Normally I am utterly apathetic towards sports; I don’t seriously follow or watch any major professional or college sports. But every four years (and to a lesser extent, every two years in between) you’ll find me glued to the television screen. And not just for the big ticket events, like China versus the United States in basketball, or the thrilling races at the Water Cube. No, tell me that Hungary is facing off against Brazil in women’s handball, or that Colombia is contesting China for the men’s 62kg weightlifting gold, and I’ll tune in. By the closing ceremonies, I’ll probably have watched more than 150 hours of Olympic coverage.

So why do I love the Olympics? Because I love stories. The “human interest stories” that networks like NBC use to tie the Games together are often derided as overblown, self-promoting fluff; and on one level, they are. But we need them, too: without the people, the sports are nothing but motion and numbers. You need a narrative.

The Olympics is a perfect example of a complex narrative. Simple narratives contain very little substance beyond what’s on the surface; everything intrinsic to them can be grasped and apprehended almost immediately. Like a snow globe, the entire narrative is contained inside a tiny space, and once you process it fully, that thing holds very little allure or staying power.

Complex narratives are the opposite—take that snow globe, shatter it on the floor, and have a guy whisper, “Rosebud,” in your ear. Now we’re talking. Complex narratives refuse to be fully appreciated with a cursory glance; rather than laying everything out and revealing everything at once, they hint at the infinite possibilities that lie outside their boundaries. They are not encapsulated, but are directly connected to a living, breathing world. This condition is what makes shows such as The Wire and Mad Men compelling as narratives, and it is this condition that makes the Olympics scintillating as a narrative.

The Olympics is like a fractal: there’s always a finer pattern to appreciate the deeper you look. At the highest level, the Olympics is “about” hundreds of nations coming together to celebrate the ideals of athleticism and international harmony; the tension comes from very real political concerns within and between nations that filter into this atmosphere of supposedly-pure sporting competition. US-China relations are the most obvious talking point, and of the most interest to this blog; I’ll discuss in detail a bit later. But also of interest is Russian and Georgian competition on the field while a state of war exists between the two nations; the two Koreas failing to march together in the opening ceremonies; and the troubled journey of the Iraqi delegation to these games. The list goes on.

Zoom in closer, past the level of national concerns and the sports being contested, all the way down to level of the athletes themselves. There are a multiplicity of stories here too. Take, for example, Kateřina Emmons, who won the first gold medal of the Beijing games for the Czechs. In 2004, her name was Kateřina Kůrková, and during the Athens Olympics she was invited to be a commentator for the men’s 50m rifle competition after winning her own bronze medal earlier in the week. In that event, the favorite was American Matthew Emmons, who had a commanding lead by the very end; even a mediocre final shot would be enough for his second gold. He had an excellent shot — on the wrong target — and plummeted to eighth place.

Afterwards, Matthew gave Kateřina a post-event interview; they met later at a beer garden. They hit it off almost immediately, and married in 2007. Now the husband and wife are competing (for different countries) at the 2008 Games — that’s an international meet-cute that Hollywood screenwriters would kill for. (Another wrinkle to her story: the women’s 10m air rifle was scheduled as the very first event of the Beijing Games because it was perceived to be an easy win for the Chinese defending champion, Du Li. Instead, she placed fifth and Kateřina took the gold.)

These kinds of stories are endemic to the Olympics not only because of the sheer number of competitors, but because of the intermingling of those competitors from almost every country and every walk of life. Sure, there are the stories of the professional sportsmen (The “Redeem Team” and Federer-Nadal come to mind), but as some of NBC’s $1 billion worth of ads remind me, a fair number of these world-class athletes will be flying back home to their jobs at Home Depot and the like. The somewhat-condescending ideal of amateurism espoused by IOC founder Pierre de Coubertin may be dead, but the story of the everyman/everywoman striving for the pinnacle of athletic achievement is still an appealing one. And even with the deluge of Olympic coverage, it’s impossible to fully see all the stories.

So you have to pick and choose the best of them. For the narrative to work, the pieces have to be there in the first place; then you put them together. And one of the key pieces is often nationalism — the pride and honor of your country is at stake, after all! Sporting events like these are the last places where it is socially acceptable to hope and fervently pray that your country utterly destroys the rest of the world. And international competition makes for a great narrative… sometimes.

