Channeling my inner Probst (Survivor: The College Class)

For a long time I’ve been threatening to teach a class on Survivor. If The Wire and Mad Men are deserving of their own college-level courses, surely Survivor is! Just think of all of the topics such a class could cover: “Hantzian Mathematics: When and How to Split the Vote.” “‘Under the Radar’ or ‘Over the Cuckoos’s Nest’: Second Place as Social Game.” “‘Superman in a Fat Suit: The Plight of the Alpha Male in a post-Tom Westman World.” “Rob and Tom and Marty and Jane: Survivor and Red State/Blue State America.” “‘Fabio Is Fully Relieved Now’: Reality TV’s Environmental Impact.” “Lunch Ladies, Construction Workers, Pharmaceutical Reps, and Foxy Boxers: Women’s Work on the Island and Off.” The possibilities are endless…

This fall, I finally decided to follow through on my threats and put in a request to teach a Survivor-themed version of my department’s Culture Industries Class. Today was the first meeting of RTVF 330: The Tribe Has Spoken: Surviving TV’s New Reality. The response from the Northwestern student body has been overwhelming, and we ended up with an enrollment of nearly double the number of students we originally anticipated. We’ve also received a great response from people outside of the university, a number of whom have agreed to visit the class to talk about Survivor, reality TV, and the state of the U.S. television industry. Our confirmed lineup of speakers includes Mo Ryan, the television critic for the Huffington Post; Andy Dehnart, the founder and editor of RealityBlurred.com; Jon Hein, the creator of JumpTheShark.com and the host of The Wrap-Up Show, What’s Worth Watching, and Geek Time on Sirius Satellite Radio’s Howard100 Channel; Dr Amber Watts, the nation’s foremost academic expert on celebreality, Jerri Manthey, and disgraced child stars; and a couple of additional very special guests whose names I’m going to keep to myself for the time being.

I’m posting the syllabus below, and I welcome the feedback of any of my fellow Survivor fans in academia and in real life. While it would have been fun to spend ten weeks on topics like “Earl, Dreamz, and Yao Man: Conciliation and Conflict Between African-American and Asian-American Masculinities,” I instead opted to structure the class as an introduction to the methods and major questions of media industry studies. Throughout the ten-week quarter we use a case study of Survivor‘s development, production, distribution, reception, and influence to explore issues of political economy and labor within the context of post-network U.S. television.

A few other notes about the class:

• The class of about 60 students will be broken up into four tribes at our second meeting this coming Tuesday. The names of our tribes will be taken from a few of my own favorite Survivor seasons: Malakal, Koror, Chapera Drake, and, of course, Aitutaki. (Update: after deciding on my four tribes I realized that Aitutaki and Chapera both wore red buffs. In the interest of minimizing confusion, I’ve decided to replace Chapera with Drake.)
• For the first half of the quarter the students will work together with their fellow tribe members as they compete in a series of immunity challenges (weekly multiple choice reading quizzes). The team with the highest cumulative score as of the midterm (noted on our syllabus as “The Merger”) will be immune from the midterm exam. (There has been some talk about rewarding the victorious tribe with a feast that they would consume in front of their classmates during the midterm, but we’re still working out the particulars for that.)
• Following The Merger the tribes will dissolve as the class becomes an individual game, with students working on a final project that will require them to apply the insights they’ve gained from our study of Survivor to another reality TV program of their choice.
• Unfortunately, the university’s bylaws prevent me from allowing the students to vote a fellow classmate out of the class every three days. However, we will have something akin to a jury vote at the end of our quarter in the form of the Course Evaluations.
• I decided to say no to Redemption Island (no extra credit or extensions on due dates), but yes to Exile Island (get caught texting in class and you’re banished to a desert to do Tai Chi and find a stick that looks like a dragon).
• There may or may not be a Hidden Immunity Idol located somewhere on Northwestern’s Evanston campus…

