Frothy TV (part 2)

Frothy TV: Opportunities for Industry Innovation in Hard Times


Second lecture by Dr. Abigail De Kosnik, an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in the Berkeley Center for New Media and the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies. First lecture here.

"Frothy", adj, full of or covered with a mass of small bubbles.

Frothy TV, an era of experimenting new ideas, new forms, and yet meaning lot of failures, a time for radical changes. A few remaining successful cases will eventually developed into dominant models in the future.

1. Mobile TV and a few different types of programming tailor-made for the small screen.

• Broadcast/ Live streaming
• Catastrophe TV (e.g. Breaking news, major sports events)
• "Snack TV": short programming
• "Talking Head" (news, sports, financial market analysis)
• Reality & Frictional
  
• "Webisodes", exclusively made promotional programming (LOST : Missing Pieces Episode 1)

2. Timeshifted Content and Interactive TV on Mobile TV, allow viewers to interact directly to the content of programming

• Shopping
  
• Recording & broadcasting photo / video / sound contents by the viewer
• Sampling content, link to purchase site
  
• Responds to programming, such as rating, mood, comments.

3. Global Format Trade
"National adaptation [is] the point where the global meets the local."-Albert Moran

Adaptation of successful foreign programmings into a local market by paying licensing fees. For example, game shows like "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" and the list of adaptations globally.

4. Transmedia: case study Trueblood
An American TV series about vampire, produced by HBO. A cross media campaign was used.

In True Blood, which is set in a small town in North Louisiana, vampires have integrated in society and share the same living space as humans thanks to the invention of synthetic blood, which is sold as “True Blood”. Vampires, however, are treated as second-class citizens...

http://americanvampireleague.com/

http://fellowshipofthesun.org/

True Blood Ad on TV Decoder

More details can be found on Trueblood (wikipedia)

5. Product Placement

Fridays Night Lights, a TV series of NBC, a story about American high-school football. Some of the main characters were written as employees of a sponsor, Applebees restaurant.

6. Experiential Marketing with interactive games.

Rockband, a video game company host a contest, the winning group would be performing live in a concert.

GPJ Creates 'Experiences' in Beijing

Bank of China as the official sponsor of badminton, the Beijing Olympics 2008.

Using blue-screen technology, visitors could hold a badminton racket and see themselves playing a virtual game against the Chinese team for two minutes each.

7. User-generated / grassroots Content

Low-budget productions shown on youtube with tremendous number of hits, some even turn into commercial success.

Case Studies:

1. "Here It Goes Again", performed by OK go, won a Grammy Award for "Best Short-Form Music Video" in 2007.

2. MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU

3. Apple Mac Music Video


4. The Killer Chow Yun Fat John Woo Danny Lee Tsui Hark Fan Vid



As seen in many occasions in history in difficult times, such as Spring and Autumn Period in ancient China, there were the time of Hundred Schools of Thought, emerged as the golden age of philosophical systems, including Confucianism, Taoism, Legalism, Mohism and such. Also, in the early 20th century with WWI & WWII, The art world experienced the development of new styles and explorations such as expressionism, Dadaism, cubism, de stijl, abstract expressionism and surrealism. In difficult time, people are starving or losing their homes; however, they are forced to examine the conditions and come up with drastic ways to reform. It's also a time for new ideas to flourish and blossom, when oppuntunites are favorable to those who challenge the norm.