Creating Something Profitable, Creating Something Dynamic

Reality Show Analysis 2: American Idol

Loyals, Zappers, Casuals

In the second chapter Jenkins covers the rise of the American Idol Franchise as a way of talking about the relationship between producers and consumers of fairly traditional television media. Televised media in particular is at a point of crisis, mainly due to the large number of available channels on the typical television set. Both in terms of advertising and entertainment, television executives are trying to find a way to hold the viewer’s interest in a competitive atmosphere. In the rise of reality television one way of creating this interest is by designing avenues for the public to interact with the show.
While the last chapter mostly discussed the fan community, this one addressed the perspective of an ad executive trying to market a product. From their perspective, viewers can be divided into three large categories. “Loyals” are the type of viewer that might only have a few shows that they watch, but they watch them obsessively. The second category is made up of “zappers” which is comprised of the viewers who surf the channels looking for interesting content, and switching as soon as they feel bored. The third type is the “casual” which is the kind of viewer that lies in the middle of these two categories. The Important facet of mentioning each of these aspects is that a group of all different viewing types delivers a good viewing experience. The loyalists inform the casuals and the zappers and vice versa.       

The Exchange Rate of Commodification

Another facet of the American Idol chapter talked about the amount of product placement that goes on with the show, which audiences see to be particularly receptive to when it comes to reality television. Jenkins delves into how the ad agencies tie the product to the show across the media entities, so that while, on the show, the product might be as subtle as a cup, the online experience is littered with coke ads. The viewer, it seems, is usually aware of this kind of advertising, and the viewer usually has a better brand recall for the show, which works well for advertisers. The viewers don’t seem to mind terribly, though they do begin to become more savy and opinionated about the way the brand works in the show. Viewers, especially with respect to American Idol, can become suspicious of something which appears to be a corporate enterprise, especially when the show doesn’t work “like it should.”

In terms of the viewers as a commodity, Jenkins describes it as a double edged sword. On the one hand the community gains recognition, but on the other hand the direction of the community is taken out of their direct control, and is distributed to a wide variety of political and economic projects. The stabilization of the community’s content also renders it motionless, unable to grow and evolve with the existing fanbase. What they saw as something interesting or beautiful is now an advertising pitch.     

The Matrix Frachcise: More Media Than You Can Shake a Gun At

The third chapter was particularly interesting because it talked about producers who are trying to incorporate multiple-media narratives into traditional media environments. Specifically touching on the Matrix franchise, Jenkins runs through the ways that film movie executives are exploring combinations of film, television, Internet, and gaming in order to write the narrative.

Jenkins, unlike the popular media critics, celebrates the Wachowski brother’s attempt. They integrated all kinds of plot lines and allusions for the viewer to find. Many of these elements were built to get the viewer more involved with the movie series, but others dragged the viewer out into the Marix “world” through animated series and games. These elements connected plot points and developed characters, as well as threw more allusive devices and easter eggs for the viewer to find. From Jenkins’ point of view, the franchise allowed for a large variety of possible meanings, and should be celebrated for its ability to run across media formats.

The movie critics, however, didn’t share Jenkins’ opinions. They thought the films felt disconnected and strange. They felt little need to look at discussion boards or play video games in order to understand the broader significance of the later movies. Jenkins calls for a new mode of criticism for reading trans-media texts, one which considers the involvement of different forms of media as a way to go deeper into the “world.” Instead of creating a plot, or creating characters, Jenkins talks about how creating an entire world is necessary for the viewers to get involved in the storyline. The problem for advertisers is that each viewer gets a different experience from these types of texts, they all have a different interpretation. This makes it difficult for trans-media texts to affect large audiences in ways that critics are used to, and so the chapter seems to come down to this simple dynamic: Jenkins’ optimism about the artistic merit of the product vs. the disconnect of consumers and critics from a movie that is not just a movie.   

Questions:

How can people create trans-media artifacts when we have grown to expect a cohesive narrative out of each individual media element? How can one negotiate the difficult space between disconnected pieces and meaningless subsidiary components.

Jenkins mentions that parody is an element of fan culture. How then might the producers of content value the comedic content created by consumers? Can the comedic content lead to the subversion of content, and if so is this something that the producer should be worried about?

Toward the end of the Matrix chapter, Jenkins calls our attention to the way critics detest the impulse to obsess over something like the Matrix franchise. They see it as the accumulation of useless information, and Jenkins does little to prove them wrong. How might we argue for the benefits of involvement in a "fan culture" as they relate to a larger cultural scope?


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