Structuring virtual spaces as television places: Internet television

RUNNING TITLE: INTERNET TELEVISION REMEDIATING CONVENTIONAL TELEVISION

Structuring virtual spaces as television places: Internet television remediating conventional structures, practices and power dynamics

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Abstract: As all major American broadcast and cable networks now provide some form and amount of online distribution of their television programming, we are beginning to see more interactive features being attached to this distribution to remediate the conditions of television consumption in the physical world. Attaching such interactivity to their online distribution creates cyberspaces of consumption that become places for virtual audiences to congregate as they view the program. To illustrate how the virtual environments and worlds are constructed to become places for virtual audiences, four case studies of virtual places are analyzed in terms of how interactivity is being managed. Two types of interactivity are used to compare these case studies: social interaction and narrative interaction. Broadcast networks CBS and NBC separately created virtual places to imitate “living room” conditions of social interaction. Cable network SciFi Channel produced “live events” to allow limited narrative interaction. Independent producer Metanomics created a virtual “talk show” to encourage both social interaction and narrative interaction. The analysis is set into a larger theoretical framework considering how these Internet-based interactive television examples demonstrate the remediation of conventional conceptualizations of television distribution structures and consumption practices, which then indicate the power dynamics of the producer-consumer relationship. The form in which the interactivity occurs is controlled by the producers of the programs through the structuring of the online distribution spaces. These structures constrain and cue how the virtual audience is expected to, allowed to and desired to engage with the program.

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1. TV is not dead, it’s just online When I moved outside of the United States, I was faced with a problem: I was worried about my addiction to American television. As there were quite a number of shows I followed habitually, I was concerned about how I would be able to maintain my fix. So I scouted the many options: illegal torrenting, legal iTunes downloads, Slingbox, illegal re-routed streaming, legal corporate sponsored streaming. To varying degrees I have tried all of these options.

For example, my loyalty to Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Under the aegis of Viacom, the show is streamed with delay on the show's website, www.thedailyshow.com, even outside of the United States. However, while in the first months of my time as an ex-patriot, I could stream the entire episode; afterwards, I could only view them in the segments predetermined by the producers1. Sometimes when impatient for an episode, I used both iTunes and, I will admit, illegal torrenting sites to fulfil my need. On the night of the 2008 presidential election, I was up into the early morning following the live, legal, streaming from CNN and MSNBC, but when The Daily Show was scheduled to air I found an illegal re-routing website that allowed me to watch the show live and with other ex-pats and foreign viewers. Because of this ability, when Barack Obama was announced on that show as the winner, I was immediately able to call – via my VoIP Skype – my family stateside to join in the news. Only a handful of times have I actually watched the delayed broadcast of the show on the local television channel.

As with my numerous other television addictions, my addiction to The Daily Show was not being primarily met by "television" in the sense of a technological object – a box with a window to the world. The object exists in my room, but it is used to display the entertainment provided by a DVD player and a Nintendo Wii. It is the window to what those objects provide, and rarely to the world at large. My computer is my window to the world.

I am not alone. At the time the data was gathered for this study, 11% of adults in the United States aged 18-34 had gone online at least once to watch television (Brandon, 2008). In December 2008, there had been at 41% increase in use from the previous year as the total number of videos watched online was over 14 billion (Fritz, 2009). At the end of the 2008-09 television season, ABC saw their show Lost bringing in 36.4 million video streams; NBC had The Office at 14.5 million; and CBS had NCIS at 11.6 million.

The experiences I and my fellow television viewers and fans are having is resulting in rhetoric from industry professionals and academics that "television is dead", that we are living in a post-television, post-broadcast era (Poniewozik, 2009), where someday, sooner or later, the "boob tube" will be replaced as the central household media technology by the personal computer.

Whether or not this will be the case remains to be seen; predictions on the centrality of the 1

The use of the term "producers" in this paper is to refer to those media professionals, amateurs and industries responsible for the creation and dissemination of commercial media products, such as television series.

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computer change, as just over a decade ago people argued the Internet would never replace or completely displace the boob tube (see Havick, 2000; Owen, 1999).

With the uncertainty of the future of "television", the tensions that exist are numerous (Cover, 2006; Reinhard, 2008): passive versus active; consumer versus producer; author versus audience; online versus over-the-air; interactive TV versus Internet TV; co-optation versus reflection. This is an era of change in mass communication, with the rise of nichecasting perhaps replacing broadcasting, perhaps being supplemental to it. It is a time when the audience, once viewed as a unified, undifferentiated mass, now must be seen as multiple, diverse, fragmented, selective, self-directed consumers as well as producers (Livingstone, 1999). It is a time when what we call television is called into question (Grindstaff & Turrow, 2006), with "television" being deconstructed into the content it relays, "television-as-text", and the technical interface it is, "television as technology" (Wood, 2007). It is a time when the changes in the media landscape and the actions of the audience(s) are changing the nature of what is television, and how we should think of it and those who produce and consume it (Bruns, 2008; Green, 2008; Grindstaff & Turrow, 2006; Meikle & Young, 2008; Tay & Turner, 2008; Wood, 2007). There are many experiments currently going on with how to structure Internet TV to be something consumers will want to use, either in replace or in supplement.

It is a time of renewed interest in interactive television – and not just as it has been conceived as being attached to the "television-as-technology". There have been attempts, both within the industry and the academy, to determine how to make the Internet fulfil the dreams people have had about interactive television for decades. This paper is an analysis of several attempts from both industry and academy that I had participated in during the fall of 2008. These cases provide illustrations of how the dis-embedding of content from "television-as-technology" and its re-embedding into various virtual environments produces interactive places for audience consumption – places that become sites for academic analysis of the concepts of television distribution, consumption practices and the power dynamics in the relationship between producers and consumers. In considering how these cyberspaces have been structured to provide forms of interactive television, I will discuss how the structures, practices and power dynamics 2 that currently surround "television" are not dead, they are just online.

2. Internet television

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In deciding to separate these sections from one another, I realize I am enforcing perhaps an arbitrary separation among structures, practices, and power dynamics given the interconnectedness of the concepts. For the purposes of this paper, "practices" means the activities people perform as part of their consumption of the media; "structures" means the physical nature of the technology that cues/constrains such practices; to “power dynamics” means the analysis of such practices and structures to understand how power shifts between the diametrically opposed positions of consumer and producer.

