IndexHow does "flow" influence the aesthetics and experience of watching television? What, then, is "flow"? ConclusionREFERENCES: The changing experience of watching broadcast television. Based on the theory “Programming: Distribution and Flow” by Raymond Williams. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay How does “flow” influence the aesthetics and experience of watching television? Have you ever wondered why all the furniture in a house is oriented towards the same direction; television? A small box which, much more than being a transmission system via Hertzian waves, offers inconceivable experiences. A drawer of programs and chains. A window of information and retransmissions which, whether good or bad, has become a daily companion in our affairs. Television is part of our domestic, daily experience, an essential machine that apparently never stops offering content. It doesn't matter what time you turn on the TV, because you will still be served entertainment. However, due to its popularity, television has entered the competitive business, radically changing its meaning and experience; which does not always have the same impact on the viewer. This is a consequence of "flow", a term deeply debated and analyzed with the magnifying glass by Raymond Williams, the theorist who revolutionized the television landscape by discussing the idea in Television: Technology and Cultural Form (Williams, 1974). This essay will evaluate how the idea of ​​“flow” can reshape the aesthetics and experience of watching television, as well as discuss how it has become one of the guiding terms for understanding broadcast television. The term “flow” initially emerged as a key word for television studies in the 1970s, which, over time, gave rise to a vast sea of ​​ideas due to their ambiguity. In ​Television: Technology and Cultural Form ​(Williams, 1974) the author presents "flow" as a concept to describe the provocative way in which television distribution has altered its nature. However, this term has also been used as a primary idea in relation to new social analyzes and as a normative concern for measures that political economy might implement to address world TV, however, this will be discussed later in this essay. “In all developed transmission systems the characteristic organization, and therefore the characteristic experience, is that of sequence or flow. This phenomenon of planned flow is therefore perhaps the distinctive feature of broadcasting, both as a technology and as a cultural form." (Williams, 1970; 80). With this statement, Williams perhaps defines flow not only as an important issue to take into account when organizing television textually, but also when it comes to the viewing experience and audience response. This is why Williams uses “characteristic organization” and “characteristic experience” for the purpose of connecting both ideas in “this phenomenon of planned flow” (Williams, 80). In other words, Williams believes that this term links in a sophisticated way the technical meaning of television textuality with the abstract idea of ​​experience. The author, in fact, suggests that the real intent of the flow is to allow the reconfiguration of the nature of television and the experience of cultural texts to flourish. As he argues “the actual program that is offered is a sequence or set of alternative sequences of these and other similar events, which are then available in a single dimension and in a single operation”.(Williams, 1970; 86). However, the semi-technical meaning presented by Williams has been rather ambiguous for other theorists such as John Corner, who openly discusses Williams' definition of the concept in Critical Ideas in Television Studies (Corner, 1999) stating that flow "is become an overt critical notion, bringing with it negative assumptions about the temporality and power of television and the viewing relationships it encourages" (Corner, 1999; 60). With this Corner states that the term was introduced into a bubble of judgment and debate that persists today and many critics had something to say that the concept “cannot really support the weight of theory that has often been attributed to it” ( Corners, 1999; 60). One such critic is Lynn Spigel who observes: “Perhaps because it has been so influential, the flow concept has also been criticized for its attempt to explain too much about television by devising a law covering television. very different types of experiences we have when we watch TV. (Spigel, 1992; 25). What the term suggests is so global that it contains a wide range of refinements to more precisely describe the essence of the cultural experiences it offers audiences. John Ellis also offers a new discussion of “flow,” which is quite close to Williams' initial idea of ​​the sense of the term. He proposes that the text system of television is based on “segmentation”. The theorist introduces the concept mainly with the aim of sharing how television presents both a unique and particular textual and cultural format. In Visible Fictions (Ellis, 1982) the author exposes how Broadcast TV has developed a new aesthetic which instead of adopting the original format of entertainment cinema - as a single and coherent text - now Broadcast TV presents relatively distinct sections which are characterized by being small sequential units, the maximum duration of which is about five minutes, which combine images and sounds. He follows his explanation with: "These segments are organized into groups that are simply cumulative, like news broadcasts and advertisements, or have some kind of repetitive or sequential connection, like the groups of segments that make up the serial or series" ( Ellis, 1982; 112). Following the idea that Ellis presents of his theory of segmentation, Jane Feuer delves into the concept of "flow" by introducing philosophical reasoning and speculation. Feuer describes the concept by keeping Williams' arguments in mind but turning them into an illusion. For her, “flow” is just abstract content that does not fulfill its meaning since television explicitly displays those discrete segments of information and stories in its textual system. He also adds that “Williams should say more accurately that television has segmentation without closure, because that is what he really means by flow.” (Feuer, 1983; 15-16). As I said before, there are many beliefs about “flow” as a component of commercial television – the main goal of which is to maximize the number of viewers planned by programs and networks – and Feuer particularly highlights this belief by adding in his argument that “Flow as such it is neither natural nor technologically determined. It is a historically specific outcome of network practice: “flowcharts” are constructed by network managers before being reconstituted by structuralists.” (Feuer, 1983; 16). Distinct ideas were expounded by critics such as Horace Newcomb and Paul M. Hirsh, who proposed a specific method for analyzing how television correctly executes its textual system. Their proposal is to "undress" a sequence of programs during viewing in order to analyze it correctly. “Our most traditional visions,the more repressive and reactionary ones, as well