The lady on the television actually spoke to me the other day. Well, maybe not to me in particular, but the audience. On Sports Center, two analysts were debating whether or not Russell Wilson was going to beat Robert Griffin III in their playoff meeting. As the debate began, the moderator prompted the audience to tweet their opinion to their page, and the percentage of voters for each side would be displayed. Throughout the rest of the debate, the stat bounced back and forth, and the TV personalities reflected on their opinions with the help of the public poll.
This is just the beginning of the new generation of audience participation within television. TV has been speculated upon for its longevity, because many believe that the lack of interactivity will make viewers bored with simply viewing TV content. With the appearance of social media within the media, a new niche was born.
It started with ESPN’s show “Sports Nation,” which features a series of debates each day, with the conclusion to each debate being the voters’ response, which had been collected online over the course of the day. As that show grew more and more popular, the form of interaction spread to other shows on ESPN and beyond.
Even beyond the world of sports, social media has grown to allow for participation by the audience. Just yesterday, CBS advertised a new episode of Hawaii Five-O in which there are three possible endings. The audience has the opportunity, during the course of the hour long show, to vote for whom they think is the murderer. At a certain point, the network will take the result of the vote and change the content to reflect what the public decides. Twitter has, in this instance, totally changed the landscape of television, and the way in which viewers relate to it.
This form of interaction creates an instant investment of viewers in their media. A person can actually engage with who they think should be the “correct” suspect, and thus be more willing to stick it out to the end of the show in terms of viewing, so as to see if their opinion reflected that of the nation as a whole.
On the other hand, viewers may feel a sense of loss as the suspense of the show is taken away. There will no longer be true “surprises” in the show, because it will simply be the answer that is most popular, not the most creative or most well written.
This then, of course, leads to an incredible shift in the production of such works of media. First of all, actors will need to now shoot several different versions of each piece, in that they will need to create the content for each individual situation. Additionally, the writers will have less ability to impress their own views on the works, and will be even more at the mercy of the public entertainment.
This is only one episode of one show. But in reality, it is a test for all other media creators. If this show is a success, you can be sure that more will follow. As twitter becomes more and more influential, it will become more and more pervasive in different elements of media and life as a whole.
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