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At the turn of the century, it was a common for American corporate controlled content providers to not worry about television being displaced by the Internet because of the difference between the passive consumption associated with television and the active consumption necessitated by the Internet (Havick, 2000; Van Tassel, 2001). In 1999, of the main networks broadcasting in the United States, only NBC and CBS were making synergistically coordinated strides towards colonizing the Internet for the (re)transmission of their goods (Van Tassel, 2001).

In 1999, several private firms, not associated with any of the major corporations, began to offer "netcasting" of genre programming like talk shows, contending that the active nature of the Internet allowed for greater audience interaction than possible with conventional OTA talk shows (Vonder Herr, 1999). Such attempts at "microbroadcasting" or "nichecasting" could be seen as providing the framework for future internet TV business models, interested in aggregating the disaggregated audience around specialized topics (Tay & Turner, 2008).

Professionals and academics point to several occurrences as the triggers for prompting corporate content providers to take netcasting seriously: the rise of YouTube and Web 2.0; the rise of Apple's iTunes and video iPod, and the diffusion of broadband technology into households (Conhaim, 2006; Smith, 2005; Streisand, 2007). With increased broadband networks, online streaming and downloading could be more effectively and efficiently accomplished, reducing buffering time that would cause frustration for the consumers (Edwards, 2009). Then with its 200506 season, ABC began offering downloads of its most popular shows via iTunes, which prompted other networks to see the potential for this distribution route (Fritz, 2009; Streisand, 2007). By the 2006-07 season, the Big Four networks in the United States (ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox) were offering their most popular series for free via online streaming, either directly at their website or on related, corporate-controlled sites (Setoodeh, 2006). Episodes were even being offered online before being broadcast OTA as a means to further promote a show, such as CBS's Jericho (Streisand, 2007).

The threat from YouTube prompted NBC/Universal and News Corp to jointly produce streaming website Hulu.com in 2007, which would serve as an archive for their television series as well as a library of films (Fritz, 2009). Since the initial joint venture, in 2009 Disney signed a deal to use Hulu.com as a streaming distributor (Littleton, 2009). The tactic against YouTube has had some apparent success, as it has been steadily increasing in the amount of streams viewed since its inception (Gelman, 2009). In less than a year Hulu.com went from start-up to logging over 300 million video streams (Fritz, 2009). In the fall of 2008, when the case studies in experimentation discussed in this paper were analyzed, 235 million videos were streamed in October alone at Hulu.com (Brandon, 2008). Nielsen's division dedicated to measuring online audience ratings found that both OTA and online television consumption are increasing in the United States

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population (Edwards, 2009); the online trend was indicated as being the result of spending time with the corporate-controlled streaming websites. Media professionals agree that consumers who want to time-shift are willing to sit at a computer and watch a full episode just to catch what they have not yet seen (Holahan, 2007).

The presence of Internet television, and particularly corporate-controlled versions of netcasting, is both increasing and potentially stabilizing as an alternative, supplemental, or replacement distribution source. With more and more people going online for their daily television programming, Internet TV becomes increasingly a part of people's everyday lives. As such, the usage of Internet TV produces sites of distribution and consumption for analysis. Specifically, for this paper, the sites of analysis are considerations for how the newer television compares to the older. How does the distribution structure of Internet TV compare to the conventional distribution of over-the-air broadcasting? How do the consumption practices of conventional television compare to those of internet television? And what does the structuring of cyberspaces to become places for distribution and consumption tell us about the relationship between television producers and consumers?

2.1. Purpose of this paper The purpose of this paper is to look for answers to these questions by considering four case studies where several corporate and academic producers have been experimenting with how to provide television content that is more than the basic streaming and downloading currently available. It may seem that focusing only on four experiments does not provide any insight of value as it excludes the majority of internet television distribution and consumption activities currently driving the growth of internet television. However, the purpose in examining these experiments lies in what the analysis can tell us about how content producers are considering what to do with interactivity – that elusive concept and tension for the television industry in the world of increasingly networked computers.

Distribution and consumption places like Hulu.com and TV.com, and other streaming sites, have the format of YouTube.com. The video is at the top of the screen and you scroll down to add/read comments to the content that are gathered asynchronously and without any direct link to any particular point of the content. There is interactivity in the sense that the individual user can time-shirt, control what she wants to consume and when and where. However, there are other conceptualizations of interactivity that go beyond the ability of the user to access a database of readily available archival content (Mcmillan, 2002); notions of interactivity as synchronous, dialogic communication between human and human or human and content (Cover, 2004, 2006). The first has been alternatively called conversational and interpersonal (Mcmillan), and in this paper is

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referred to as "social interaction". The second has been discussed by Cover (2004, 2006) without labelling, but has been discussed as content interaction (Mcmillan, 2002); in this paper it is referred to as "narrative interaction".

What I discuss in the next section of this paper are four experiments in providing social interaction and narrative interaction. My interest in these experiments focused on how the producers were attempting to distribute "television-as-text" by creating cyberspace locations (websites and virtual worlds) to become places structured to cue and/or constrain consumption practices to specific acts; which specific acts could be inferred by analyzing the type and amount of social and/or narrative interactivity utilized to craft that place3.

The experiments will be discussed in three sections, based on what type of structuring of distribution and consumption they attempted. First are the attempts by CBS and NBC to produce "virtual living rooms". Second is the attempt by The SciFi Channel (now The SyFy Channel) to produce "virtual ghost hunting" with a live investigation of a haunted location. Third is the attempt

by Dr. Robert Bloomfield to utilize the virtual world Second Life for his own talk show.

I should first make clear my position to these experiments. I call them experiments not because they were the product of a study conducted by myself or any specific research entity.

They were experiments in the sense that the structuring of these virtual spaces for online distribution and consumption were unique in form as the producers attempted to offer new interactivities to potential consumers. As they were public offers, I approached them as interested consumer and researcher. Thus I approached these experiments with the methodological tensions of participant observer and fan-scholar. In analyzing the structure of these experiments I manoeuvred my dual identity by alternatively immersing myself in the experience and withdrawing to take notes and screenshots, which are displayed in this paper.

