Live Television: The Extraordinary & the Everyday

This week, on TV Cultures …

An interesting lecture this week, analyzing the concept of ‘live’ television, and dividing it into ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary’ programming. I’m particularly taken by this idea of producing ‘everyday’ content for the audience – content that, on the face of it, is thrown together, ‘ma and pa’ television. However, in reality, it’s a meticulously crafted construct designed to draw in and appeal to the masses. The Sunrise clip that we were shown was clear evidence of this, and I’ll make an attempt (no doubt, a ham-fisted one) at exploring this within the journal post.

I was absent for the first two weeks of the course, so while Brian noted that we had previously covered the notion of the family and the nation, the discussion was new for me. I particularly responded to the concept of the TV’s relationship with the ‘family’, and its integration into the home – referred to as the ‘electronic hearth’, installed within cabinets and trussed up to look like an integral part of the living space. Upon reflection, I did realize that I treat the television as a natural component of the domestic space – a living room without a TV is not a living room, at least that’s what I’ve grown up believing. The concept of the ‘nation’ was also interesting, particularly the notion that television has had a crucial role in ‘the cultural thickening’ of our nation that Brian addressed. The idea that television has played such an important part in our understanding of our community is a fascinating one, and I think that programs (like Sunrise) that strive to emulate ‘everyday’ content definitely play on this imagined community – our perception of the ‘nation’ we live in.

A quote from this week’s lecture that struck a chord, in regards to the concept of ‘everyday television’, was the assertion that breakfast television “is obsessed with identifying itself with the daily world of the television viewer” (Weiten & Pantti, p. 21). Having never really sat down and watched a program like Sunrise, it did strike me that ‘obsessive’ is actually an extremely accurate term to use for the show. Everything about it, from its hosts to its settings and delivery of ‘news’ seems actively geared towards ingratiating itself into the viewer’s lives and becoming part of their constructed ‘worlds’. It wants to create a relationship with the viewer, and become an active part of their morning lifestyle.

Everything about Sunrise screams colloquial and ‘everyday’ – the hosts, David Koch and Melissa Doyle (casually referred to as ‘Kochie’ and ‘Mel’), are laidback and friendly, often interrupting their own broadcast with laughter and inconsequential tangents in an attempt to emulate the unstructured reality of conversation. A search through YouTube of the show’s different clips reveal that the hosts (with Doyle now replaced by Samantha ‘Sam’ Armytage) dress conservatively – Koch always in a suit, Doyle and Armytage similarly covered.

The program itself is fairly frenetic, a mash of genres, cuts and graphics that simulate a sense of ‘liveness’ for the audience at home. The show will switch from Koch and Doyle’s lighthearted banter over a group of ‘Masterchef’ contestants to Natalie Barr’s grave reading of the morning’s news stories, before cutting to an infomercial and then a round-table discussion of some current affairs. Meanwhile, regurgitated news headlines scroll at the bottom of the screen while any story to be discussed is heralded by an onscreen graphic – useful for an audience who can tune in and out at their leisure. It’s all designed to have a rapid turnover – the breakfast audience is busy doing other things, they’re not sitting and watching, so by throwing a variety of genres at them, the people watching are likely to see something they’re interested in.

References:

J. Weiten & M. Pantti, (2005) ‘Obsessed with the audience: breakfast television revisited’, Media, Culture & Society, 27(1):21-39.