Ilya Ryvin

Ilya Ryvin
Position Paper
The Evolution of Television: The Road to Transmedia Storytelling
In his book Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, renowned media analyst Henry Jenkins argues that we have entered a new era of media engagement. He has dubbed this the era of “convergence culture,” identifying the three key concepts that define it: “media convergence, participatory culture, and collective intelligence.” (Jenkins 2). In this age of convergence, media producers are creating stories that require a new type of audience engagement, one that forces audiences to hunt these stories down across multiple media channels. This narrative strategy, dubbed transmedia storytelling, has been implemented through a number of different media franchises, but it has been most effective in television programming. This, however, should not come as a surprise. Television has come a long way since its inception, and as I write this thesis, it is still evolving. I will argue that since its early days, television has undergone a number of changes, primarily in the areas of narrative complexity, technology, and the behaviors of both media industries and audiences, and that these changes ultimately lend themselves to the transmedia model.
In the early days of television, most television programs could be described as being episodic. Jason Mittell explains that the “dominant form of primetime television storytelling from the 1950s to the 1990s was self-contained episodic narration” that rarely “demanded knowledge from previous episodes to understand what’s going on” (Storytelling Technologies). Although there existed a “consistent setting, continuing characters, recurring themes and types of events,” there was ‘little or no long-term memory or persistence of the events and occurrences of what happens in any episode” (Storytelling Technologies). In other words, audiences were able watch a random episode without having to worry about comprehending it had they missed the episode from the prior week. The Twilight Zone, for example, is an extreme form of an episodic program, with each episode having no relation character or plot-wise to the episode that came before or after it. There were, of course, less extreme cases of episodic programming
Around the 1980s, a new type of narrative emerged. This narrative created a “storyworld [with] continuity” that depended on “consistent viewing and accurate memories” (Serial Boxes). This model borrowed many of its conventions from serialized daytime soap operas, creating a hybrid that mixed episodic and serialized norms. Jason Mittell argues that this form lent itself well to “the generic forms of cop shows, medical dramas, and sitcoms,” citing shows like Hill St. Blues and Cheers, where they typically “featur[ed] some episodic plotlines alongside multi-episode arcs and ongoing relationship dramas” with “relationship stories carry[ing] over between episodes” while the medical or police cases resolved themselves within a single episode (Narrative Complexity 33). The aforementioned hybrid model was further expanded on in the 90s through the implementation of “story arcs across episodes and seasons,” and shows like The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer best exemplify this narrative evolution through their innovative combination of “long-term arc storytelling and stand-alone episodes” (Narrative Complexity 33). For example, each of the seven seasons of Buffy features a primary villain whose storyline spans the entire season. Every episode advances that season long arc, while at the same time “offering episodic coherence and miniresolutions” (Narrative Complexity 33).
Other than the combination of lengthy story arcs and episodic conventions, narratives of the past 30 years have grown increasingly complex in the ways they’ve demanded audiences to make sense of them. In his book, Everything Bad Is Good For You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter, Steven Johnson argues that this complexity “involves three primary elements: multiple threading, flashing arrows, and social networks” (Johnson 65). For the purpose of this paper, I will focus primarily on multiple threading and what this has done for modern narratives as I feel that it has more relevance to narrative complexity than the other two elements. Johnson explains that traditional narratives often had one or two narrative threads, or plots. For example, any episode of Dragnet followed the following formula: the crime, the investigation, and the resolution. Starsky and Hutch usually had two threads, one following the villain’s narrative while the other followed Starsky and Hutch’s narrative.
Johnson cites Hill St. Blues as the primary innovator of the multithreaded drama, identified by the increased number of narrative threads, an increase in the number of primary characters, and the fact that some threads crossed over from one episode to the next. Programs like Lost take these narrative complexities even further. Each episode has a number of storylines running alongside each other, with no one narrative taking precedent over another. Each episode also includes an extensive flashback sequence, exploring the extensive back-story of a specific character or characters. There is also very little episodic coherence, with the threads from one episode almost always spilling over to the next with resolution far and between.
It is important to note that these more complex narratives have not replaced episodic ones. There are a number of popular programs on television today that follow the episodic model, including the CSI and the Law and Order franchises. It is also important to note that I am not placing a value judgment on any particular narrative form.