An example of an abortive “story” is in swimming, with the 400m women’s freestyle. NBC Sports even had a flashy pre-event video package explaining the gravity of the situation: French swimmer Laure Manaudou was defending her world record against Italian favorite Federica Pellegrini — and Pellgrini was the current girlfriend of Manaudou’s ex, who had posted nude photos of Manaudou on the internet! Truly soap-operatic stuff; unfortunately the story floundered when Pellegrini finished a disappointing fifth and Manaudou posted even worse at eighth. There might have been a story there if American Katie Hoff, who was not predicted to win the event, had snagged the gold. However, after a strong surge she barely lost to British swimmer Rebecca Adlington. Great story for the Brits; not so much for the US.

No, the real story was in the men’s 4×100m freestyle relay, an event which has made plenty of American newspapers and has been replayed, commented, and analyzed more than a dozen times in the past 24 hours by NBC’s Olympic coverage. Really, all the pieces are there:

• Scrappy underdog heroes: This event was dominated by the Americans since its introduction in 1964 — until they placed 2nd in the 2000 Sydney Olympics. They fared even worse in 2004, getting the bronze.
• Dastardly villains: It is very easy for Americans to deride the French. Alain Bernard’s offhand comment that they would smash the Americans only added fuel to the flames.
• High stakes: This event was tied to another of the big American stories of the Games — Michael Phelps’s quest for eight gold medals. A loss here could have easily derailed those ambitions.
• Escalation: This event showed every swimmer giving it their all. Even the fifth-place finishers from Sweden broke the pre-Beijing world record in this event.
• Come-from-behind victory: As expected, the French seemed poised to win the event. Then Jason Lezak closed at the gap, and at the last second… America got their story.

These kinds of events crystallize the Games into a compelling narrative. But something as big and expansive as the 29th Olympiad needs more than this one story; it needs many more. So what’s the next story?

All signs point to women’s gymnastics between the US and China, at least the way NBC and the media are shaping the story. Between covering synchronized diving and the qualifiers for women’s gymnastics, NBC Sports showed a couple of interesting pieces. The first of these was a package investigating the Chinese tradition of acrobatics and acrobatics training. While ostensibly the piece was designed to give American viewers a greater understanding of Chinese culture, it’s easy to see how this can feed the nationalistic fire: either it can be used as an excuse for why America loses at events like gymnastics and diving (”They’ve been doing this for a thousand years!”) or as something to make the victory sweeter (”They’ve been doing this for a thousand years — and we still beat them!”).

The second piece of note was an interview between Bob Costas and President George W. Bush. For an interview during sports-related programming, Costas’ questions were unusually aggressive and political, including such gems of questions as: “…This remains an authoritarian state… with an abysmal human rights record. In the long run, is China’s rise irreconcilable with America’s interest?” and “If these Olympics are as successful as they are shaping up to be, most people believe this only further legitimizes the ruling party in the minds of most Chinese citizens…” The placement of such hard-hitting political content before showing the Chinese and US qualifiers in gymnastics could not have been accidental.

For a number of reasons, this gymnastics event could prove to be a powder keg. Journalists and commentators, including Bela Karolyi, coach of the gold-winning 1996 American woman gymnasts, are already hammering on issues such as the uncertain age of the Chinese gymnasts and complications with the new judging and scoring system. This, coupled with the flubs and injuries plaguing the American team, are at least setting up for a dramatic story…

I pose a question to those on the other side of the Pacific: How is the narrative of these games shaping up over there? What stories are crystallizing with the Chinese coverage of these games? The contrasts — and similarities — could prove to be illuminating.

The coverage of sporting events tends to have different priorities than other entertainment media; aesthetic concerns often take a backseat to clarity (Leni Reifenstahl and NFL Films notwithstanding). So like a genre television show, the emphasis is on form, not content. And what can we say about the form of Olympic coverage?

