Hills-Villalobos Core 4

    Reading Christian’s intro to Open TV really made me consider the question of choice. On page 5, Christian states that “audiences have exponentially more options but fewer real choices” when discussing “Legacy tv” or major studio/networks that produce television in a “conventional” way. That statement made me consider the ways in which streaming company Netflix produces high numbers of television series in very limited amounts in order to keep a tight budget despite consumer/audience demand. Now here is where I am speaking as a non-CAMS student and I don’t know much about production and distribution. Theoretically, Netflix gives this illusion of choice: uou have a seemingly endless scroll feed, you can sort these options by various categories, but it seems like they are mimicking conventional television in certain ways. The endless scrolling reminds me of sorting through channels trying to find something good to watch, the very targeted netflix experience reminds me of networks trying to cater toward specific audiences. As I think Tara pointed out a few weeks ago, just because it looks like Netflix offers more options does not mean you have access to more choices. 

When Christian discusses how open TV has been underestimated on page 13, the paper led me to think about the accidental popularity of vlogging through YouTube as referenced earlier on in the article. With the rise of social media platforms, I wonder how I would even define TV today. TikTok, for example, has become a place where people produce serialized narrative content where viewers expect to see a continuation of a story, series where the content might change every week but the central players remain the same, and even satirizing reality television. This is a great time for Indie TV mostly because it could be anything! I think now defunct app Quibi tried to capitalize on this notion that TV could be anything but approached it with a money making approach vs. a true love for making television or a desire to see something that “hasn’t been done before” which Christian says is a motivation for people producing indie television (10). Further, this made me reconsider the goals of OpenTV beyond physical representation.