MetaBroadcast Blog

On this article, the Intelligent Life website writes: Does history work on television? Andrew Marr gives an insider’s view. Myself, I feel there’s even more to it, beside telly historians and their tools of trade. From the couple of paragraphs reproduced below, it is the last one that incites my imagination: could TV soon evolve into real-time interaction far beyond the red button benefits?

I found this UK telly feature useful only during large sport events like the Olympics and Wimbledon, when I couldn’t be bothered with TV guides/ schedules to understand what was on where and when. So the thought that TV content could become as hyperlinked as web content is a beautiful dream of unexplored potential, and possibly a huge opportunity.

Having seen the presentations and debate at the 2screen event last week, I continue to believe that the future lies in one screen savvy EPGs that rely on wonderfully linked content and thus, make the boundary between broadcast and internet fuzzy, if not irrelevant. But let me not get ahead of myself. I give you Andrew Marr’s thoughts, and hope to hear yours:

Television forces you out of the library. In the making, at least, it’s a fresh-air medium. Then it insists that you focus ruthlessly on a few emblematic stories. Then it boils things down yet again, because of the relatively tiny number of words each film can contain. There can be few spare words. It won’t replace books, with their vast word-hoard. But it is no longer a merely parasitical, secondary narrative, either.

And of course it is changing too. For how long will the hour-long narrative set piece survive? Soon, I believe and hope, viewers will be able to pause, dive away from the main narrative and pursue particular stories more deeply, watch more archive, hear a longer version of the interview and join a digital argument about what the telly historian has just said. In the end, you will even get to heckle “Civilisation”.

Three years ago, Chris shared his thoughts on the topic prompted by Simon Schama and Al Gore:

Al Gore [...] observed that while TV viewing is tremendously immersive, it is weaker than the Internet in maintaining multi-way conversation and encourage a meritocracy of ideas. [...] He urged TV festival delegates to consider how the natural strengths of current TV and Internet media can be combined.

It is almost 70 years since the BBC began scheduled television broadcasts, but we are still improving our understanding of how to best use the medium. Boundaries are being pushed by people like Simon Schama getting deep into the gritty detail of making great TV. What can we learn from him as we develop our ‘new media’?

[...] In TV richness exists in the raw footage. In the digital world technology also create opportunities—for richer interfaces, more interactivity, and better connection with others. I am not convinced that the Simon Schamas of the Internet are taking time to gain a detailed understanding of the possibilities.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, September 27th, 2009 at 19:34 and is filed under ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.