One of the main themes of this column is that as media technology continues to change, the viewer is given increasingly more and more control over what he or she watches. When the first modern Olympiad took place in 1896, the only way to experience the games was to physically be present, or to read accounts after-the-fact in newspapers. Since then, coverage of sports, including the Games, has continued to expand both in terms of the size of its audience and the breadth of its content. Radio gave the first taste of live coverage to a mass audience, while newsreels and films preserved and disseminated indelible images of the Games. And yet these tools seem rudimentary compared to what we have now—how can a few hours of footage capture the full experience of hundreds of events and thousands of athletes in competition?

The coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics is a highly controlled and extremely lucrative business involving hundreds of television networks around the world and extensive internet coverage. In the United States, the NBC network has sold over $1 billion worth of ad time during its Olympic coverage both on the air and online. This package is the most comprehensive yet, encompassing rolling coverage across nine different television channels and a website offering live streaming video of almost every single event. So if you, like me, are a fan of esoteric sports that rarely get television coverage, you are in luck: you can watch online Kateřina Emmon’s impressive win at Women’s 10m Air Rifle (the first medal of the Beijing Games), or the South Koreans dominating Women’s Archery (maintaining deadly accuracy in the face of both hecklers and pouring rain, all the while accessorizing with Hello Kitty chest and arm guards).

Another point of interest comes to the fore when watching the Olympics online, because the streaming coverage lacks commentators talking over the events; instead, there is live written commentary that appears below the screen. This wrinkle calls into question the relative usefulness of spoken commentators, something utterly ubiquitous in television sports coverage. They are normally accepted because they work to add value to sports coverage on two levels: they provide context and information for those who need it, and they attempt to inject some of the emotional presence that’s lost when watching a sporting event from your living room rather than in the arena.

However, watching the Games online again highlights the increasing sophistication of audience members when dealing with the internet and new media. Hearing the commentator on television explain what are legal target areas in sabre fencing is useful; hearing him repeat it every fifteen minutes for those just tuning in is not. Television needs to maintain a mass audience, the lowest common denominator; the internet as a collection of specialized niches doesn’t need to do the same. Information is just a click away; in a few minutes of reading I can find out what it means to be a man up in water polo, or the new scoring system used in gymnastics, all the while keeping the video feed on-screen.

This is because traditional mass media needs to splice together all its information streams into one; you either take it all or leave it. Newer media is all about increased options for the viewer—you pick and choose what works for you. This is especially interesting when it comes to spoken commentary because of the different ways a person processes the audio and video components of media. Video is discrete in that you can put information in one portion of the screen without substantially disrupting the experience in another part of the screen. This is the principle behind banner ads and pop-ups online which have also found their way to the television screen.

However, audio doesn’t operate in the same way; there’s only one frequency range that we can hear. To add new sound into the mix, you have to crowd out others. When discussing commentary, the question becomes: does the commentary add more than it takes away by drowning out the live audio of the actual participants, crowd, and environment? This was especially an important question during the opening ceremonies of the games; the $300 million production was one of the most dazzling spectacles ever shown on television. (I would, however, chastise Zhang Yimou for perpetuating the stereotype that the Chinese can fly.) But if you watched it on NBC, the musical and audio components of the ceremonies were often buried under a continuous stream of talking from the studio. After hearing Bob Costas and Matt Lauer’s intrusive and sometimes vaguely racist commentary during the opening ceremonies, access to an unmediated audio feed proves to be a godsend. Watching a live, uncommentated HD feed of the Olympics can create that often sought-after feeling of immersion: the illusion that you are really there. This, with the benefit of having the best camera angles and views that you could never get from a seat in the stands; and with the ability to instantly switch from a swimming race in the Water Cube to a cycling race in the outskirts of Beijing—it’s almost better than being there.

The crux of all this media development is that we’ve come a long way from 1896; we’ve reached near-total saturation of media coverage of the Olympic Games. With the multiplicity of channels and outlets for sports coverage, we’re entered into some Baudrillardesque hyperreality where it is possible, in a sense, to have a fuller experience of the Olympics sitting in your living room than if were actually in Beijing.

Faster, higher, stronger, indeed.

In the next article I’ll discuss a bit why everyone really watches the Olympic Games: pure, unabashed nationalism. (Suck it, France!)

