not as a medium but as
  a bad object?

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Overview of Contemporary TV studies

• Television as a medium in transition (Jenkins,
  Spigel, Lotz, Caldwell, Ellis and many others)
• End of TV as primarily mass medium, though by
  no means end of TV per se.
• What happens when socio-culturally central medium
  is fractured by new media but not replaced by
  another centralizing medium? (Newcomb)

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Three areas of focus

• Technologies
• Texts
• Audiences

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Technologies

• Digital transmission technologies multi-channel
  fragmentation, niche narrow-casting, plenitude
  and self-sufficiency of TV environment (on-screen
  interface with TV schedule), phenomenal
  television (Lotz).
• Time-shifting technologies expansion of the
  current, rise of elective simultaneity, focus
  on process.

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Technologies

• Portability and mobility TV out of the home, as
  appendage of the individual
• Transformation of the screen (size, depth, aspect
  ratio, resolution) and sound reproduction
• Shattering of phenomenological coherence/unity of
  television convergence with other devices
  (computers, iPods, PDAs, cellphones)

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Technologies

• Question Does it make theoretical and
  methodological sense to call a plethora of
  different screen technologies and uses
  television?
• On what basis do we distinguish between
  television and other media technologies?

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Aesthetics

• Richness and Detail of Image
• Multi-platform event television and transmedia
  storytelling. Televisual overflow 1) between
  media platforms, 2) between diegetic and viewer
  worlds.
• Television out of the box interruption,
  seriality, concentrated viewing

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Aesthetics

• Question Has there been a qualitative shift in
  television (as opposed to scholarly perception)?
  Is it now more possible than ever before to claim
  that television can produce not just
  transformative historical events but also
  aesthetic innovations and great art?

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Audiences

• Fragmentation or nuclear realignment of
  audiences?
• Fandom as a new audience ideal? The audience as
  producer? Interactivity, surveillance and the
  work of being watched (Andrejevic)? Anti-fans
  and non-fans (Gray).
• Lifestyle TV television as new ethical centre?
  As agent of governmentality?

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Audiences

• Question If television is now distributed
  among multiple platforms, contexts and
  experiences, how can one effectively research its
  reception? Are fans not so much the most central
  type of audience as the most convenient research
  object?