RTVF 330: The Tribe Has Spoken: Surviving TV’s New Reality

Course description:

Reality TV is popular, profitable, and wildly controversial. To better understand reality TV’s impact on the American television industry this class examines the history, reception, and influence of one of its defining examples: Survivor. Survivor debuted in the United States in 2000 and quickly became one of America’s most-watched and talked about television programs. The show’s runaway success propelled the CBS network to the top of the Nielsen ratings and transformed producer Mark Burnett into one of television’s most sought-after talents. It also launched the current reality TV boom, inspiring a host of programs that emulated Survivor’s competition format, episodic structure, and visual style. While most of these programs have long since had their torches snuffed, Survivor has outwitted, outlasted, and outplayed its competition for twenty-three seasons. The show’s ongoing success makes it an ideal starting point for a critical examination of the American television industry’s new reality.
Part One: The business of reality TV

Week One
Thursday January 5
The marooning

Screening: Survivor: Borneo ep. 1

Week Two
Tuesday January 10
Studying media industries

John Caldwell, “Cultures of Production: Studying Industry’s Deep Texts, Reflexive Rituals, and Managed Self-Disclosures” (13 pp)
Reading the trades exercise (see below)

Thursday January 12
Reality TV and the new television

Ted Madger, “TV 2.0” M&O (23 pp)

Guest speaker: Maureen Ryan, television critic for AOL TV

Week Three
Tuesday January 17
What is reality TV?

Susan Murray and Laurie Ouellette, “Introduction” M&O (23 pp)
Kelefa Sanneh, “The Reality Principle”

Screening: The Comeback

Thursday January 19
Reality TV: the early years

Chad Raphael, “The political economic origins of reali-TV” M&O (17 pp)

Screening: excerpts from Candid Camera, An American Family, The Real World: New York

Week Four
Tuesday January 24
Outwit, Outplay, Outlast

Bill Carter, Desperate Networks (Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

Screening: excerpts of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?, and Big Brother

Thursday January 26
“Want to know what you’re playing for?”

Henry Jenkins, “Buying Into American Idol” M&O (18 pp)

Screening: various reality TV product placements

Week Five
Tuesday January 31
Global reality

John McMurria, “Global TV Realities” M&O (23 pp)

Screening: excerpts from Expedition Robinson and I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!

Thursday February 2
The merge

Mid-term exam
Part Two: Making Reality TV

Week Six
Tuesday February 7
Real work

Edward Wyatt, “TV Contestants: Tired, Tipsy and Pushed to Brink” (5 pp)
Jim Milio and Melissa Jo Peltier, “Does Reality Still Bite?” (9 pp)
“Harsh Reality: Working Conditions for Reality TV Writers” (7 pp)
Lee Abbott, “Reality Check” (4 pp)
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy #19 script (20 pp)

Thursday February 9
Real work

Heather Hendershot, “Belabored Reality” M&O (16 pp)

Guest speakers: TBD

Week Seven
Tuesday February 14
Celebreality

Jeffrey Sconce, “’See You In Hell, Johnny Bravo!’” (16 pp)

Screening: Celebrity Boxing; The Surreal Life (pilot)
Guest speaker: Jon Hein, founder of JumpTheShark.com

Thursday February 16
No class

Week Eight
Tuesday February 21
Faking reality

Alison Hearn, “Hoaxing the Real” M&O (13 pp)

Screening: The Joe Schmo Show; Laguna Beach

Thursday February 23
Reality performance and stardom

Amber Watts, “‘You can blame the editing, but you’re still a bitch’: The search for the authentic self in reality TV celebrity” (11 pp)

Guest speaker: Prof. Amber Watts, Texas Christian University

Week Nine
Tuesday February 28
Reality is contagious

Ethan Thompson, “Comedy Verité?” (10 pp)

Screening: TBD

Thursday March 1
Reality fans

Henry Jenkins, “Spoiling Survivor” (23 pp)

Guest speaker: Andy Dehnart, television critic and publisher of realityblurred.com