In this way I engaged with the experiments as often as I could from late September to late December in 2008. This period was chosen for several reasons. First, one of the experiments discussed here is a special event that only occurs once a year, on October 31; I had had experience with it in 2007, and I knew I wanted to analyze their subsequent attempt as part of this study. Second, this was the period in which CBS rolled out their experiment, which also highlighted NBC's attempt at something similar. Third, through my post-doctoral research project, we had been visited by the scholar who was experimenting with television broadcast in virtual worlds. What follows then are my observations on how these experiments have structured their distribution of television content and their conception of what should constitute interactive consumption practices.

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I take my understanding of the distinction between space and place, as they relate to virtual environments and worlds, from Jensen's (2008) discussion and analysis of the structuring of the Second Life grid space to become places for human interaction and meaning-making to occur.

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3. Cases studies of experimentation 3.1. Virtual living rooms The first two case studies are examples of experiments similar in both distribution structure and consumption practices. They are attempts by CBS and NBC to structure online spaces to become virtual “living rooms” for retransmitting content that has already been transmitted via conventional OTA and cable. The observations come from the fall of 2008, but the services continue to run with minimal change to either distribution or consumption structures. These attempts are technically not original, as ABC Family, MTV, and an entertainment portal Lycos had attempted something similar years before (Kaplan, 2008; Walsh, 2008). However, they are unique these were the first attempts to produce ongoing services directly tied to on-demand libraries the content providers could offer on their websites.

The CBS and NBC experiments have in common the idea of providing synchronous communication between viewers for the duration of the video stream. That is, while the video is playing, people are linked to each other via a chat function so that they may engage in dialogue with one another as if they were in the same room watching the show on a television set – hence the conceptualization of the virtual "living room". Where the experiments differ is in what videos are available, how to find people to be "in the room" with you, and how to interact with each other in these rooms.

3.1.1. CBS Social (Viewing) Rooms This experiment began in October 2008, as part of the CBS Labs and CBS Interactive attempt to find innovative ways to display television online by promoting the ability to interact with people as if "he's sitting right next to you." (Walsh, 2008). When I started participating in this experiment, these spaces were called Social Viewing Rooms. Their name subsequently was shortened to simply Social Room, accessible via http://www.cbs.com/socialroom. CBS, with its partnership with Viacom, and extensive libraries from Paramount and Spelling Entertainment, offered a variety of series from all the dayparts as well as classics, such as: Survivor, NCIS, Young and Restless, The Late Late Show, Star Trek, Twilight Zone, MacGyver, Love Boat, Family Ties, and Melrose Place.

Scrolling through the selection of series offered, however, I found an imposed limitation. As seen in Figure 3.1.1a, I could not choose any episode I wanted from a particular series. Each series had a particular episode being played when I would visit the website, and if I wanted to participate by watching that series, then I had to accept watching that episode. Moreover, the

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episode could already be in progress by the time I entered the Social Room; if I wanted to see it from the beginning -- say if I had never seen the episode, as was the case when I watched one from the series Numb3rs -- I had to wait for the next screening to begin. Going into a Social Room while the show was in progress made little difference to me when the series was the original Star Trek; I knew from memory the episode that was airing.

On the list of what was available to watch, each entry offered how many other people were currently "in the room", watching the series, at that time. I found this useful to locate rooms where there would be people. As mentioned above, and shown in Figure 3.1.1b, there was a synchronous chat field, similar to chat rooms, underneath the video as it streamed. Each person would be represented in this field by a pictorial icon of their choosing. In these chat fields I could talk to the other viewers about what was going on in the show, make comments about the series in general, or talk about some non-related topic. All of this happened in real time, with my text and their text appearing as cartoon dialogue balloons above our icons, actually overlapping the video being played. There were also asynchronous communication possibilities, with a message board, and quizzes that were offered regarding the series being watched.

One feature set apart the Social Room from NBC's experiment. As well as interacting with fellow viewers, I could superficially interact with the content of the video. Rolling over the video field, a menu appeared with a series of cartoon icons, as seen in Figure 3.1.1c. These icons represented a series of actions I could perform at the video stream, even to particular spots on the screen that I choose. These actions included showing love, kissing, throwing a dart or tomato, and, most telling, putting on the screen an image to reflect the corporate sponsor of the Social Room. The first sponsor I encountered was Intel, who was even highlighted by CBS as being a partner in their experiment. A subsequent sponsor I encountered was Coca-Cola.

3.1.2. NBC Viewing Parties I will confess I could not spend as much time in NBC's experiment, the Viewing Party. At the beginning of my data collection period, the CBS Social Rooms were viewable to people living outside of the United States, such as myself. NBC/Universal, on the other hand, prevented access to their video streams outside of the United States; thus, I was only able to participate in this experience at the end of my data collection period, when I had returned stateside. Since I had been made aware of the NBC experiment by looking into the Social Rooms, I felt it necessary to see how they compared.

NBC's Viewing Party structure is located as part of MyNBC and NBC Video Rewind, which they label as a way to combine community, personalization and video on demand. The service was launched in the spring of 2008, but it appears to have been kept more secretive than CBS's

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Social Room. The service is accessed not as directly as CBS, through one central webpage, but through the shows that allow Viewing Parties to be formed; http://www.nbc.com/shows/ is the place to find the option "Start a Viewing Party", as seen in Figure 3.1.2a. There is no central list as is found on CBS Social Room. It appears more that you have to know that the service is available for the series you are interested in; perhaps this is a function of being part of the MyNBC community that fans and users will communicate about Viewing Parties. However, as there is no list saying what is available when you log on, and the focus is more on the series than a particular episode being available, there is a wider selection of episodes from the library that can be viewed at any time. Unlike CBS, the user has more control over what to watch and when – and indeed, even with whom.

As with CBS, I could go into any party already started by going to the lobby and finding a party in progress. However, NBC structured the service more towards those individuals interested in creating their own unique parties – to become a host in a virtual living room, so to speak. As shown in Figure 3.1.2b, a person could initiate a Viewing Party by choosing the episode to watch, then sending out invitations by selecting friends who are also members of MyNBC or sending emails to individuals not part of the community. This structure is similar to the physical world phenomenon of gathering friends to watch a series, perhaps week after week, making it a ritual.

Giving individuals this control is what leads NBC to call such spaces "viewing party". With CBS, the space is simply a place to watch video, or a room. With NBC, the space is a place to be with your real friends, or a party.