Well, I don’t know if China is any different, but—our relationship with China is certainly different. We’re in hock to the Chinese up to our eyeballs because of the war in Iraq, for one thing. They’re holding hundreds of billions of dollars worth of our paper. We also are running hundred of billions of dollars worth of trade deficits with them, as we continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food and export, you know, jobs to places where you can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we’re buying from Wal-Mart. So I think our relationship with China has certainly changed. I think they’re basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they’ve been for the last 50 years…

Jack Cafferty on CNN

His comments sparked a furor across the media and the internet; combined with its misrepresentation of photos related to the unrest in Tibet, CNN has suddenly become the focal point for attacks against the credibility of Western media. This has culminated in protests in front of CNN’s offices and the US Capitol, and demands that the CNN Beijing bureau be deported. A music video has even been made, broadcast on CCTV and quickly finding its way onto the internet, in which the audience is exhorted to “don’t be too like CNN.” The singer goes on to ask: “What’s the good in trying to fake the truth… would you accept it if we turned Jay Chou into Li Yuchun?”

Cafferty’s comments were indeed in poor taste, and the debacle with the Tibet photos is unfortunate. Protests and calls for an apology are reasonable responses to the situation. But the inordinate focus on the press as being an antagonist doing active harm to China goes far deeper than the current political hay being made by both sides—it stems from a fundamental difference of perspective on the role of the media.

In the May of 1926, the United Kingdom was hit by a general strike in which almost two million people refused to work. During the crisis, a question arose regarding the nascent British Broadcasting Corporation. Several government officials, including Winston Churchill, wanted to take direct control of the BBC and use it as a mouthpiece against the strike. Lord Reith, the BBC’s first Director-General, responded: “Assuming the BBC is for the people, and that the Government is for the people, it follows that the BBC must be for the Government in this crisis too.”

Reith’s intended meaning was that the BBC, even though it was a government-funded organization, would remain impartial and independent; the facts would be enough to damn the strike without the government intervening directly. But let’s regard the surface level of the statement: the media always finds itself beholden to another. But what is that other?

For much of its early history, the news media was easily seen as an arm of the establishment, and in important matters, often as a mere herald of the government—the “fourth estate.” The mere fact that a relatively liberal nation such as Great Britain could entertain the thought of taking control of their broadcast networks is testament to that.

But during the Cold War era, journalists began to take on the mantle of defenders of the public. They realized that their proximity to the corridors of power and their expertise to ferret out what was beneath the public eye meant that they had a responsibility to find out what the public needed to know but could not. Investigative journalism, previously the niche of muckrakers, became a primary focus with such events as the publication of the Pentagon Papers and Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation into Watergate. Journalists had become crusaders.

But things change. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and continual advances in communications technology, journalists, like everyone else, found themselves quickly outpaced by the rapidity of current events—the news media was playing catch-up. Now more than ever, the first eyes at the scene of developments are amateur ones with portable video and cell phone cameras, all uploaded to the internet before network news even realizes what has happened. Even traditional news channels are relying more often on e-mailed comments, RSS feeds, and video submissions by viewers.

With the rise of this citizen journalism, the media still has the responsibility of putting events into context. However even this role is coming under fire; as I discussed previously, almost all of the major news outlets are under the aegis of a handful of multinational conglomerates. Journalism was once the foundation of public discourse; now, it is quickly becoming a commodity. The number of stories killed because they did not “resonate with a target demographic” is astonishing. John Hockenberry, formerly of Dateline NBC, had this to say:

Since Dateline was the lead-in to the hit series Law & Order on Friday nights, it was understood that on Fridays we did crime. Sunday was a little looser but still a hard sell for news that wasn’t obvious or close to the all-important emotional center. In 2003, I was told that a story on the emergence from prison of a former member of the Weather Underground, whose son had graduated from Yale University and won a Rhodes Scholarship, would not fly unless it dovetailed with a story line on a then-struggling, soon-to-be-cancelled, and now-forgotten Sunday-night drama called American Dreams, which was set in the 1960s. I was told that the Weather Underground story might be viable if American Dreams did an episode on “protesters or something.” At the time, Dateline’s priority was another series of specials about the late Princess Diana. This blockbuster was going to blow the lid off the Diana affair and deliver the shocking revelation that the poor princess was in fact even more miserable being married to Prince Charles than we all suspected. Diana’s emotional center was coveted in prime time even though its relevance to anything going on in 2003 was surely out on some voyeuristic fringe.