Week Ten
Tuesday March 6
The work of being watched

Mark Andrejevic, “iCulture” (28 pp)

Screening: The Truman Show (excerpts); EdTV (excerpts)

Thursday March 8
The Final Tribal Council

Final papers due in class

Filed under: teaching, survivor, reality tv, mo ryan, realityblurred.com, jon hein, amber watts, jeff probst, northwestern, andy dehnart

VIDEO: “Girls, ex-vets, older men are keeping the television field alive”

Toward the end of World War II, the Army Information Branch partnered with its counterparts in the Air Force and Navy to produce a series of instructional shorts that previewed various aspects of the post-war world for members of the armed forces. Tellingly, the first film in the series looked at television, and highlighted the TV-related job opportunities that awaited servicemen after they received their “permanent furloughs.” Tomorrow Television (1945) is exemplary of the corporate liberal futurism that so thoroughly shaped television’s cultural meanings (and, by extension, influenced key decisions about its technical standards, content, and regulation) in the period “before TV.” Within such forecasts, television both belonged to the future and was key to that future’s arrival. Or, more accurately, the immediate resumption of set manufacturing and commercial broadcasting were key to that future’s arrival. (As an aside, it bears noting that the television of the post-war future envisioned by the film operated in accordance with the pre-war technical standards. In the film, and in many other contexts during the mid-1940s, television figured as an icon of the technological marvels born of wartime research that consumers could look forward to enjoying after the war’s conclusion. And yet, technically speaking, by the time manufacturing of sets resumed in 1946, this standard was already obsolete…)

Check out Tomorrow Television. My personal highlights: the NBC and WNBT station idents that appear around the five minute mark; David Sarnoff’s horribly uncomfortable delivery at around 7:38.

Filed under: Research, future, sarnoff, television, videos, war

A piece of NBC history, stuck between the pages…

Leafing through a copy of Looking Ahead – The Papers of David Sarnoff that I found at a used bookstore a while back, I came across this letter, dated March 28, 1968.

Filed under: Research, archives, history, mad men, nbc

Space Mountain and the Television of Tomorrow

In its original 1975 incarnation, Walt Disney World’s Space Mountain housed an RCA-sponsored Home of Tomorrow exhibition. The exhibition showcased a number of RCA’s mid-70s television products, including its SelectaVision VideoDisc systems and Colortrak CRT sets. The first video is an excerpt of a home movie recorded by a park visitor in 1978 – if you pay close attention you can catch a few glimpses of the VideoDisc player. The second is a recording of Here’s to the Future, the song that played in Space Mountain’s entrance and exit areas.

More to come as I track down additional info…

Filed under: Writing, Disney, future, RCA, tv of tomorrow

Conclusion: Vapor to vapor (part six of “From Broadcasting to Multicasting: The Mobile Phone and ‘the Future of Television’”)

The following post contains the sixth and final installment of my essay-in-progress From Broadcasting to Multicasting: The Mobile Phone and “the Future of Television.” For part one, as well as an introduction to this project, click here. For part two, which lays out the essay’s theoretical and historical contexts, click here. For part three, which looks at the circumstances surrounding the American broadcasting industry’s involvement with mobile television, click here. For part four, which outlines some of the mobile communications industry’s various mobile multimedia initiatives, click here. And for part five, which discusses the mobile communications industry’s promotion of mobile multicasting, click here.

Conclusion: Vapor to vapor

The American broadcast industry’s answer to MediaFLO – and to the spectrum reform campaigns that gained momentum in the 2000s – made its belated debut in January 2010 at the CES, the annual convention of the global consumer electronics industry. The 2010 CES event featured a special “Mobile DTV TechZone” where a group of exhibitors that included the aforementioned LG demonstrated prototypes of mobile devices capable of receiving signals transmitted using the mobile DTV standard, which had be finalized in late 2009. In a remarks given at a reception to celebrate mobile DTV’s official debut, Gordon Smith, the chief executive of the NAB, identified local programming (which remained absent from MediaFLO systems) as the standard’s “killer app,” and predicted that the organization’s members would soon use the standard to establish themselves as the leaders in the delivery of “‘local, live broadcast signals’” to all varieties of mobile devices. “That’s the future,” Smith informed the reception’s attendees, “and it includes broadcasters” (Dickson, 2010).

