Network Ten EP Adam Boland @ RMIT

Executive Producer Adam Boland paid a visit to RMIT and I happened to be sitting right where the action took place, when it took place. He talked really fast, and get’s up at 2:15 in the morning. Fun!

Notes on breakfast TV engagement

Currently, Ch 10 less than 2% audience share during breakfast television. Sunrise & Today take about a 43% audience share each, this makes them risk averse (talentented producers but the EP won’t want try their ideas because if risks don’t pay off then the share plummets). Ch 10 has therefore hired six of Sunrise’s best producers, likely tempted by the opportunity to try new things (going from a show with a 43% audience share to less than 2% is where creative opportunities are). They’re creative people but can’t get ideas up.

Boland launched Sunrise in 2001 with a 3.1% audience share, but by 2006 Ch 7 dominated Today at an almost consistent 60% share. Ch 10’a new breakfast show Wake Up is possible, but it takes time.

Boland says that the passion levels in breakfast TV is gone at the moment. Sunrise & Today have morphed into each other and there is nothing unique. Ch 9’s clone strategy after 7’s domination recovered audiences but it’s stale.

Boland: The challenge was to come up with something fundamentally different (a la The Project). Breakfast television is ritualistic, so changing TV habits in the morning means interrupting personal schedules. Breakfast gives oxygen to your entire network shcedule – it punches above its weight in terms of unique visitors calculated cumulatively. It should be a front door to your network.

Ch 7 represents ‘heartland Australia’, it’s the network identity. Ch 10 used to own 16-39’s demographic but freaked when digital/multi-channelling came along and Ch 9 & Ch 7 introduced their won younger stations (eg. Go). ‘Second screen’ multimedia engagement also shook Ch 10. They consequently confused their audience by doing trying to engage older audiences that were already dominated by Ch 7 & Ch 9.

Network branding is critical. Who are we as a network? NOW: Ch 10 re-claim their identity as the destination for the youngest audience at 25-54’s. It’s the core demo for commerical TV land; advertisers want them to be there, still places Ch 10 as the youngest network.

A program called Wake Up with Tash, Tarsh & Matho:

Localism, the hosts, lack of studios, four dedicated social media producers, re-working advertorials.

“We have a separate digital team, we want to have a 24 hour conversations that just happenes to be amplified by a breakfast TV show.”

Announcement: Launching one show means it SINKS, so Ch 10 will be launching many. There will be an early news bulletin until 6:30am positioning Ch 10 to be the only network with this. After 6:30 engagement changes, enter the breakfast show 6:30-8:30. A morning show will ride off the back in-studio until 11am. Over the summer, engagement with breakfast television after 8am really lifts. Official ratings period is over but it will be a great sample period to get Wake Up right. Second target in February during Olympics (10 has the rights). Advertorials are essential to floating the show BUT 50% will be live, no advertorials for the first half of the show.

Morning shows traditionally schedule content in 2 minute quick hits on Lindsay Lohan. Bolan says you can’t lead a show with this as it lowers tone of the conversation. There’s a notion that commercial television can’t be intelligent (and fun).

Panel Show idea bookended with news. Laucnhig it all on one day. Keeping 10 young and being different: Studio will reside within a renovated Manly Surf Club. Evokes the landscape of the beach, ‘Home & Away Syndrome’ – Australians just get it. Gets the show out of a Central Business District full of bankers and lawyers (who Boland adds are ‘typically sad’). This way, Boland says, the “Fitness freaks are right behind us!”

Melbourne is a unique market so their Melbourne local content will come straight from Fed Square (in an agreement with the Victorian Govt & City of Melbourne). The shot? Flinders Street Station:

“It doen’t just plant us firmly in Melbourne…Imagine studio 1 in Manly and Studio 2 in Melbourne. All of a sudden we get to do an old radio trick and cut to local news. We’ll be the only breakfast show with live local news instead of pre-recording stories between cities. All of a sudden people in Brisbane are only seeing Brisbane news… localism does count.”

“Having these two studios enables making sure news is up to date.”