So whom are journalists beholden to now? It’s us, the public, in our roles as consumers instead of citizens. The BBC is for the people, indeed.

The beauty of the situation is that it scarcely matters; distrust of our own news media is almost taken for granted. Jack Cafferty is not the only voice out there; and as much as he or CNN would like to argue, he is not even a very important or well-liked one. If we do not believe one channel, there is always another, and another; and anyone with an internet connection has almost instant access to a deluge of different perspectives. Much like the case with internet television, the individual as audience is given increasing agency in how they interact with their media.

Don’t be too CNN!

But this for the West. What about China?

Technology shapes our perspective, and changes in technology in turn change our perspective. Citizen journalism is immeasurably helped by the ubiquity of consumer video and the rise of the internet. And it was the economies of scale and societal reorganization caused by the Industrial Revolution that inspired the socialist philosophies that, through a long and circuitous route, became the ideological underpinnings of the CCP.

However, for the longest stretch of time, China has been isolated from larger technological and cultural trends. This has been a disadvantage as China must continuously play catch-up; but it has been advantageous in that Chinese elites can look upon Western developments with the benefit of hindsight. This has led them to try to cherry-pick only certain developments instead of the whole package.

This is the policy of “modernization without Westernization.” After all, communist political philosophy was a response to, and a prescription for, a highly urbanized and industrial society, but the CCP managed to co-opt it for a rural, agrarian one. And this can be seen with CCTV and the Golden Shield: reaping the economic benefits of mass media and internet connectivity, while trying to minimize paying the rather unsettling social costs. And, as astutely pointed out by others on this blog, this is the attitude many see in regards to the Olympics: reap the prestige, squelch the scrutiny. While directly comparing Beijing 2008 to Berlin 1936 or Moscow 1980 is a tad strong, the motivation behind such a comparison is understandable.

The crux of the matter is that Americans and other westerners take the concepts of press freedoms, editorial independence, and the marketplace of ideas for granted, which is why the CNN furor is somewhat overwhelming. The media did not motivate the unrest in Tibet; it only reported on it. The media did not motivate the Olympic Torch protests; it only reported on them. The media did not motivate the boycotts; it only reported on them.

And people are not their institutions. Jack Cafferty may be a reactionary, but he is not CNN. CNN may have misrepresented photos, but they do not speak for all the media, or for Americans in general. And when discussing China, many people are quick to make the distinction between the CCP and the people it governs; the nationalistic response they are met with is profoundly disturbing.

On the whole, westerners welcome all the protests against CNN, all the angry letters, and all the catchy internet videos; it’s how these things get fixed, and the more voices, the better. It’s only when voices get squelched that there are problems. In the end, all the rage against CNN only highlights the contrast between the rights and responsibilities of journalists in America, and of those in China. Cafferty is being publicly shamed, and may eventually be fired. But the important thing is that this is all done in the public eye.

After all, the clarion call of the journalist is that the only reason to restrict freedom of the press is when you have something to hide.

KNIGHT RIDER - On the heels of NBC’s hit movie, the iconic 1980s television classic comes roaring back to life as an updated drama series showcasing the new customized KITT (Knight Industries Three Thousand) Ford Mustang. As the sequel resumes, KITT is absolutely the coolest car ever created: its supercomputer capable of hacking almost any system; its weapons systems efficient; and its body—thanks to its creator’s work and nanotechnology—is capable of actually shifting shape and color. It is the ultimate car—and someone will be willing to do anything to obtain it.

THE LISTENER - In this one-hour drama, Toby Logan (Craig Olejnik, “The Runaway”) is a 24-year-old paramedic living with a secret: he can read people’s minds. This telepathic procedural takes viewers into the heart of a tortured hero who struggles to solve crimes with his unique gift. Week-to-week, “The Listener” balances high-stakes drama with irreverent humor and sends Toby on an intellectual and emotional adventure.

Regardless of the quality of NBC’s upcoming programming schedule, the interesting thing about this announcement is that the network is jumping the gun; and in doing so, they are experimenting with overturning the economic model that they and America’s major networks have operated under for years. Whether the experiment will work remains to be seen, but it is another signpost of the major shift in the way the public interacts with its media.