As with CBS, there is a chat field to allow synchronous communication between all viewers.

There are also polling and quizzing functions, but unlike CBS here the host could potentially create one to test his friends. Again, this can be understood in terms of structuring the experience as a "party" and empowering the user who created the party as a host. Unlike CBS, there was no superficial interaction with the video's content.

3.2.3. CBS, NBC, and interactivity These two experiments share in common their allowance for consumption practices that control what to watch and when and with whom, although CBS restricts these controls more than NBC does. However, such time-shifting capability is increasingly a common feature for television consumption in the United States. With DVRs and various websites that stream video, timeshifting appears to be the central interaction promoted and used with interactive and Internet television. Where innovation occurs in these experiments is that both structures promote the incorporation of a synchronous communication capability. This social interaction feature is provided, and rhetorically promoted in press releases and the labelling of the services, to reduce

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the feeling of watching alone, as Internet use is often described as a physically solitary experience (Poniewozick, 2009).

As far as narrative interactivity, neither CBS nor NBC offered the ability for the user to control the content of the video in these spaces. However, CBS provided a means to express emotionality towards the content, perhaps attempting to replicate the perchance for such outbursts in other viewing contexts. For all but the last icon, these activities represent what could be considered as conventional audience reactions to content – conventional in the sense that they are examples of a parasocial interaction that is either positive (showering with love, blowing kisses) or negative (throwing darts or tomatoes). These restricted activities represent a conceptualization of how audiences in their own living rooms may emotionally act out towards the content. The last activity is akin to product placement, but it is product placement at the control of the user. Rather than be subject to either covert or overt advertising integrated into the content, here the user has the option to place the advertisement wherever the user desires. Including it with the other activities may be an attempt to treat ironically the idea of product placement, as you can throw an ad at the screen as easily as a kiss or a dart.

Meanwhile, the lack of such superficial interactivity in the NBC Viewing Parties can be understood in how these two experiments differ regarding with whom you watch the video. With CBS, unless you have negotiated a coordinated viewing external to the Social Room, you are most likely watching with strangers. In that instance, if you do not find your fellow viewers to be interesting enough to speak with, then you may be glad to have some other activities to perform while watching the video. With NBC, unless you wander into someone's party, you are most likely with people you consider to be friends, partly because of being able to talk to them. In that instance, if the content does not hold your attention, you have your friends to talk to, and no other interaction may be necessary.

3.2. Virtual ghost hunting This next experiment is also an attempt by a corporate producer. However, unlike the experiments from CBS and NBC, this case describes a special event in the season of a television series, Ghost Hunters. Airing on American cable network The SciFi (SyFy) Channel, Ghost Hunters is a reality series where a documentary crew follows The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS, http://www.the-atlantic-paranormal-society.com/) crew as they investigate potential hauntings with pseudo-scientific methods. The series began airing in 2004. In a typical episode, the crew investigates a potentially haunted location with several teams of two to three people, collecting audio, video and other data that would be analyzed for any activity that could not be explained. Since premiering, the series has produced three live shows as Halloween specials, all

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called Ghost Hunters Live. Each year they select a specific location, either well-known or supposedly high in paranormal activity, from which to broadcast.

Starting with the 2007 special, The SciFi Channel created a webpage, hosted at their main site, to promote viewers to also be online during the show to give the crew feedback about the live investigation, including asking viewers to become "part of the hunt". The website featured live video streams of the investigation, with footage not airing on the cable network, and a "Panic Button" that viewers could use if they saw something suspicious to send the crew suggestions for those places to investigate. I am focusing on the 2008 event because it occurred during the data collection period. It was similar to the 2007 event in terms of promoting participation and offering non-cable broadcast footage for such participation. The 2009 event continued the gimmick of providing additional footage online for individuals to monitor for possible evidence, including allowing the user to choose which of five cameras they wished to monitor. The 2008 event differed from the other two in that the producers attempted to stream the actual episode online to compliment the cable viewing.

The 2008 event aired October 31, Halloween night, starting at 8pm EST. The main broadcast was on The SciFi Channel, with video streaming at www.scifi.com/ghosthunters/live/.

The seven hour long event followed a return investigation to Fort Delaware, a location that had been investigated earlier with purportedly good results. A SciFi.com press release, dated Oct 28 2008, indicates the various interactive features they hoped would entice cable viewers to become online users: "SCI FI.COM INVITES FANS OF SCI FI CHANNEL'S HIT ORIGINAL REALITY SERIES 'GHOST HUNTERS' TO "JOIN THE HUNT" WITH NEW SOCIAL NETWORK ‌ And once again, SCIFI.COM will serve as the online destination on Halloween night, offering a multi-layered digital experience for fans including an exclusive, multi-camera online video feed and thermal imaging camera views, exclusive access to photos from the live event, live Q&A with the TAPS team members and the return of the "Panic Button" for web watchers to alert the team of something they are seeing live on TV."

In the press release we can see promise of narrative interactivity as the corporation promoted the idea that viewers could vicariously or virtually join the crew on their investigation by helping to monitor the live feed and make suggestions about possible paranormal activity. But that is the promise; what of the execution?

Going into this experience, I was worried the licensing embargo that prevented me from watching video streams on corporate websites would be in effect here as well. I was fortunate, and amazed, that this was not the case. The live stream worked; however, the audio did not. The website informed me I had to update my Windows Media Player, but in trying to do this I was informed by the program that I had the most updated version. Thus, I only had video. However, I could use RealPlayer to record the live stream so that I would be able to compare it with the content that was broadcast on the cable network, which I obtained via an illegal torrent.

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Additionally, during the show, I was using my Yahoo! IM program to chat with my mother, another fan of the show, so that I could keep apprised of what was happening.

Had the audio been functioning, I most likely would not have been chatting with my mother; however, in doing so, the ability to talk with her pointed out something the website was lacking.

Unlike the experiments by CBS and NBC, there was no structure to allow synchronous chatting with other viewers. Given that the promoted purpose of the website was to allow fans and viewers of the series to "join the hunt" by incorporating the Panic Button and watching footage online that was not being shown on cable, the producers may have felt that providing conduits for communicating with other fans would have distracted them from their vigilance.