The driver for viewer change is to ‘wake up to something new’. The advertising campaign will involve people breaking their morning routines by waking up to different things like Miranda Kerr instead of their real wives… Disrupting viewer behaviour!

MANOVICH-ING

Lev Manovich’s words on the Database As Symbolic Form.

This is quite a fascinating subject, I really haven’t come across this idea before. Manovich begins with the proposition that after the novel, cinema privileged narrative as the key form of cultural expression (of the modern age). Today, a ‘computer age’ introduces the database; new media objects that do not tell stories nor contain beginnings or ends but exist as collections of individual items. Database as form. He asks:

What is the relationship between database and another form that has traditionally dominated human culture – narrative?

Manovich is talking about new media’s affordances which appear as computerised collections of items on which users can view, navigate and search; popular multimedia encyclopedias, CD-ROMS as storage devices that have become cultural products and DVDs. The term database, originating out of the computer sciences, is dryly defined as a structured collection of data… Data is stored for fast search and retrieval by a computer, so a database ultimately becomes far more complex than a simple collection of items. Different of types databases (hierarchical, object-oriented etc.) use different models to oirganise data.

Anyways, the important point is that users of new media experience database-like engagement at a basic level. I’m thinking about how I love my Mac’s nifty top-right magnifying glass that so easily let’s me search my entire computer for random files: using only the keyword ‘McLuhan’ I can find in seconds an essay I wrote five years ago on Marshall McLuhan that doesn’t even mention the word in the title of the document. Also, that document is buried so far down in the deep depths of my unorganised Documents folder, there’s no way I’m finding that baby going the long way.

Other than my actual computer, Manovich focuses on newer media. CD-ROMS (digital storage media) – still kinda computery. Wikipedia (popular multimedia encyclopaedias) – also kinda computery. A non-computer-but-new-media example of database he mentions is the DVD. Maybe because they contain menus with subtitle / commentary options? Chapter selection? Well yeah, it is pretty freaking basic, and the only difference is that it can be read on a special computer called a DVD player.

I don’t get what’s special about databses if they are still requiring the use of computer. Doesn’t that mean databases are the same ole’ computer science gadget as always? Maybe they’re being made more broadly engage-able and less IT Guy In The Basement through the employment by new media, like the Museum Tour CD-ROM Manovich goes on about.

Where does narrative come into all of this? Yep, I’l keep reading.

The Atlantic is a wicked resource that I like very much. While snooping, I came across a highly relevant article on the digital reference book, particularly the definitive history of surfing titled The Encyclopaedia of Surfing by Matt Warshaw (2003).

“The difference between the book and the website is sort of like when Dorothy first gets to Oz,” Warshaw explained to me with obvious glee. “Her black and white world is all of the sudden in bright technicolor.”

The article’s author, Mark Lukach describes the practical extinction of ye ole paper encyclopedia:

Reference books, if not fully extinct, are certainly on their last, choked gasps of breath. After a 244 year run, Encyclopedia Britannica stopped printing in 2010, and now focuses solely on its digital encyclopedia, in an effort to compete with Wikipedia.

A TAKE AWAY IDEA

This week’s ideas were interesting takes on ‘figuring out’ what The Network is, as explored from a sociological perspective (Watts) and the ‘Silicone Valley Joy’ (Anderson).

Anderson identified the interesting offspring of increasingly fragmented viewer- and readerships:

Unlimited selection is revealing truths about what consumers want and how they want to get it in service after service, from DVDs at Netflix to music videos on Yahoo!…People are going deep into catalog, down the long, long list of available titles, far past what’s available at Blockbuster Video…

And on the idea of niche interests, cultures of taste are changing (cue Brian Morris!); as people begin to explore far from the beaten path of Post-Apocalyptic Summer Blockbuster #9546, they discover their taste is not as mainstream as they have been led to believe (which Anderson blames on a lack of alternatives, marketing, and hit-driven cultures).

The network is an exciting realm of opportunity for taste cultures, particularly fannish modes of behaviour.

Consider an American system of television production now churning out television series’ with the incredibly high production values akin to epic film. Writers are empowered to produce, executive produce, screenwrite and direct epic television dramas such as Game of Thrones (HBO), with cash from companies with arms in film production.

