On Hiatus

This blog is on hiatus until August 2008. See you then!!

Gossip Girl Online from Shira

This is from New York Magazine's April 28 issue. The cast of Gossip Girl is on the cover. The article is called "The Genius of Gossip Girl" and lists 6 reasons. Reason #3 is "Because Gossip Girl is changing the very model of a successful TV show."

Here is what the article says:

"Before it even aired, Gossip Girl was armed with two great advantages. One was the fan base of Josh Schwartz, which was giddily waiting to see how he'd follow up The O.C. The other was the legion of young girls who had read the tawdry book series but addictive Gossip Girl book series by Nightingale-Bamford graduate Cecily von Ziegesar. And yet, the numbers were bad. Really bad. New episodes pulled in an average of 2.5 million viewers, just over half of what the O.C. had the season it was cancelled. Teenagers just weren't gathering around the family tube to catch the show during the 9 pm slot. But that didn't mean they weren't watching.

"New episodes routinely arrived at the No. 1 most-downloaded spot on iTunes, and then there were the hundreds of thousands who were downloading free week-old episodes on the CW's site. Even executives at Nielson threw up their hands and admitted that Gossip Girl appeared to be speaking to an audience so young and tech-savvy they hadn't really figured it out yet

"This isn't the first show to find the Internet success - Lost and The Office are big download hits, too. But this is the first show that seems to have succeeded primarily on the Internet. There's something about the combination of the show's premise, the viewer's age, and the available technology that has given Gossip Girl a life of its own online. Not only do fans watch the show on their computers, but they post sightings of the actors on gossip blogs and exchange rumors (about both the show and its stars) on fan sites. You can even play Gossip Girl's Upper East Side on Second Life. It's not appointment television; it's a 24-hour conversation. We are all Gossip Girl! And the whole experience can happen sans television."

Okay so the few last lines of that is what is super interesting. The idea that the show is a 24-hour conversation. What does this really mean? Also, we talk so much about how print is dying, what about TV? Could the internet be destroying TV as well. Additionally, CW was forced to announce that the last 5 episodes of the season will NOT be available to download on their site of iTunes because they are losing so much money from advertisers. The only way CW knows how to fix this problem is through product placement, so in terms of advertising and television, are we looking at a drastic change in the future, as well?

So you say you're graduating?

For all those J561ers, let me know:
1) what are your plans after graduation, and
2) how do you think you might use media theory in your personal/professional life? (errr... and tell me if you don't think you ever would, but I am really curious to know if any particular theorists appealed to you and whether an idea or two struck you as being particularly relevant for your media habits or your career plans).

Remembering

I've been thinking a lot about memory and media these days, in part because of a series of articles about memory of past election campaigns in various publications and in part because of some conversations with friends. In one conversation, a friend posed philosophically, "who are we without our memories? Don't our memories in some way create our particular identities?" To this I would add: If our memories are suddenly gone, what foundation for values can we draw from to live?
In another talk, a friend lamented the loss of photos from a family trip and then proposed redoing that family trip just to retake the photos. "How are we going to remember otherwise," she asked.
Meanwhile, news stories are constantly revisiting past events, politicizing them for current situations. In this article from yesterday's NYT,

Sometimes, as Senator Barack Obama seemed to argue earlier this year, a flag pin is just a flag pin. But it can never be that simple for anyone with direct experience of the 1988 presidential campaign. That year, the Republicans used the symbols of nationhood (notably, whether schoolchildren should be required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance) to bludgeon the Democrats, challenge their patriotism and utterly redefine their nominee, Gov. Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts. The memory of that campaign — reinforced, for many, by the attacks on Senator John Kerry’s Vietnam war record in the 2004 election — haunts Democrats of a certain generation.

By drawing this contrast, the author simultaneously contextualizes the current campaign by re-historicizing (i.e. re-remembering) the 1988 one.
If we are our memories and those memories are now at least in part perpetuated within media (to be used indiscriminately and called upon going forward), then can we then suggest that our identities are now mediated? Or at least dependent on media? I throw this out there just for fun.

Bidding wars, huh? FROM DANA IN 561

If newspapers are dying then why is there a bidding war going on for one?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/columnists/chi-2-phil-rosenthal-tribunemay02,0,7491131.column