The webpage was divided into four parts. The main feature of the website was the video streaming of live feed from the investigation site. This live stream was promoted as being different from what cable viewers would see, calling it "exclusive access to view locations in the Fort that won't be shown on TV". The live stream provided footage that appeared shot from security cameras – high angle, very still -- for viewers to monitor and thus feel like part of the action. By comparing what I recorded from the live stream to the cable footage, I could see that when the show was not in commercial, the live stream tended to show what was being broadcast, although not always. At times when the cable broadcast was focused on one team as they investigated, the online footage would follow different teams. When the cable broadcast would be in commercial, the live stream would show the exclusive footage, which consisted mostly of the security camera footage from various spots around the location.

Besides the live stream, there were channels to allow three types of asynchronous communication. As mentioned, there was the Panic Button, actually designed to be a big, red button, as seen in Figure 3.2a. Using this feature, the user is prompted to indicate what the investigators should look at and why. Users were also given two fields to send comments or questions directly, supposedly, to three crew members, as shown in Figure 3.2b. One field was to ask questions to Amy Bruni, a new TAPS crew member, who was tasked for the night with answering these questions and posting the answers online, shown in Figure 3.2c. Amy and the producers saw the questions asked before they were posted with the answers. The other field was designed to allow users to send questions to the two founders and chief investigators of TAPS, Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson. No answers from Jason and Grant were posted online, and there was no indication of what happened to the questions.

3.3.1 Ghost Hunters Live and interactivity As indicated by the event's producers, the goal of the online distribution was to promote a type of consumption whereby fans and loyal viewers could feel they were having impact by being a

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part of the investigation. With this intention, the producers structured the virtual space to promote ways of interacting with the investigating crew, such as the Panic Button and the two fields for asking questions. The producers promoted an ideal of narrative interactivity, leading users to believe they could potentially spot the big piece of evidence that will become the focus of the investigation.

However, in the experience, this narrative interactivity was more for promoting viewership than it was a consumption practice that impacted the progress of the content. The potential narrative interaction occurred asynchronously, and through the filters of the producers. For example, the Q&A with Amy. These posts were not terribly frequent during the event, and when they did occur, they had the feel of being public relations style communication management. The following examples were typical of the exchanges posted: William: Amy , will you be doing any investigating?

Amy: Tonight I will be in the interactive center only. But I have been investigating with TAPS for awhile now. I was on the last episode at the USS Hornet and you will see me in a few more episodes this season and a lot more in season 5. :) Mike: how is the atmosphere amy Amy: Pretty intense actually. Everyone takes this very seriously and of course, with so many viewers watching it adds a different and exciting element. Of course, the team is always fun, so even with a little added pressure, we have a good time. :) Dave: Amy. since I've been watching this show I've been real interested in the paranormal. What struck your interest in this field?

Amy: I was actually raised in a house that had a lot of paranormal activity. My family was very open about it and I started reading books on the paranormal when I just a kid. A couple years ago, I decided to take that interest and knowledge, and use it to investigate.

Jon: Amy, where or who do I ask, about the team investigating a tunnel and a trail that is in my area? They are extremely creepy and I've had some weird things happen to me there.

Amy: You can check out the TAPS web site, www.the-atlantic-paranormal-society.com for information on where and when to send case requests to TAPS. Good luck!

The answers concerned basic information about the episode, the series or TAPS. There was no indication of questions posted challenging TAPS or the veracity of their evidence. There was no discussion about whether or not ghosts actually do exist. No doubt not all questions posed to Amy were answered, and as there was no way to verify the existence of those people who did ask questions, this interactive feature could just as well have been scripted.

Additionally, there was very little acknowledgement of the show's investigators using comments from the audience during the course of the episode. At many times the cable broadcast would display in a crawl at the bottom suggestions generated from the online consumers; as seen in Figure 3.2.1a, the person's name, location and suggestion would be shown, giving the viewer the sense of having a presence in the show, but with no impact as these suggestions were not used to prompt any investigations. Several times Amy and other crew members mentioned how many Panic Button hits they had, but only once was there a pause in the episode narrative to

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address the suggestions. At 3 hours and 55 minutes into the investigation, Jason and Grant answered live a call from a viewer who claimed his ancestor was a Confederate soldier and thus a prisoner at the Fort. The viewer suggested whistling Dixie to provoke the spirit; Jason and Grant both chuckled at the suggestion, but promised to try it. However, the broadcast never showed them fulfilling this promise.

In all, it would appear that the attempts at narrative interaction were constructed more to "pay lip service" (Cover, 2004, 2006) to the desires of loyal viewers and fans who may wish to be a part of the investigation. To gratify this desire, the producers structured the site to contain various means by which they could interact with their objects of affection – the TAPS team members and the concept of ghost hunting. But the extent to which those viewers actually had an impact on their object of affection appears to have been minimal at best.

3.3.

Virtual world talk show The last experiment I report on here occurred within the new media of a virtual world –

Linden Lab's Second Life, to be exact. This experience was with a television series created and broadcast inworld, within Second Life, as well as streamed to a related website. It is not a production supported by a corporation; instead, it is the work of a professor of economics, Dr. Robert Bloomfield of Cornell University. As part of his research interest in the economics of virtual worlds, Dr. Bloomfield began producing an inworld talk show, Metanomics, in September of 2007.

All programs are archived at their website, www.metanomics.net, for time-shifting consumption.

However, it is the live shows that occur inworld and on the website that are the focus of my analysis.

I must first clarify that Metanomics was not the first time television production as been attempted in a virtual world for distribution inworld and through other conventional media. A decade ago a research group in the United Kingdom, in partnership with a local television system, attempted to create a virtual world that would be used to create broadcast material via a process they dubbed "Inhabited Television" (Craven et al, 2000). They designed the virtual world to contain areas and events they hoped would entice virtual world inhabitants to visit their space; then they would film the activities that occurred and use the footage for broadcast content. According to the researchers working on the project: "The defining feature of this medium is that an on-line audience can socially participate in a TV show that is staged within a shared virtual world. The producer defines a framework, but it is audience interaction and participation that brings it to life. ‌ Furthermore, inhabited TV extends interactive TV to include social interaction among participants, new forms of control over narrative structure (e.g. navigation within a virtual world) and interaction with content (e.g. direct manipulation of props)." (Benford et al, 1999, p. 180)

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In essence, this earlier research project is similar to what the producers of Metanomics have accomplished with their creation of an ongoing television series that even operates within standard television seasons.