as the supraversive and emancipatory ones, are supported, examined, maintained and transformed. The emphasis is on process rather than product, on discussion rather than indoctrination, on contradiction and confusion rather than coherence.” (Breines, 1983; 6). They see television as a forum to expose different points of view that address the same topics, regardless of whether they have a cultural character or social connotation, with the pursuit of exposing social issues from a wide range of perspectives. With this in mind, they conclude that to fully analyze the range of cultural meanings offered by television, an in-depth examination and study of the “viewing strip” is required rather than an analysis of programs or units individually. “We are now examining the “viewing strip” as a potential text and are finding that in the range of options offered by television every evening, the forum is actually a more accurate model of what happens on television than any other we know of. Of." (Newcomb and Hiris, 1994; 509). This idea is quite close to Williams' point of view on how audiences tend to stay for more than one program at a time, as he argues: "On the other hand it is an experience widely, if often ruefully admitted, that many of us find television very difficult to turn off; that over and over again, even after turning on a particular 'show', we find ourselves watching the next one and the one after that.” (Williams, 1974; 94). To conclude this section of juxtaposing ideas about “flow,” I will introduce John Fiske and his “intertextuality.” He suggests that “Flow, with its connotations of a languid river, is perhaps an unfortunate metaphor: the movement of the television text is discontinuous, interrupted and segmented. Its attempts at closure, towards a unified meaning, or a unified subject of vision, are constantly subject to fracturing forces.” (Fiske, 1987; 105). In other words, he claims that this textual system encourages individual programs to find their own meaning between the continuities and discontinuities of which each unit structures the flow. Have an interpretive vision and read beyond the surface, finding meaning in the subtext that connects each segment. Furthermore, Williams' argument about “flow” has also been criticized from another perspective: an institutional point of view. It has been said that “flow” gives television a connotation that undermines its honest value as a critical term for a medium to be conceptualized away from its consumerist purposes. That said, flow has become a concept used in the industry as a marketing strategy. This involves carefully planned programming, which chooses the location for commercials and its main determination is to increase and maximize audience continuity on a distinct channel. This last sentence brings us to the next topic, which is advertising, as it has a powerful influence in the flow. Advertising occupies, especially physically, an important position in television broadcasts. In fact, it's claimed to be "the longest program on television." Commercials and other commercial communication media included in the programmes, cover a significant number in percentage of time until reaching the maximum quotas in the prime time hours. It is often said that television does not produce programs but spectators for our advertising. Advertising is, in fact, the main point of reference of the television system; the source of almost exclusive financing. Likewise, advertising manifests itself as the "soul" of communication and mass culture. This intentionally causes not only a direct influencethrough the advertising content contained in the messages; but also an indirect influence based on programming (choice of genres that guarantee maximum audience), which make advertising one of the main - if not the main factor - sources of influence on the culture of our time. Williams openly discusses how commercials advertisers have stolen most of the space in the “interval concept” (Williams, 1974; 90). One of the main aspects that characterizes “flow” are intervals. These were first introduced in earlier phases of broadcast services, both in television and radio. Both had a particular sound or image that distinguished them from the actual program to announce that an interval of the program was taking place.programming schedule. However, as Williams argues, this concept of interval has been reevaluated. "This intensified under conditions of competition, when it became important for broadcast planners to retain viewers - or as they say, 'capture' them - for an entire sequence of the evening" adding that "the eventual unification of these two or three sequences, a new type of communicative phenomenon must be recognized" (Williams, 1974; 91). Furthermore, a tendency towards confusion is added here: the messages emitted by advertising are often mixed with the "primary" contents disseminated by the media, mainly from information, entertainment, fiction, etc. - And this also happens through a confusion of roles: presenters and journalists become bearers of commercial messages, underlining, to the point of unbelievability, the commercial nature of television programming the complex editorial autonomy of authors and broadcasters, favoring the conquest of advertising spaces. As far as I'm concerned, it is understandable that this happens in the field of commercial broadcasting, however it seems rather alarming that the same public service falls within the same advertising networks, lowering the quality of the broadcasting. programming. Therefore, competitive pressure has led official channels to schedule their times with the same percentage of programming as commercials. Once again, everything is aimed at capturing the viewer. Speaking of this confusion, Williams presents his own personal experience while we were in America, recounting his "first encounter" with American television. He goes on to explain how, while watching a film, he encountered some difficulty in "adapting to a much greater frequency of breaks for commercials" (Williams, 1974; 92). The author then adds: “Here there was something completely different, since the transitions from film to commercial and from film A to films B and C were effectively unmarked” (Williams, 1974; 92). We then proceed to analyze and compare television programming in Great Britain and America as a further study of “flow”. With the results it can be concluded that television is hypothetically examined as a social and mechanical “other”, instead of being absorbed into a European social convention through elegant research and standards development, it is in any case Europeanized by the excellence of being organized from the Western anthropological point of view. The full meaning of this “other” social structure reveals its essential “flow” to the European explorer, who thinks from the ethnographic point of view. Consequently, the medium therefore stands as an ethnographic discovery in the formative stages of television theory. However, this experience was particularly criticized by John Corner, who pointed out that Williams is recounting an experience from the perspective of a cultural outsider, being a fresh and inexperienced person., 72-112.