Filed under: Writing, broadcasting, mobile television, new media, remediation, spectrum, telecommunications, television, vaporware, Writing

“Real TV, now on your phone” (part five of “From Broadcasting to Multicasting: The Mobile Phone and ‘the Future of Television’”)

The following post is part five of my essay-in-progress From Broadcasting to Multicasting: The Mobile Phone and “the Future of Television.” For part one, as well as an introduction to this project, click here. For part two, which lays out the essay’s theoretical and historical contexts, click here. For part three, which looks at the circumstances surrounding the American broadcasting industry’s involvement with mobile television, click here. And for part four, which outlines some of the mobile communications industry’s various mobile multimedia initiatives, click here.

“Real TV, now on your phone”

Exemplary of mobile network operators’ efforts to affiliate multicasting with broadcasting is a succinct slogan that appeared in some of the advertisements for Verizon Wireless’ V Cast Mobile TV: “Real TV, now on your phone.” The press release that announced V Cast Mobile TV’s 2007 launch eliminated any confusion about what Verizon meant by “real TV” at its outset:

Filed under: Writing, broadcasting, mobile television, new media, remediation, spectrum, telecommunications, television, vaporware, Writing

Emergent technologies, residual protocols (part four of “From Broadcasting to Multicasting: The Mobile Phone and ‘the Future of Television’”)

The following post is part four of my essay-in-progress From Broadcasting to Multicasting: The Mobile Phone and “the Future of Television.” For part one, as well as an introduction to this project, click here. For part two, which lays out the essay’s theoretical and historical contexts, click here. For part three, which looks at the circumstances surrounding the American broadcasting industry’s involvement with mobile television, click here.

Emergent technologies, residual protocols

During the 2000s broadcasters and mobile communications companies each identified mobile television as key to their respective industries futures. At least initially, agendas shaped by distinctive institutional cultures, industrial legacies, and technological considerations led these two groups to pursue diverging mobile television solutions. The multimedia ambitions of the mobile communications industry and the survival tactics of free-to-air television broadcasters would however over time place these two industries on a collision course. By the end of the decade, broadcasters and mobile companies’ preferred methods of delivering television programming to mobile devices shared a number of attributes in common. Though these methods continued to employ incompatible transmission and reception technologies, the user experiences they offered both owed much to the protocols of free-to-air broadcast television.

Filed under: Writing, broadcasting, mobile television, new media, remediation, spectrum, telecommunications, television, vaporware, Writing

“The future of broadcast television is mobile” (part three of “From Broadcasting to Multicasting: The Mobile Phone and ‘the Future of Television’”)

The following post contains the third of six installments of my essay-in-progress From Broadcasting to Multicasting: The Mobile Phone and “the Future of Television.” For part one, as well as an introduction to this project, click here. For part two, which lays out the essay’s theoretical and historical contexts, click here. 

“The future of broadcast television is mobile”[i]

Mobile network operators’ multimedia ambitions led them into new markets, as well as into new portions of the radio spectrum. In these spaces they encountered old partners under new circumstances, but also institutions that they had limited experience in dealing with. Amongst the latter were broadcasters, a group that shared mobile network operators’ interest in the possibility of delivering television programming to mobile devices.

Filed under: Writing, broadcasting, mobile television, new media, remediation, spectrum, telecommunications, television, vaporware

The uncomfortable proximity of convergence (part two of “From Broadcasting to Multicasting: The Mobile Phone and ‘the Future of Television’”)

The following post contains the second of six installments of my essay-in-progress From Broadcasting to Multicasting: The Mobile Phone and “the Future of Television.” For part one, as well as an introduction to this project, click here.