At the same time, emerging online communication technologies provide for online fan communities – platforms that allow for an extension of the norms of engagement with television texts. Spin-off web series, cast interviews, behind the scenes videos, bonus scenes, series-dedicated forums of discussion – both of these evolutions have, in Graham Blundell’s words, undoubtedly “intensified the experience of drama in a way without cultural precedence”.

THE GREATEST EXERCISE IN MIND STRENGTH

19th August, 2013 and 16th September, 2013

An Open Letter To Jock Palfreeman

 My extremely bi/tri/quart/?-lingual tutor is banging on about journalism stories that advance an idea. It’s interesting, until he asks the class for an example of a story like this that’s a commentary on AFL. Way to void a decent concept. My tutor speaks 7 languages. There’s been a lot of conflict in universities because the Labour government has just slashed university funding by $2.8b. Meanwhile, they’ve increased funding to drones by $3b. Shows where their priorities are – thank God there’s an election in a few weeks, I just wish there was a smart person in a suit worth voting for.

My mind drifts. Someone brings up a story from the weekend about six young Australians who are being pinned for the murder of a Peruvian doorman who went over a balcony (while they were backpacking Peru). It’s getting serious, the Peruvian government wants them to stand trial. But they’re in Australia – they’re fiiiiinnnne. It made me think of that young Australian guy; whose heartbreakingly dedicated father was constantly flying back and forth from Bulgaria was it? What happened to him? Anyone else see that Four Corners story? I might’ve even watched it with my parents a few years ago on a Sunday night.

And now I am so sad to learn that the old man I saw on TV just trying to help his beautiful boy, can’t possibly still have the means to maintain his plight. Times were desperate, then. I saw that story years ago, how are you Jock?

The kneejerk is to say, well, there’s nothing interesting happening here. But of course that’s not true at all, relatively. It’s easy to say when one of your girlfriends goes overseas, that there’s nothing special happening here on the Mornington Peninsula, but that’s not entirely true. It’s easy to say to a girl you used to go to school with, at a birthday dinner that brings together an odd mish-mash of different friend groups, “Just busy with uni and working, really”, but there’s more to it than that.

Because walking down Swanston Street, with a secure sense of independence and relaxedness is an experience in living. Ducking up Fitzroy Street to the IGA to grab some butter and soy milk is an experience in living. Writing-off your car for parking in someone else’s spot, and then making the fraught decision to dip into your hard earned summer savings – locked away for your graduation trip – to buy a new car is an experience in living. Perhaps that’s why I’m writing to you Jock.

Some important years have been taken away from you. Fucking shit time and fucking shit place, mate. And I’m sure there’s more to it than that, but you are having an incredible experience in living. Of patience, of tolerance, of absolute disregard for your personal truth, of the absolute unfairness of human beings and corrupt government. Someone or something needed you to learn the greatest gravity of these ideas. To go through the shit Jesus went through (and I’m not religious at all). I can’t imagine how you’ve reconciled yourself to the events of your life, but that would require extraordinary power. I can’t not respect that.

Bumbling idiot Tony Abbott is a fluffy kitten. We’re fiiiiinnnne. When your day comes Jock, I will be watching.

Love, Alexandra

ECOLOGIES, PLATO & WEINBERGER

The word ecology continues to surface in classes and symposiums, so I thought I’d flesh it out.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term ecology as:

noun [mass noun]

| the branch of biology that deals with the relations of organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings. 

When I click on the term deep ecology (who knew?), I get something closer to the intended meaning for our Networked practice:

noun [mass noun]

| an environmental movement and philosophy which regards human life as just one of many equal components of a global ecosystem. 

On ‘the network’ as an ecology, Adrain says:

We’re just one actor in this system. We are not the centre and we’re not driving it.

In fact, it also changes us. We have no control over the way Google is re-wiring our brains. A Columbia University study has found that our ability to retain information in the internet age has declined, because we know we can just ‘Google it’. The way in which technolgies have the ability to change our minds means we are just one part of a larger network.

