Liveness does not define the medium of television.

Liveness does not define the medium of television.

Despite significant institutional, technological, and aesthetic changes in television, several myths about the medium’s essence continue to exist. One of the most persistent is the myth of liveness as the fundamental nature of television (willlowitts, 2019). Stephanie Marriott’s depiction of how television influences our perceptions of time, location, and connectedness, Live Television, is based on academic phenomenology. Her lively, first-person story, on the other hand, is everything from stuffy. As she chases her hunt, “the ontological structure of television,” whose essence, “liveness,” she strives to convey by describing bits of programming, Marriott comes off as an avid viewer and devotee of technology. Her examples range from the mundane—such British pastimes as snooker, bowls, and jump racing—to the historic—assassination of J.F.K.’s and the demolition of the World Trade Center. This article demonstrates Stephanie Marriot’s point that, while liveness is prevalent, it does not define television as a medium.

Many early morning shows or news broadcasts were shot at various times and in different places. Still, they all involve a host or an anchor in the form of a direct address to bind the various episodes together into the deception of a single spatiotemporal and spatial occurrence. According to Marriot, most television transmissions on most channels were no longer live by the end of the twentieth century. The jumble of genuinely ‘live’ material – stuff ‘broadcast are received in the same instant as it comes into creation’ – and insertions made or captured before would be promoted to the public as live. By focusing on the events on the morning of the devastating 911-attack, when most American stations were broadcasting live breakfast shows, it became apparent how even programs that are unduly touted as “live” can only claim that status occasionally.

Ontological definitions of ‘live’ in televisions lead to the conclusion that technology is the source of liveness. There must be an organization to interpret the events for livenes to take shape. This helps to explain why commuters have access to real-time traffic and schedule updates. Even channels that appear to be dedicated to live transmissions (temporarily or otherwise) will almost certainly turn out to be reliant on some sort of time-delay technology to some degree (Marriott, 2007). Marriot illustrates the ontology of liveness by citing the British channel E4, which has devoted a significant portion of a live feed of the goings-on in a house where the reality show Big Brother is being filmed; however, footage like this is broadcasted with a short period delay for potentially controversial and actionable content can be eliminated. To comply with regulations governing obscenity, obscenities, and other such things, content is delayed. This demonstrates that the live-as-ontology approach ignores the importance of economic, social, and cultural norms in shaping the liveness and that the liveness is more than just a technical performance.

Since the invention of the ability to record and playback video, an increasing number of television programs have been pre-recorded. The introduction of the digital video recorder (DVR) in recent years has made time shifting easier, thanks to the use of an electronic program guide (EPG) and the ability to record shows onto a hard disk (Donaldson, 2018). Certain broadcasters transmit time-shifted versions of their channels, which typically carry programming from one hour in the past, to provide those without recording capabilities with more flexibility in resolving conflicts and those with recording capabilities with more flexibility in scheduling conflicts between recordings. Because of the ability to record and replay, Marriot wonders what the difference is between television as an apparatus (an electric device for reception and display) and television as a medium (a medium that can be recorded and replayed).

The majority of television shows contain varying degrees of mediation and staging, which reduces the impression of liveness that viewers experience. It is only via the prospect of something actual or unmediated breaking through the current of program occurrences that liveness may be accomplished (Gadassik, 2010). Instead of being visually modeled on live theatre, early television plays were presented as theoretical performances taking place in real-time, as opposed to today. To demonstrate this, Marriot claims that it makes no difference whether television manipulates the promise of liveness for its gain. Marriott delves into the complexities of spatial dissemination in her description of British election night coverage (in May 1997). A plethora of cameras and screens distributed across the country produced a plethora of photographs of this type: In Sedgefield, Blair’s fans “are also recorded on camera in moments of perpetual regress, seeing themselves on a giant screen.”

Without a doubt, the definition of theoretical liveness in television has evolved. These transformations are almost certainly linked to the numerous institutional, technological, artistic, and social transformations that television has undergone since its inception. However, it’s possible that the idea that “liveness is the very definition of television” isn’t as far-fetched as it appears. Even though liveness is not ontologically provided, it is latent in the medium of all times and sets of circumstances.

References

Donaldson, G. (2018). Time shifting – Wikipedia. En.wikipedia.org. Retrieved 22 February 2022,

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_shifting.

Gadassik, A. (2010). At a Loss for Words: Televisual Liveness and Corporeal

Interruption. Journal Of Dramatic Theory And Criticism24(2), 117-134.

https://doi.org/10.1353/dtc.2010.0015

Marriott, S. (2007). Live television. Sage.

willlowitts, J. (2019). Retrieved 22 February 2022, from https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/sociology/contemporary-mass-media/the-role-and-influence-of-mass-media.

 

 

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