The time-use diary was very useful in analysing the way in which I use TV and I was quite surprised by the results. While I tend to pride myself on my good taste of quality TV shows, I found that I watched what I deem to be lesser quality shows more often. I would often only watch what I deem to be quality TV (complex narrative) alone as my family all have different tastes in TV shows.

The shows I watched more often included The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, Have You Been Paying Attention, and Gogglebox. When watching these shows I tend to second screen more often and pay less attention to when I watch drama and complex narrative shows, like True Detective. These shows are free-to-air and in the reality TV show genre, and I usually watch them with my mum and my dad, as my brother despises watching them. During the broadcasting of these shows, I don’t always pay full attention, and will often do chores, uni homework, and use my phone. “Television is employed as an environmental resource in order to create a constant background noise which moves to the foreground when individuals or groups desire” (Lull 1980, pg. 201-202). I tend to only pay the most attention to the shows when aspects or personalities I like to watch are on, for example; on The Bachelor, I thought Sarah and Ebru were entertaining so I would pay more attention to their screen time compared to Heather and Lana who I found to be annoying. While I pay more attention to shows like Gogglebox & Have You Been Paying Attention, I pay the most attention to Anastasia and Sam Pang respectively as once I again, I find them to be the most entertaining from their shows. This is also the case with Family Feud, as if I deem a family ‘dumb’ because they give Grant the worst answers, I will tune out, compared to if I find a family to be ‘smart’ or just entertaining then I will tune in more.

Second screening became a habitual part of watching The Bachelor for me as I would often read radio host Dan Dabuf’s live tweets in the ad breaks and share them with my mum and dad. Towards the end of the season, a friend and I were at a mutual friend’s house and as a group we watched the show. As a result, our friend who had never watched the show previously became hooked and we started a group inbox on Facebook which we would live message each other through. As a group, if one of us couldn’t tune into the show, we would rely on the others to live message us what was happening. “Media technologies have become ubiquitous, mobile and scalable, generating new possibilities for social interaction in which information flows are increasingly able to act on and shape social activities as they occur” (McQuire 2008, pg. 146). This also included sending each other copious amounts of memes making fun of Sam (The Bachelor) and the girls, making fun of Snezana’s promise ring, etc. I also began reading host Osher’s tweets as well during The Bachelorette, the highlight of which was when David (the international model) was evicted from the show.

Watching Have You Been Paying Attention religiously was quite interesting for me, as when it first started I wrote it off as lasting only two or three episodes, but I was wrong. As it is a quiz-comedy show hybrid, a lot of the answers the comedian contestants provide are jokes rather than actual guesses, resulting in it being funny. It has become routine for my family and I to watch it during its broadcast on Monday nights. The personalities and running gag between Sam Pang and Tom Gleisner provides the audience with a lot of laughs. The intertextuality and mocking of their station’s shows provide humour, particularly for The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. This makes the show more entertaining for my family and I, as we watch all of these shows and will often guess which aspects will be highlighted on HYBPA. “Television and other mass media… can now be seen to play central roles in the methods which families and other social units employ to interact normatively” (Lull 1980, pg. 198). It creates a dialogue between my mum, dad, and I about the comments the comedians make about the shows we watch, making it more enjoyable to watch, as we tend to mock aspects of The Bachelor/The Bachelorette while we watch it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=By6qvZXSUc4

The Bachelorette on Have You Been Paying Attention

I discovered that I used TV as background noise to doing other activities and used it in a far more social way than I expected, using it to create dialogue between my family and friends.

WORKS CITED:

Lull, J 1980, ‘The Social Uses of Television’, Human Communication Research, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 197-209, viewed 26 October 2015, Wiley Online Library Database.

McQuire, S 2008, Media City: Media, Architecture and Urban Spaces, SAGE Publications, London, viewed 26 October 2015, EBL Ebook Library Database.