The upfronts are media events full of flash and spectacle.
(Photo: Heidi Gutman/ABC)

All around the world, traditional television distribution models are rather centralized and monolithic. This is because all the distribution methods — broadcast transmitters, satellite networks, and seas of underground cable — are all quite expensive to maintain and operate; if you want to deliver television, the cost of entry is very high. For many countries, this means that television is usually state-funded and state-run, like in the United Kingdom and China. For the United States and other nations, the means of television media production and distribution tend be controlled by various companies under the aegis of major multinational conglomerates. And like any good arm of a multinational conglomerate, they have the process of making their money down to a science.

The linchpin of the major television networks’ year is the month of May, which is when the Spring sweeps period takes place. During sweeps, the television networks make a concerted effort to increase television viewership. The recorded amount of viewership via Nielsen ratings translates into how much the networks can charge advertising companies for commercial time. In the third week of May, these ad companies meet with the networks at special events known as the upfronts. Half trade convention, half carnival, the networks stake out New York’s most prestigious auditoriums to hawk their wares to a multitude of advertisers and press. The networks promote their upcoming fall lineup with lavish displays and presentations in the hopes of generating buzz, and more importantly, revenue. Because network prime time is so heavily watched, advertisers are willing to purchase ad time in advance; hence, “upfront.” In 2006, the six major networks generated $9 billion in sales from the upfronts.

This way of doing business has served the networks well for years; but this year NBC is foregoing a traditional upfronts presentation and the pilot season that goes with it. (Pilot season is when the networks commission the production of pilots, or test episodes, of a number of new shows; they pick up the ones they like to fill out their schedule, and are announced with much fanfare at the upfronts.) Pilots are costly, and instead of funding a large number of pilots—many of which will never see the light of day—NBC is deciding to commission a smaller number of shows with guaranteed (but shorter) runs. They are embarking on partnerships with other corporations, such as DirecTV, to co-sponsor current and new shows on various distribution platforms to reduce effective costs. And they are changing the standard network schedule of fall/spring seasons with a summer hiatus to show original programming all year round, filling in gaps with a larger number of limited series runs. Although each of the additions and alterations is small by itself, they add up to a sea change for the network.

Why this, and why now? NBC has been continuously fourth-place in ratings and viewership, losing out consistently to ABC, CBS, and FOX; that may have something to do with it. The recent strike by the Writers Guild of America also threw the networks’ schedule into disarray, and finding an excuse to dump the costly pilot season will save NBC money. But the biggest reason, as always seems to be the case with media, is that “The Internet is Changing Everything.”

$9 billion from upfronts may seem like a lot of money, but network ad sales have been on the decline since 2003. Ownership of DVR devices such as TiVo has increased in the same period; advertisers understandably feel they are getting less than their money’s worth as more and more people fast-forward through commercials. Watching television on the internet has become a major concern as well: first through illegal piracy similar to that of music and movies, then later through pay-to-download services like iTunes and network-sponsored portals such as Hulu and Joost. Within days of first broadcast, you can find almost all prime time television programming online.

With ad revenue decreasing, NBC has been forced to cut overall costs while finding no-cost ways to maintain and increase viewership. Watching television on the internet is part of all this. But the question is raised: why is watching television on the internet different from watching it on a television?

The answer lies in the way the medium presents itself to the audience — the more a program imposes on us, the more thought we will give it and the longer our attention spans. The audience has very little control over how a theatrical film is presented; we show up at the theater at the specified time, sit down, and shut up. People have no problem watching a film for two to three hours. Television is different, being a fixture at home and one distraction among many, it must make a more transparent grab for our attentions; programs are generally half an hour to an hour at most. Long-form programming in the guise of the made-for-TV movie has always been unwieldy and has been out of vogue since the 1980s.

And then we come to the internet, where the audience has greater power than in any other medium. Unlike choosing between one of a dozen films at a theater, or one television channel out of hundreds, on the internet the solitary audience members choose one site out of thousands. They have the power to watch what they want whenever they want it. And because of this, their attention span is reduced to that of a gnat’s — it’s really quite difficult to sustain internet content over ten minutes. Internet video is used to fill increasingly smaller and smaller gaps in people’s times, often at work; the CBS television site has a “boss button” to convert the video window to look like an e-mail client. And like everything else on the internet, video must be multitasking-friendly. (While writing this article, this blog is currently one tab out of fifteen open on my web browser.)