I began participating inworld and online with the September 23, 2006 episode, and was there for seven episodes. All the shows in some way deal with topics about virtual worlds: from the study to the design of them. At the time, the show was broadcast from an "island", or a region of the virtual world owned by the show's producers, in Second Life called Sage Hall4. On this island stood a building designed to mirror a physical building at Cornell University. As seen in Figure 3.3a, in this building was a large hall festooned with virtual objects intended to replicate a conventional three-camera television studio built for a talk show. There was a stage decorated with chairs for the host, Dr. Bloomfield's avatar Beyer Sellers, as well as his guests for the show.

Behind the chairs was a basic backdrop with an integrated video screen that could show graphics, text and video. There were stadium-style stands for the audience to sit in – or, rather, for the physical audience at their computers to position their avatars at as an anchor in the studio. There were no objects representing cameras, as the technology allowed for recording to occur either linked to a user's avatar or to a point in the virtual world of the user's choice.

The production staff of the show was geographically dispersed around the United States, and at times around the world. For the September 23rd show, Dr. Bloomfield was at our university, but was still able to conduct his show as if he was doing it from his standard location. The series was "filmed" and transmitted by SLCN (Second Life Cable Network), which since the data collection period has become Treet TV (http://archive.treet.tv/programs/metanomics). The show was broadcast within Second Life to special islands, or event partners. During data collection this included: MetaPartners, New Media Consortium, Rockcliffe University Consortium, Muse Island, and Orange Island. As mentioned, the show is also streamed live at their website for those who do not have access to Second Life, either in general or due to a technical glitch, as happened to me once.

As part of my experience, I visited all of the event partners to understand how the transmission worked. At each island, for example MetaPartners and New Media Consortium seen in Figure 3.3b, a theatre was constructed that allowed users to position their avatars in chairs or stadium-style stands and orient their avatars, and thus what they could see in the world, towards a screen that would exhibit the show. Once I was forced to attend an event partner because I had arrived too late at Sage Hall to become part of the live studio audience. Each island has a limit as to how many avatars can be there at any given time; by the time I had arrived at Sage Hall, the studio was full. Also, because this experiment combined both a virtual world and live streaming, 4

The show currently airs from a new island in Second Life in a building not designed to reflect a physical world location; however, it does retain the conventional set-up of stage and stands for studio audience.

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there were technical glitches. For the October 13 show, the audio and video feeds were distorted at the New Media Consortium island, which I had scheduled to visit. Then, in teleporting to the Rockcliffe University Consortium island, my avatar, and thus myself, became stuck in a blue void and I was unable to move. That night I ended up going to the website to watch the show and participate from there.

While the use of a virtual world to produce an ongoing television series is itself innovative, the experiment's most innovative feature may be the utilization of an inworld feature to facilitate, encourage, and utilize active audience participation. The series created a "chatbridge" or "backchat" structure wherein audience members can utilize the world's standard texting feature to talk amongst themselves and address questions and comments to the host, guests and producers during the live show. As depicted in Figure 3.3c, this feature produces what Dr. Bloomfield called a "constructive cacophony".

At each of the locations in Second Life, there were balls in the audience sections that were treated metaphorically as microphones. If the audience member sat her avatar within a specified range to this "microphone", then anything she types in her chat field will automatically be included as part of this "constructive cacophony". Individuals who watched the live stream at the website could likewise log in and participate in the chatbridge from there. The host and the guests were also a linked to the chatbridge and would sometimes partake in the conversation. Audience members were encouraged by producers to ask questions for the host and guests, allowing for the backchat to actually provide feedback to influence the content of the show. The producers also used this chatbridge to send out announcements before, during and after the show, such as information about the show's sponsors, links to websites discussed in the show, and information about upcoming episodes.

3.3.1. Metanomics and interactivity The fact that a section of a virtual world was structured so as to produce a television series is itself an attempt to foster greater interaction on the part of the consumer. More than just logging in to a website and clicking on the hyperlink for a specific page, the consumer must initiate the Second Life program, which includes creating an avatar, then orient her avatar to a place where the episode will be shown and to face the screen within the virtual world so that what appears on the user's computer screen is that episode. These steps require more activity on the part of the user, and more reactivity on the part of the medium in order to function.

Furthermore, the producers of Metanomics have attempted to simultaneously promote social and narrative interaction through their promotion of constructive cacophony. The chatbridge allows individuals to communicate with each other during the show with the same type of

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synchronicity both CBS and NBC provide. Because the producers, host and guests are also part of the chatbridge, there is the possibility that any audience member could impact the course of the show, utilizing the same potential promoted by Ghost Hunters Live.

In one sense it is unfair to include an analysis of this experiment with the others for two reasons. First, this is an academic program within a less used medium, a virtual world, about a highly specialized topic; thus, the overall audience size is not comparable to those generated by the corporate controlled examples. Because of this smaller size, it is possible to generate the type of social interaction Ghost Hunters Live could not. Second, it is a talk show and not generally designed for high audience feedback, whereby a solitary question from the audience could completely change the course of the show. Thus the genre is different than the formats used by CBS and NBC, which use their virtual spaces for the distribution and consumption only of scripted material. The genre is also different than that of Ghost Hunters Live, but as with those special event shows, not every question directed at the producers of Metanomics becomes utilized by the producers to impact the content of the show.

However, there are reasons to include this experiment when discussing attempts to further the interactivity of television distribution and consumption. In both the Ghost Hunters Live and Metanomics examples, the producers act as gatekeepers and decide what communication from the audience will be passed along to become part of the show's content. From the user's perspective, there was no one-on-one correlation between the user's actions and the content's reactions. Instead the content responds to the aggregated audience by reacting to perhaps the "best" actions, where the actions are determined to be as such by the producers. Additionally, in the Metanomics and CBS and NBC experiments, individuals alone at home or work, seated before a computer, can be in conversation with individuals perhaps thousands of miles away, both strangers and friends; indeed, friendships can be fostered via such communicating, and even a sense of community can form. Also, in all three of those experiments, there was some attempt for the producers to bring into the virtual space the practices of a physical space; with CBS and NBC, these would be the practices of watching television with others in a living room; with Metanomics it would be the practices of being part of a live studio audience for a talk show.