The uncomfortable proximity of convergence
Although the “jurisdictional conflicts” that have surrounded mobile television are “complex and multisided” (Altman 2005, p. 22), the factors that initially provoked them may nevertheless be conceptualized in rather straightforward spatial terms. In brief, the primary adversaries in these conflicts were groups that in the 2000s found themselves in close and oftentimes uncomfortable proximity to one another, first within the marketplaces in which they operated, and then later within the progressively cramped quarters of the nation’s radio spectrum.

Filed under: Writing, broadcasting, mobile television, new media, remediation, spectrum, telecommunications, television, vaporware

Essay: From Broadcasting to Multicasting: The Mobile Phone and “the Future of Television” (part 1)

Over the last six weeks or so my regular output of spleen-filled tweets has dropped off sharply as I’ve hunkered down on a big writing project that ties together five years’ worth of research on the topic of mobile television. I first wrote on this subject during my PhD. coursework in 2006. Two recent purchases inspired my interest. The first was the LG CU500, which was one of Cingular’s first 3G phones. The second was a subscription to the print edition of the trade magazine TelevisionWeek, which by the spring of 2006 was running articles on mobile television’s implications for the television industry on a weekly basis. That first seminar paper became a presentation at the 2006 Screen Conference, and eventually developed into the article “Little Players, Big Shows Format, Narration, and Style on Television’s New Smaller Screens.” I continued to follow developments in mobile television over the next two years while I was writing my dissertation, the final chapter of which looked at the much longer history of efforts to make television mobile (and, by extension, to extricate television from domestic spaces and the pejorative gendered connotations so often assigned to them within the contexts of discussions about technology).

In the years since I first began writing on mobile television, quite a lot about it has changed. Cingular became AT&T Mobility. Slim-profile flip phones like the CU500 forfeited their status as high fashion fetish objects to touchscreen smart phones like the iPhone. And TelevisionWeek joined many other media industry trades in killing off its print edition. Along the way, the definition of mobile television underwent significant revision. When the project began, trades still used “mobile television” to refer to the on-demand delivery of short video clips to mobile phones over 3G networks. (I’ve written on some of the factors that shaped this conception of mobile television during the first half of the decade in another essay, which appears in the edited collection Television as Digital Media) By 2007, however, a new conception of mobile television – one that bore obvious debts to the technologies and protocols of over-the-air television broadcasting – was gaining prominence. This mobile television involved scheduled channels as opposed to on-demand clips, and transmitted in television’s portion of the radio spectrum, as opposed to over 3G networks.

My most recent essay on mobile television explores the contexts and the consequences of the transition between the clip-based on-demand model of mobile television that I first encountered on my CU500 in 2006 to the broadcast-style model that subsequently eclipsed it. Writing it led me to new sources, including policy documents and work by legal and telecommunications scholars, which in turn spurred me to think more about institutions than I had in my previous work on the topic. This essay is slated to appear in Media Studies Futures, a collection Kelly Gates of UCSD is editing for Blackwell. Portions of it will also constitute the backbone of the final chapter of my book manuscript, which I’m right now titling The History of Television’s Future: Technology, Convergence, and Reform.

On account of the essay’s length (including works cited, around 10K words), I’ve decided to break it up into a series of posts that I’ll publish on the blog over the course of the next week or so. Below the jump is the first, introductory section. (The full bibliography will follow). Standard disclaimer: This is still a work in progress, and I would very much appreciate any feedback you’d care to offer. And since this is a draft, I ask that you please contact me directly before citing it.

Edit May 27 2011: a .pdf of the entire essay is now available on scribd. 

From Broadcasting to Multicasting: The Mobile Phone and “the Future of Television”

Filed under: Writing, broadcasting, mobile television, new media, remediation, spectrum, telecommunications, television, vaporware