Most television programming already comes conveniently segmented into seven or eight-minute chunks because of commercial breaks, so they “plug in” very well into the internet. But the internet’s form and style has impressed itself clearly on video designed specifically for it. High production values and flashy effects are wasted on tiny-screened pixellated internet video, and demanding too much of an audience’s attention is a turn-off. Sketch comedy, with its lack of reliance on production values and propensity to cram a massive amount of content into a short amount of time, is perfect for the internet; comedy shows currently on television such as Human Giant started out as internet videos and continue to maintain an internet presence. Other videos, such as the absurdly popular lonelygirl15 and katemodern, mimic the brevity, immediacy, and unpolished rawness of video blogs. (The 165 collected episodes of katemodern have to date received over seventy million views.)

Dylan Krieger (Bitsie Tulloch), the protagonist of Quarterlife. (Photo: www.quarterlife.com)

More traditional media types are trying to get into the game as well, with less success. The Michael Eisner-sponsored Prom Queen is rather schlocky, mimicking the form of internet video without understanding its meaning. Its sequel, Prom Queen: Summer Heat, has proven to be unprofitable.

A more interesting case is that of quarterlife, created by Marshall Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, the minds behind thirtysomething, Once and Again, and My So-Called Life. Released on the internet in thirty-six parts target=”_blank”, the show chronicles the interconnected lives of seven people in their mid-twenties; the main character, Dylan (Bitsie Tulloch), posts a video blog which serves as both a storytelling device and a point of friction among her friends. NBC attempted airing the show but canceled it after the first episode received some of the most disastrous ratings in the network’s history.

Was it because the show was bad? No. Is the show perfect or revolutionary? No to that as well. The show is exactly what it tries to be: a piece of quality storytelling from television veterans who are experimenting with a new medium. The concept stumbles in some respects — the show’s actual website attempting to double as a social networking site feels rather forced — but overall it works. The tropes and trappings of video blogging mesh well with Zwick and Herskovitz’s trademark intimate, character-focused storytelling. The show manages to tell a compelling bit of story in eight minutes without feeling rushed or cheating the audience. And this is why it didn’t work on network television: watching each episode as a unit is not the same as seeing six of them strung together for TV. What works as a beautiful slice of life on the internet feels like a haphazard rollercoaster on television, a bizarre melange where all the emotional notes fall on the wrong beats.

And yet this show hints at the abundant possibilities of internet video. The medium is in its infancy, and as storytellers begin to wrestle with what makes it tick, we will undoubtedly see astounding things. (And perhaps eventually a show that doesn’t predominantly revolve around someone talking directly to the camera.)

But NBC changing its business model and the rise of internet television are only the beginnings of the answer to the question: What changes are happening in the way that the Western public is interacting with its media? More on that later…

Photograph by Trey Ratcliff.

This is the first of many articles about television, a medium often maligned by critics and the public alike for its general pandering and almost-oppressive vapidity. So when writing about television there are two important questions: is television worth writing about; and, if so, how does one write about it? Are the methods and challenges in conceiving, producing, and distributing television significant enough to make it more than a mere subset of cinema? This column will argue that, yes, television is an entirely different animal. The nature of television allows it to easily reflect the fundamental dilemmas of the culture it inhabits and the individuals who make and watch it. When you watch American television, you are watching America.

If the cinema is the most democratic art form, then television is the most populist one. The trend in cinema has been to decrease the cost of entry to the point where anyone with a camera and a bright idea can reach a mass audience. Television, on the other hand, is still a place where you can spend five million dollars, bring together some of the best talent in the world, and produce something that’s summarily rejected by a handful of executives then locked away in a vault never to see the light of day. It happens every year—we call it pilot season.

The salient differences between film and television seem to work in favor of the former. It is surprising that television can be as aesthetically viable as it is considering all the barriers placed between it and the audience. Writers of all stripes know classical three-act structure, but television writers have to work within a four (or five - six if you count the teaser) act framework built around commercial breaks. What other medium allows interruptions every ten minutes and takes for granted that the audience will tune in and tune out whenever they like? What other medium assumes it will be background noise for people, and that its audience will be watching it while eating dinner or browsing e-mail? What other medium accepts the fact that stories can end abruptly before their conclusion, and that it happens on a regular basis?