4. Remediating conventional television online Through my participation with these experiments, what I have discussed is what I found the most interesting: how the producers were attempting to provide different types of interaction in the experience of internet TV. They appeared interested in creating structures that would promote some form of social interaction and/or narrative interaction. I found such experimental attempts at increased interactivity interesting for two reasons. First, for what such attempts say about the

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desire of the producers to remediate the structures and practices of conventional television.

Second, for what such attempts say about the power dynamics in the relationship between producers and consumers. In this section I will elaborate on my observations and reflections considering both of these points.

4.1 Remediation Remediation, as originally conceptualized by Bolter and Grusin (1999), is used in this discussion to understand how to compare conventional television distribution and consumption to the structures and practices promoted in these four experiments; remediation helps us understand, as we compare the movement of content from one medium to another, what was or was not changed in that the meaning of the content and how it was distributed. For the purposes of this discussion, I am focusing the notion of remediation involving not only content, but the forces that are surrounding and embedded in that content and its distribution structures.

"No medium today, and certainly no single media event, seems to do its cultural work in isolation from other media, any more than it works in isolation from other social and economic forces. What is new about new media comes from the particular ways in which they refashion older media and the ways in which older media refashion themselves to answer the challenges of new media." Bolter & Grusin (1999, p.15) "Remediation is, above all, the borrowing and refashioning of the representational practices of one media or media form into another, and such practices are constituted as a combination of technical choices and ideological positions. The measure of these practices is not a standard dictated by any essential features of a technology; it is instead their ability to capture the 'real' with reference to some cultural standard." Bolter (2007, p. 201)

I refer to these two quotes as they seemingly acknowledgement that a media text, new or old, does not only involve how the content is refashioned, and the ways in which the refashioning speak to the nature of mediation. "Television-as-text" is a product of the multiple layers of meaning and behaviours that surround it as it is enmeshed in social and cultural networks. In remediating, it is possible to attempt to refashion these meanings and behaviours: either to make them transparent, where the consumer is in relation to them through the new media as they would be through the old, or to make them aware of the new media's mediation in bringing to the consumer to the text (Bolter, 2000; Bolter & Grusin, 1999). In this sense, along with comparing the technical structure of the text that is being remediated, one can also compare the behaviours that are either implicitly or explicitly also brought into the new consumption space (Crang, Crosbie & Graham, 2007; Deuze, 2006).

In this discussion of Internet TV, the analysis is on how the Internet compares to television in refashioning the distribution structures and consumption practices of and around conventional "television-as-text" content. In the following three sections I will discuss how the experiments can

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be seen as attempts to remediate three aspects of conventional television: practices, structures, and power dynamics.

4.1.1. Remediating practices In this analysis I will focus on a practice that is often used to separate the two distribution technologies under consideration, networked computers and television sets. Engaging with any aspect of the Internet, from emails to massive multiplayer games, is typically considered to be a solitary experience, at least in the sense that in the physical world the ratio is one person to one computer screen (Poniewozik, 2009). Television is typically considered a social activity, whether at the time of consumption or later on as a focal point for conversation (Chorianopoulous & Lekakos, 2008; Ryu & Wong, 2008; Wood, 2007).

The virtual livings rooms created by CBS and NBC and the virtual talk show Metanomics are examples of attempts to remediate the social practices of consumption that happen in living rooms or any place people congregate in-person to consume the same televised content. The producers consciously programmed their virtual spaces to promote synchronous social interaction.

NBC and CBS marketed their products to highlight such capability, even labeling them with terms that would conjure up the physical surroundings and the practices that inhabit them.

The question remains, however, did they effectively remediate the practices? Part of remediation is determined by the subjective experience of the user; this would perhaps be most true for the activities that surround the television set and constitute the engagement with it. If the user does not perceive the social interaction activities in the online spaces to be similar to those he is familiar with in the physical spaces, then can they be considered the same? Critic Chris Albrecht (2008) tested CBS's Social Rooms and found the social interaction not a true remediation of those physical world practices. Albrecht argued there is a difference between virtual and physical social interaction, and one of his key points is that without the body language and sound aspects it is not the same type of social interaction.

The lack of such cues is particularly true in the NBC case, but less in the CBS and Metanomics cases. With NBC, there is only the option of textual chatting. With CBS, the users can interact with the screen through the various actions, and each user's actions will be visible to the others in the room. In this way, each person in the virtual living room could comment upon the actions of the others, as they could do were such interactions occurring within a physical living room. With Metanomics, the avatars are full bodied representations of humans and other creatures, capable of making gestures akin to physical body language. In each of the event partners, where the avatars congregate to consume the live feed, people can use their digital selves to relay communication other than through the text channel. Of course, none of these

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virtual spaces can completely remediate all the dimensionality of social interaction that occurs within the physical world, but the virtual world can come closest with the combination of embodied and text communication.

4.1.2. Remediating structures As I have discussed, what I consider makes these cases experimental are the attempts at different types and amounts of interactivity. In the previous section I discussed social interaction.

Narrative interaction was also attempted in two of the case studies as an attempt to refashion the distribution of television from one-way transmission to a more two-way dialogic model. A more dialogic distribution model is one of the features proponents of interactive television have attempted to develop: the ability for the consumer to interact with the content so as to have the content reacts in real-time to his actions. Since the rise of digital games with increasingly complicated narratives, there has been growing interest in how to learn from these interactive media for the production of interactive television (Cover, 2004; Ekman & Lankoski, 2004; Ursu et al, 2008).

In both the Ghost Hunters Live and Metanomics cases, there was structured into the nature of the show an attempt to include the consumers in the production process, to limited extents.

Being live shows, both examples structured their virtual space so that the audience could provide feedback to the producers that could impact the progress of the content as it was broadcast. For Ghost Hunters Live, such feedback was through specified structures of asking questions to the producers and providing suggestions to assist the investigation. For Metanomics, such feedback was through the communal chatbridge that linked audience members with one another and with producers during the course of the show. By allowing, and promoting, such feedback potentials, both cases were explicitly indicating they did not intend to distribute their content in the conventional linear model; instead, they attempted to bring in real-time audience feedback, thereby creating a dialogic distribution model.

