SANDRA M. FALERO Digital Participatory Culture and the TV Audience Sandra M. Falero Digital Participatory Culture and the TV Audience Everyone’s a Critic Sandra M. Falero California State University Fullerton, California , USA ISBN 978-1-137-49999-8 ISBN 978-1-137-50000-7 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-50000-7 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016936731 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identifi ed as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or here- after developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub- lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to the many colleagues, friends, and family members who helped in the creation of this book. Pamela Steinle prompted and encouraged my academic thinking and writing about television. Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Janet Farrell-Brodie, and Alexandra Juhasz were patient and kind as this project grew into a decade of research and writing. Henry Jenkins’ work inspired and continues to inspire my research and teaching. Paul Booth served as a detailed and very thoughtful reader, asking ques- tions and providing sources that ultimately gave the work deeper meaning and coherence. My family provided unwavering support in the way of kind words, gentle (and not so gentle) encouragement to write, hours and hours of childcare so mama could think and write in peace, and in general believing in my abilities. My husband Matt Lipschutz deserves special thanks for listening to my diatribes about television and enduring the many incarnations of this study before it became a book. Thanks also go to the founders (Tara Ariano, David T. Cole, and Sarah Bunting) and the community of members at TelevisionWithoutPity.com. Many hours of laughter and tears were had in the glow of your pastel-colored forums before and during this project. Thank you for shedding light on all things, including television. v CONTENTS 1 “Meet Market”: The Attraction of a Place Without Pity 1 2 “The Industry”: A Brief History of Audiences In and Out of Control 29 3 “Give Pete a Line”: Participatory Television and the TWoP Community 53 4 “Sorkin Situations”: The Television Auteur Meets the Digital Age 77 5 “Shows You Hate (But Watch Anyway)”: The Dark Side of Online Criticism 101 6 “Network Interference”: Policing Conversation and Political Discourse 125 7 “Permanent Hiatus”: The Death of Television Without Pity 151 vii viii CONTENTS Conclusion 167 Appendix 175 Bibliography 181 Index 189 LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 1.1 Total posts in all message boards 4 Fig. 1.2 Total topics in all message boards 5 Fig. 1.3 Example post 6 Fig. 7.1 Emily Nussbaum, twitter 160 ix LIST OF TABLES Table 1.1 User designations 4 Table 1.2 Television creators who became TWoP members 9 Table A.1 Message boards visited most frequently for the study, 2000–2010 176 Table A.2 Major program topics 178 xi INTRODUCTION: DEMOCRATIZING CRITICISM This is a book about the community of television viewers and critics at Television Without Pity.com. Television Without Pity was a site devoted to recapping television programs. “Recaps” were humorous recapitulations of popular programs, in long form. Partly television criticism, partly enter- tainment, recaps engendered discussion, and message boards were pro- vided for readers to continue the criticism alongside the recapper. It is also a book about the changing nature of amateur television criticism in the digital age. Audiences have become a central component in the study of contemporary media. Today, reading or writing an online review of a tele- vision show is a relatively normal activity. But, not long ago, the image of a denizen of a TV message board was a sad caricature: a lonely, overweight shut-in whose only thrill in life was in lashing out at Hollywood’s creative elite from behind the protective anonymity of a keyboard. Why should we care about the faceless commenters out there, chat- ting about television shows with an intensity former generations would have reserved for biblical texts or political speeches? Among the syco- phants and trolls (and even within them) are everyday people with offi ce jobs, or service-industry jobs. Maybe their co-workers are simply not watching Mad Men . Perhaps there is no water cooler to discuss it over, or there are rules about how long they can stand at the water cooler gos- siping about television. For a myriad of reasons, people have gone online in droves to discuss their favorite television stories. And as they did so, I studied them. I should probably say “as we did so,” and make it clear that I studied “us.” I’m one of these creatures, and I am old enough to remember xiii xiv INTRODUCTION: DEMOCRATIZING CRITICISM when Internet fans were talked about in mainstream US culture in terms that compared us to base life forms. Audiences, or “viewers” to use a less commodifi ed term, have been attempting to take over the reigns of enter- tainment criticism on a large scale since the early 2000s. Is it changing television? Is it changing audiences? Is it changing creators? The answer is a resounding yes. I entered this study not only because I wanted to document the phe- nomenon I was participating in, but also because so much of the early discussion of it focused on technology. Technology had afforded us (on the negative end of the spectrum) the evils of the Internet troll; proof that society was devolving and that criticism as an art form would give way to the uneducated whims of the infantilized masses. Arguments about popu- lar media and cultural decline are peppered with this idea, that the “trash media” we consume is destroying us and leading to a nation of unintel- ligent brutes who do not value intelligence or the pursuit of knowledge. The popular 2006 fi lm Idiocracy brought these fears to life. The fi lm takes place in a future in which anti-intellectualism prevails in a nation that has become a mass of unintelligent brutes. According to cultural critic George Will, we are becoming “an increas- ingly infantilized society,” obsessed with new technology, but not pro- gressing in intellect. Indeed all that technology has afforded us is a “more sophisticated delivery of stupidity.” 1 He was not alone in that rather nega- tive view of technology, especially media technology, in American culture. From Marshal MacLuhan’s Understanding Media to Neil Postman’s sem- inal work Amusing Ourselves to Death in the 1980s, to Nicholas Carr’s New York Times 2010 bestseller The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains , the idea of technology’s relationship to intellect’s perceived slow decline has been widely discussed. In stark contrast to the neo-Luddites, there is the more positive side; that technology has provided us with a closer connection between the cre- ators of media stories and their audience, allowing for stories that matter, a revision of the idea of audiences as solely the numerical approximations of the box offi ce and Nielsen Media Research. What was sorely needed, I thought, was a better look at the connection between technology, his- tory, and culture. I wanted to show that audiences have a long history of being just as loud and brash (and derided) as Internet commenters today, but also that the role of technology is an important component in how we make sense of the new kind of relationship between creators, critics, and audiences. INTRODUCTION: DEMOCRATIZING CRITICISM xv My primary evidence is conversation. I spent over a decade reading the conversations between members in the thousands of message boards once thriving at TelevisionWithoutPity.com . I conducted interviews and surveys with writers, message board members, and the founders of the site. I read thousands of pages of conversations, and even participated in a few. In the beginning, this study posed a lot of questions about the future of television, audiences, and those who study both. I debated what would work best for a study that seemed to be very new to the fi eld. This was not a typical fan community (most did not even defi ne themselves as such), nor was it a cross section of “average” viewers, at least not in any discern- able way. My methodology and research questions were honed and some even changed over the years. I watched, over a decade, as the community I was a part of started to change in ways I had not anticipated.