On top of that, the long-form nature of television makes it inherently conservative. Making television is a hefty, long-term investment and thus discourages experimentation. There is a wide and vibrant fringe in which independent and foreign cinema can operate and gain a receptive audience. The vast majority of television, on the other hand, must be tailored to appeal to as wide a demographic as possible, for the sake of ensuring longevity.

But what mostly damns television to the critical eye is its passivity and its ability to function with virtually no engagement from the audience. Cinema is fairly active by comparison, requiring a deliberate decision on the part of an audience member to get in his car, drive to the theater, and pay ten dollars a ticket to see a specific film. Because of that investment in time and money, a film has a captive audience and is freer to dazzle, challenge, or even alienate.

Television, on the other hand, must deal with a lazy and fickle audience. A viewer might end up watching something just because it’s on. But that same viewer can just as easily change the channel at any time. A television show must fight every second to retain its audience—case in point: act-break cliffhangers. The multitude of distractions at home in comparison to a darkened theater means that television operates under the assumption that its audience’s attention is divided. Thus simplicity is favored over depth, and clarity is favored over subtlety. One of the reasons why television is so dialogue-heavy is that most shows are designed to make perfect sense even if you take away the image.

These commercial and artistic pressures almost ensure the mainstreaming of most broadcast and cable television. Generally, television is immediate where film is belated; it is a blunt tool where film is a fine instrument. It tells us what we want to hear while film tells us what we need to hear. Because of these facets, where cinema is cosmopolitan and global, television is parochial by comparison. Most Hollywood films seek a global audience, and much of a movie’s theatrical earnings comes from foreign markets.

A good portion of American-made television, on the other hand, is mainly for domestic consumption. Sitcoms do not often survive translation, and things like talk shows and reality television are even more difficult to export. Other countries may consume American television but they are not the show’s primary audience. The reverse is true as well; while foreign cinema is not necessarily a significant force in America, the outlets are there. However, someone in the United States can live and die without seeing a single minute of foreign television.

This parochial dimension of television does lend the medium an interesting quality. While movies are a reflection of America’s public face, television is more intimate and private. The cinema is what we tell the world; television is what we tell ourselves.

The average American is more conversant with television than with cinema or any other art form. Its ubiquity and longevity make it an integral part of American conversation. Most people in the United States watch multiple hours of television daily, while watching one movie or fewer per week. It’s clear that television inhabits a different world than film, and if you want to understand the American mind, you have to understand American television.

That fact alone makes television worth studying. But what makes it worth watching? After the laundry list of everything that’s hobbling television, what makes it good? Simply put, television is the only medium capable of sustaining the long narrative. While other art forms present the beginning and end at the outset, television presents an ongoing story; it invites you to join a work in progress and provides for a different kind of experience. While this can lead to rehashing and creative bankruptcy, in deft hands television is a medium of creative breadth. Its regular rhythm and long-term development mimics the rhythm of life itself.

Television’s unique long form allows for a show to be an organic, ever-changing work. A film exists in a single point of time—two or three hours chained to a single day and a single year. A television show, on the other hand, consists of dozens (perhaps hundreds) of hours spread over many years. And as the world changes, so does the show. So while a film exists in a historical moment; a show exists in a historical era.

The long narrative also allows for a great degree of story development and character growth, which elicits empathy and engenders an odd sense of devotion. Where films have the freedom to dazzle and alienate audiences, television is well-suited for identification and attachment. The medium itself is a work in progress, and as shows continue to innovate and refine, the potential of the art form seems limitless.

In the columns to follow, I won’t pretend to give an overview of all the television that is currently out there. I won’t even necessarily give a balanced appraisal or recommendation of the show that each article is about. But every show has something to add to the conversation, and every show goes about it in a different way. What I want to do is ask the interesting questions—what does this show say about the people who make it? The people who watch it? The time and place in which we live?

The answers will take some time to find.

Oscar Moralde can be reached at oscar@oscarmoralde.com.