18 May, 2017

Media Lecture – 10

This week’s lecture was taken by a guest lecturer Dr. Ramon Lobato.

To be honest, when I saw the topic of this week’s lecture, I felt so excited because it is link to my Project Brief 4! The content discussed in the lecture are related to my Project Brief 4!

The first part is about ‘TV in Australia by the numbers’. According to the research:

• Hours of broadcast TV viewing per day – 2.7
• Hours of online video viewing per day – 0.5
• Devices per household – 6.4
• Households subscribing to Netflix(%) – 25%

Actually, when our group decided to do research on ‘How have narrative practices evolved to meet the changing modes of viewing?’, Gareth and Brandon thought about broadcast era and post-broadcast era, of course including Netflix. Why I have no idea about this topic??? The reason is… I do not know about Netflix… even never heard it before. Maybe Chinese government bans Netflix because they need to protect local companies which has similar system with Netflix. Thus, it is the first time for me to learn about broadcast era/ post-broadcast era and Netflix.

For ‘TV in Australia’:

• Broadcast (4) – 1977
• Broadcast (5) Pay-TV (20) (e.g. VHS/DVD) – 1997
• Broadcast (30) Pay-TV (150) (e.g. DVD/BlueRay; mobile; Download; IPTV; Streaming) – 2017

I know some abbreviations, such as DVD, BlueRay, mobile, Download… however, I really did not know they are a form of Pay-TV. (I am not sure I understand clearly here.)

For online TV ecology, the image the lecturer showed us is easy to understand.

To understand ‘what does TV means for audiences’, Dr. Ramon used three references to illustrate. Media environment is controlled by the public and more people do not just rely on broadcast TV any more. They have more requirements for online TV because of the development of the quality of life. As the third reference provided in the lecture:

• ‘More and more, your computer monitor is a kind of one-way mirror, reflecting your own interests while algorithmic observers watch you click.’

－Eli Pariser. The Filter Bubble, 2011. p.3

Next part is the most important one I think, because it is the brief introduction of Netflix. Although I search for some information about Netflix when I did the project, I still felt confusing about it. However, Dr. Ramon’s explanation is more clear:

• Word’s largest SVOD service
• 125,000,000 hours of viewing per day
• Operates in 190+ countries
• 100 million subscribers globally
• US$41 billion market cap; US$6.7 billion revenue in 2015
• Headquarters in Los Gatos, California

Moreover, he also compared the meanings for TV content and culture and it is the part that help me to compare and contrast between broadcast TV and Netflix:

                           Broadcast TV VS Netflix

• Over the airwaves VS Over the top / internet-distributed
• Schedule VS Curated library
• Flow VS On-demand
• Advertising model VS Subscription model
• Mass markets VS Niche markets / personalisation
• Reliant on hits VS Less reliant on hits
• Sport, news, event TV VS Adult drama, comedy, movies
• Distraction VS Immersion

To sum up, this lecture conclued the differences between broadcast TV and Netflix in a simple way and help me to have a clear instruction for my project.