Interactivity, the growing relationship between television and the internet
Ultimately, television can have a relationship with the internet that features cannot. “Features have been able to grab on to what internet can do for marketing and publicity,” says Megan Wolpert, executive vice president of Spyglass Television, when I interviewed her in January this year: “However, TV can do what movies can’t with that relationship, because they don’t need to add a step. They don’t need to say come see us. They just show it. You can show a memoir, a travelogue, a serialized anything on the internet. I think even if you just look at the act of watching a movie versus watching television, it’s more analogous to the act of watching a computer.”
Certainly, the popularity of Reality TV is the outcome of the game generation trend towards interactivity. What is happening more recently, however, is an extension of the relationship between television and internet with show like Lost and VH1 Webjunk. Now MTV introduces MTV Flux a combination social networking portal/television channel.
Excerpts:
Called MTV Flux, the new service will allow members to upload their own content on to television, be part of an online interactive community and ultimately control their very own TV channel.
Users will get a manga and Japanese animation styled basic avatar design which they will then be able to manipulate into the image they want to represent them in the Flux on-screen community.
In an environment which fully encourages and rewards community interaction, the more Fluxers “flux”, the more screen time they will bag for their avatar, as well as securing a greater say in exactly what appears on TV.