The Twilight Zone was, and still is, regarded as a wonderfully creative program that delivered some of the most memorable science-fiction narratives. Likewise, not every complex narrative is effective, sometimes making it a season or two before the narrative became too muddled to follow. What I am trying to get across is that overall, narratives have gotten more complex, forcing audiences to follow, attain and ultimately retain more information.
These narrative changes, however, would not be possible if it were not for a number of technological advances. The conventional wisdom in the early days of television was that narratives needed to be simple; otherwise, producers feared they would lose audiences. For example, if and episode is not self contained and relies on information revealed from a prior episode, someone who missed that episode would have a much harder time piecing together the narrative. This fear had more to do with the model of television broadcasting than it did with the nature of earlier audiences. Audiences had no real access to missed episodes, and syndication at the time “favored interchangeable episodes of conventional sitcoms and procedural dramas” (Narrative omplexity 31). With the advent of the VCR in the 70s, this became less of an issue. VCRs gave audiences the ability to record their favorite programs, meaning that if a person was going to miss an episode of their favorite series, they could simply record it and watch it at a later time. Recording technologies have made their way to the digital age, with the likes of TiVo and other digital video recorders making the entire process much easier and more organic. This makes producers more confident about creating programs that are narratively complex. Jason Mittell puts it best when he says that “time-shifting technologies like VCRs and digital video recorders enable viewers to choose when they want to watch a program, but, more important for narrative construction, viewers can rewatch episodes or segments to purse out complex moments” (Narrative Complexity 31). Likewise, DVDs have allowed consumers to purchase entire season of their favorite programs. DVDs give consumers the option to “rewatch for depth of references, impressive displays of craft and continuities, and appreciate details that require the liberal use of pause and rewind” (Serial Boxes). Of course, this idea of rewatchability will only work if the show has elements that make it worthy of rewatching. In other words, the narrative needs to have a number of analyzable complexities and intricacies that would inspire fans to scrutinize the program.
Lastly, the behavior of both audience and media industries cannot be ignored when looking at the evolution of television narrative. The Internet has widely changed the consumer/producer relationship, offering interactivity unlike any that came before it. Mittell explains that the “internet has become more central to the television medium, with both official and illicit downloadable shows, transmedia narrative extensions, and the rise of sites like Hulu and YouTube as alternative ways to view a wide range of programming” (Serial Boxes). However, I argue that the Internet plays another important role. Ivan Askwith argues that “we are now operating in an attention economy, where media producers and advertisers view attention itself as the most valuable of commodities, and it is the pursuit of viewer attention that has led the media and advertising industries to their newest point of obsession: audience engagement” (Askwith 17). His notion of audience engagement is not dissimilar to Jenkins’ ideas behind his theories regarding convergence culture. Audiences can watch their favorite programs online, legally and illegally, interact with fans, interact with producers, and even shape content. In many ways, audiences can now shape what degree of engagement they can have with their television programs, whereas before it was the sole right of the studio to decide when and what audiences would watch. If the narrative is intriguing and at the same time complex, the Internet opens up a myriad of possibilities for engagement. Jason Mittell most aptly described this when he said that the Internet “has enabled fans to embrace a “collective intelligence” for information, interpretations, and discussions of complex narratives that invite participatory engagement-and in instances such as Babylon 5 or Veronica Mars, creators join in the discussions and use these forums and feedback mechanisms to test for comprehension and pleasures” (Askwith 31-32).

Works Cited
Askwith, Ivan D. “Television 2.0: Reconceptualizing TV as an Engagement Medium.” Thesis. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007. Web. 19 Oct. 2010.
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006. Print.
Johnson, Steven. Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter. New York: Riverhead Books, 2005. Print. Johnson
Mittell, Jason. “Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television.” The Velvet Light Trap Fall.58 (2006): 29-40. Web. 19 Oct. 2010. .
Mittell, Jason. “Serial Boxes.” Just TV. 20 Jan. 2010. Web. 27 Oct. 2010. .
Mittell, Jason. “Storytelling Technologies.” Just TV. 13 May 2007. Web. 27 Oct. 2010. .