Losing The Passive Companionship of TV

For the past month, I have felt as though I've been part of one of the experiments I would like to conduct on media choice and decision making. Ever since I moved into my house, I've received free cable, as often happens with Comcast who isn't very vigilant when it comes to who gets their signal and who doesn't. After the digital transition, they've begun gradually whittling away at my channels. I lost about 3 or 4 channels out of 40 a few weeks ago, and this past Friday I lost about 20, pretty much everything besides the networks, public television, and the Michigan research channel. When I lost AMC, I had to consider what watching my favorite show, Mad Men, meant to me, and whether I could replace the experience with something as pleasurable until it came out on DVD. I decided that I could live without it, that it certainly wasn't worth paying the extra $40(!) a month for cable television, that I'll either wait for the DVDs or buy the remaining eps on ITunes. Then they took ESPN, my bread and butter, and that has caused a great deal of reflection on my part as to what the value of TV is for me.

At first, I missed the up-to-date-ness of TV. I can go online and get all the information that is dispensed though ESPN (and then some), but it doesn't feel the same. I think my attachment to TV has something to do with the fact that I live by myself. When I turn on ESPN, there's something about the direct address format and the jocular tone of SportsCenter, not to mention the always-on nature of the news coverage (similar things could be said about cable news). It feels like companionship in a way that cold, lifeless DVDs and the internet does not. If I was looking for replacement experiences, I could just spend more time actually talking to people, but part of the pleasure of the companionship offered by ESPN and TV in general is that its passive. Also, my use of ESPN is dictated by my moods and schedule, not someone else's. I don't give a fuck whether or not Chris Berman or Scott Van Pelt are in the mood to be funny; that's their job. Not so with people I know.

Are there any possible substitutes for this feeling? Like ESPN, NPR is always on and roughly appeals to my interests, but to be honest, i just don't like the content as much. Its possible that some applications on the internet - social media like Facebook and maybe Twitter - could fill this need for passive companionship. Using FB does feel a little bit like that kind of passive companionship that I crave, though sometimes its almost too personal. I like the level of detachment that I get from watching sports or news. Perhaps this will motivate me to give Twitter a try.

This experience makes me believe that television, just like radio before it, needs to move away from pre-recorded drama and towards shows that address the viewer as part of a crowd, either through a host or telecaster or anchor, or merely by presenting a show that is performed in front of a crowd (like American Idol). Its possible that reality TV offers something in the way of passive companionship, although maybe its pleasures are more about social surviellance. Similarly, comedy might provide some additional pleasure if watched in groups, so maybe it does need to be watch simultaneously by many viewers. In any case, DVD and the internet seem to take care of drama exhibition and information about the world.

The Day the Texting Died

T-Mobile's services have been failing tonight. I discovered this when someone called me and told me that they were having trouble texting me. I then tried to send a text and it bounced back. Then, I tried to call T-Mobile customer support to find out if the problem was with my network. When I didn't get an answer (all agents busy, don't even bother hanging on, call back later), I knew it wasn't just me. I then googled T-Mobile news and got a story, posted within the previous 30 minutes, that T-Mobile was having massive outages. Kinda neat how I was able to find out how big the problem was so quickly.

Then, I went over to twitter (the news article in pcmag mentioned outraged phone users taking to twitter to register their disgust w/ tmobile). Indeed, it was clogged with complaints about T-Mobile. My first reaction was laughter. There was something that just struck me as funny about how upset people were about losing texting service. It was the kind of exaggerated outrage that pervades online fora (LOTS OF CAPS, EXPLETIVES, AND EXXXCLAMATION POINTS, DAMMITT!!!!!!). Maybe I felt entitled to laugh at this outrage (or self-parodying fake outrage (fauxtrage?)) b/c I was in the same boat as them. For me, it was a comically minor inconvenience, one that, frankly, prevented me from being distracted by getting into a text conversation (though here I am, avoiding my work by blogging, so maybe the outage didn't help my productivity after all).

Then I checked myself. It would be bad to laugh about a total failure of telephone lines. Phone lines are used by emergency units to save people's lives. While I know that it wasn't everyone who lost texting capabilities (I guess some lost voice, some lost both), it got me to thinking about what it would mean for lots of people to lose the ability to text for a night. Would there be anything seriously bad about that?

It got me to thinking about the overall character of texting. Is there really anything serious about it? There's the hyper-coordination, so an outage might mean a bunch of people would get slightly lost or be slightly late, and get ticked off at one another. I suppose it is possible that if someone didn't know about the outage and was waiting for a call or a text, they might think that the other person was ignoring them, causing stress in the relationship (maybe even the end of a (probably already tenuous) relationship?). Imagine that happening to thousands of people at once.

But really, I feel like the overall character (aside from coordination) of texting is joking, flirting, and gossiping. What would it mean to lose that for a night? One could study this in the way that Berelson (1962) studied what it meant to live without the newspaper for awhile back in the day. Maybe it'll be a nice moment of self-reflection for people. That's what its been for me.