In
television
Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. Additionally, the term can refer to a physical television set rather than the medium of transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...
programming, flow is how
channels and
networks
Network, networking and networked may refer to:
Science and technology
* Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects
* Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks
Mathematics
...
try to hold their audience from
program to program, or from one segment of a program to another. Thus, it is the ''flow'' of television material from one element to the next. The term is also significant in
television studies
Television studies is an academic discipline that deals with critical approaches to television. Usually, it is distinguished from mass communication research, which tends to approach the topic from a social sciences perspective. Defining the field ...
, the academic analysis of the medium. Media scholar
Raymond Williams
Raymond Henry Williams (31 August 1921 – 26 January 1988) was a Welsh socialist writer, academic, novelist and critic influential within the New Left and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture, the media and literature contribu ...
is responsible for first using the term in this sense. He emphasized that flow is "the defining characteristic of broadcasting, simultaneously as a technology and as a cultural form." "It is evident that what is now called 'an evening's viewing' is in some ways planned by providers and then by viewers as a whole; that it is in any event planned in discernible sequences which in this sense override particular program units". Williams argued that ads glued programs together which created the sense of television flow with a shift "from the concept of sequence as ''programming'' to the concept of ''flow''."
[Raymond Williams (2004/1974) ''Television. Technology and Cultural Form''. London: Routledge, p. 89]
Since the 1990s, the concept of flow has been transformed by new technologies and programming strategies that free the viewer from the old television model.
VCRs
A videocassette recorder (VCR) or video recorder is an electromechanical device that records analog audio and analog video from broadcast television or other AV sources and can play back the recording after rewinding. The use of a VCR to re ...
,
DVDs
The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...
,
DVRs (such as
TiVo
TiVo ( ) is a digital video recorder (DVR) developed and marketed by Xperi (previously by TiVo Corporation and TiVo Inc.) and introduced in 1999. TiVo provides an on-screen guide of scheduled broadcast programming television programs, whose fea ...
),
Video-on-Demand
Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos, television shows and films digitally on request. These multimedia are accessed without a traditional video playback device and a typical static broadcasting ...
, and online video sources all allow the viewer to construct their own flow. They are no longer limited to a choice of a small number of networks, as they were in the 1950s–1970s. Consequently, the concept of provider-planned flow is dying out and may not survive beyond the broadcast era of television.
Production and purpose
Williams claims that flow is determined by television's "stage of development," but
Rick Altman, Professor of Cinemas and Comparative Literature at the University of Iowa, argues that the culture of the medium produces and determines its flow.
[Rick Altman, "Television/Sound," in ''Studies in Entertainment: Critical Approaches to Mass Culture'' ed. Tania Modleski (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 39-54.] He notes that the soundtrack is unique to American culture and is one of the techniques that shapes the viewer's flow or his or her experience watching television. He notes that the soundtrack provides the viewer with sufficient plot, cues important events by sound (sound advance, e.g. clapping before it is seen on screen), and creates continuity.
These sonic elements create an intermittent flow of television. The goal is not to get the viewers to watch carefully, but to keep them from turning the television off.
References
Sources
*Williams, Raymond (1974). ''Television: Technology and Cultural Form''. London: Fontana.
External links
''Flow''— an online journal of television and media studies
"Television Studies Information" — museum of broadcast communications.
Television terminology
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