In around 370 B.C, Plato wrote in Phaedrus of the moment Theuth (said to be the inventor of writing) presented his invention to god himself, the King of all of Egypt, Thamus. Thamus would regularly enquire into the uses of inventions brought to him by his people, so that they could become useful to all Egyptians in general. To him came Theuth, who had many inventions but writing was his greatest accomplishment. He claimed, to the King:

“Here is an accomplishment, my lord the king, which will improve both the wisdom and the memory of the Egyptians. I have discovered a sure receipt of memory and wisdom.”

Plato, with exquisite foresight and wisdom, writes Thamus’ insightful reply thus:

“Theuth, my paragon of inventors, the discoverer of an art is not the best judge of the good or harm which will accrue to those who practice it. So it is in this case; you, who are the father of writing, have out of fondness for your offspring attributed to it quite the opposite of its real function. Those who acquire it will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on writing to bring things to their remembrance by external signs instead of on their own internal resources. What you have discovered is a receipt for recollection, not for memory. And as for wisdom, your pupils will have a reputation for it without the reality: they will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction, and in consequence be thought very knowledgable when they are for the most part quite ignorant. And because they are filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom they will be a burden to society.”

Of course, Plato’s text is ironic; he writes his argument against writing. However what this passage communicates is that writing, as any other new technology (like the internet), can make lame the human faculty that brought it to existence; the power of the mind, leaving only a baseless impression in its place. Our minds are weakening because we have permanent storage for ideas on us everywhere we go, we don’t need to memorise information.

The scope of these ideas, of the network, are here ruminated upon by David Weinberger. He elegantly considers The Network to be as dynamic as a human brain when defining the space of it:

The geography of the Web is as ephemeral as human interest…

The world of the internet is a New World. Its navigation can therefore be problematic if it has few rules of engagement and fewer lines of authority. Of time he says it is like a story in progress, whose narrative waits for the renewed want of the user:

The Web is woven of hundreds of millions of threads like this one. And, in every case, we determine when and how long we will participate based solely on what suits us. Time like that can spoil you for the real world.

On that last bit, Weinberger considers the difference between real-world and internet time. Real-world time is a series of “ticks to which schedules are tied” where internet time doesn’t move beyond the user’s interaction, waiting for the moment they should want.

Unlike real-world selves, online selves are intermittent and most important according to Weinberger, are written. Online selves are crafted; eBay user ‘firewife30’ is a crafted identity. New worlds create new people:

If we’re ambitious, the world appears to await our conquest…we can’t describe our world without simultaneously describing the type of people we are. If we are entering a new world, then we are also becoming new people.

The self that constitutes a continuous body moving through a continuous map of space and time is being re-written by a Web of connections no longer bound to the solid earth; we are said to have gained both the randomness and the freedom of the airborne. I wish it felt that way.

 Knowledge within the network can be unsystematic and uncertified, but because it comes ‘wrapped in a human voice’, Weinberger argues it can be richer and in some ways more reliable:

The lively plurality of voices sometimes can and should outweigh the stentorian voice of experts.

What Weinberger concludes is that the network is based on new assumptions of space, time, self and knowledge: the Web is an enabler for shady self-exploration as much as it gives easy access to transactions of the most mundane: a quilt off eBay?

I am a person who deeply values the capital of knowledge, perhaps more than anything. I love books. One of my greatest fears is Alzheimer’s. I didn’t realise that this would be the territory this post would take on, however I can’t help but find myself longing for a simpler time. When children grow up with strong arms because they’re used to swinging on trees instead of the new kind, who see chiropractors for their unhealthy spines. I’ve started taking an acting class so that I can connect to people by looking in their eyes and responding with an open heart. It’s a simple premise and yet remarkably difficult. What these writings communicate ultimately is that the network is affecting the perceptions we have of ourselves as we engage, but it’s also eroding human’s most primally distinctive feature: our brain, our intelligence. I’d extend that to our beautiful capacity for sensitivity in the real-world. It happens because we aren’t God to the network, we are just a small part of it.

It’s a sad day.

Photo: By author