However, the narrative interactivity of these experiments is not equitable with the truest form seen in digital games due to the lack of a one-to-one action-reaction ratio. What this means is that the progress of the television content was not reactive to each single user. Instead, the content reacts to the aggregated audience. In Ghost Hunters Live and Metanomics, the producers selected only certain questions or suggestions to incorporate into the live content; everyone who wanted to influence the content could not directly do so. In digital games individuals playing alone or in groups have the one-on-one relationship as their actions can be shown to directly influence the game’s content as it reacts to them. Game players can have the experience of having their

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actions matter for the progress of the game's content; such subjective experience is not possible with either of these experiments.

While these examples show interest in narrative interactivity, there remains the tension about producing a true one-on-one ratio. Even research studies that have attempted to create television broadcasts that were interactive also relied on the aggregated response model (Hales, Pellimen & CastrĂŠn, 2006; Ursu et al, 2008). What these experiments reflect is the tension Cover (2004, 2006) described as the problems involved in overcoming the "author-text-audience" relationship. With both Ghost Hunters Live and Metanomics, the lack of the one-to-one narrative interaction can be seen as "paying lip service" to the desires of consumers to fully participate in the content.

4.2. Remediating power dynamics The conclusion of the previous section leads directly into the discussion of this section.

Conventional power dynamics in television are based on the producers being empowered over the creation and distribution of content, with consumers having increasing control over their consumption. The attempts at interactivity found in these case studies can be read as attempts to refashion this conventional power dynamic for the new media landscape. In examining the rise of interactive marketing techniques, I have argued (Reinhard, 2008) that the attempts by producers to structure interactivity into their offered media products is to maintain the ability to utilize the labour of aggregated audiences for their own purposes.

I believe we can see a similar power dynamic at work in these case studies. While it is true that these experiments provide more interactivity than has been found in other internet television offerings, they are not the type of interactivity that empowers the individual to explore her desires fully. Instead, the interactivity is limited in terms of the choices available, as predetermined or determined in real time by the producers – a system that is reflexive to programmed parameters, but is not flexible beyond that (Kim & Sawhney, 2002). While the consumers are empowered in certain ways, the producers have determined how, when and in what way those consumers will be empowered, thereby retaining ultimate power over distribution, and to a lesser extent consumption.

Rather than deconstruct the traditional television model to truly make interactive television, Kim and Sawhney argue the industry is more interested in maintaining the conventional model (2002), albeit with adjustments to reflect the increasing active nature of consumers. From one perspective, maintaining this model is commonsense. The producers have to be responsive to an audience, an aggregated collection of users, even if it is not numbering in the millions. A technological medium can be responsive to the actions of a user, but to the providers that individual user is just one of many. While the user may be able to interact with and respond to the

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whole network, the whole network, in order to be economically viable, must respond and interact with the aggregated audience (Van Tassel, 2001). Limiting the type and amount of interactivities can reflect this necessity of responding to larger, variable marketplace of consumers.

What this points to is the tension discussed by Cover (2004, 2006) and Jenkins (2004) on the traditionally dichotomous identities of producer and consumer. Producers have attempted to respond to changes in the marketplace and the media landscape by simultaneously including consumers more in the production of television (Bennett & Strange, 2008; Deuze, 2007) and offering them greater control over the distribution and exhibition of television (Becker, 2006; Holahan, 2007), and then using their ability to maintain aggregating audiences to further grow and develop their media empires that are ultimately not disempowered in relation to the audience (Deuze, 2007). The television industry has learned lessons from the music industry that to remain powerful in a world mediated by the Internet (Holahan, 2007; Seiter, 1999), the industry must provide some power to the consumers to fulfil increasing interest in interactivity From a critical approach, these attempts to remediate the power dynamics may appear oppressive, disallowing the consumer to fully express herself by interacting on all levels of television content, from production to consumption. I will not argue this is not potentially true.

There does appear to be pandering to those who want interactivity by providing limited forms that could potentially become accepted as the norm by the majority of users, thereby reducing the likelihood of truer interaction, and more equitable power dynamics, in the future.

However, to what extent does such an argument celebrate the consumer as being alwaysactive, or indeed all consumers being as interested in interactivity as the most active fans studied

by Ross (2008). Seen from another perspective, this remediation may be interpreted as basic "supply and demand" economics, of producers responding to a majority of the audience being unwilling and/or not ready to embrace a fully interactive television. The majority of consumers may be more interested in the passive reception of the content rather than having to negotiate and navigate a highly interactive technical interface (as seen in discussions by Benford et al, 1999; Van Tassel, 2001). This tension in the marketplace continues when we consider potential consumers to be an aggregate of a variety of groups, some that may be more or less likely to be in the readyto-interact category. Studies indicate acceptance and desire for truer interactivity will come sooner with younger, more affluent demographics and those experienced/comfortable with computers and online environments, such as fans of television shows that began colonizing the Internet as a place for their fandom (Ross, 2008; Sperring & Strandvall, 2008; Ursu et al, 2008; van Dijk & de Vos, 2001).

From this perspective, perhaps what these case studies illustrate are attempts to remediate the practices and structures of conventional television because these practices and structures can

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replicate the logics of television to which consumers have become accustomed (Green, 2008). As Ekman and Lankoski (2004, p. 168) discussed in their survey of British people, finding both this duality of interest and hesitation: "Although new media may be emerging, people are slow to change. They will prefer the old and reliable to the new and suspect, until the new medium becomes familiar. ‌ interactive television will have to maintain some familiar aspects of television, mainly its broadcast nature, in order to be perceived as television at all."

In providing a hybrid, a middle ground of something familiar combined with something novel, progress could be made toward that dream of the interactive television that better balances the power between producers and consumers. However, the assumptions of this perspective require reception studies analyses of the wants and needs of the aggregated audience(s) in relation to these experiments and similar attempts to colonize cyberspace to become places for television.

5. Conclusions As the Internet and broadband technology grow in scale and diffuse throughout the marketplace, we may continue to see more attempts to bring to online distribution and consumption of television the type of interactivity that proponents of interactive television had hoped to bring to the television set. Already all online television structures foster time-shifting; consumers can visit a variety of Internet applications, both legal and illegal, to find whatever content they wish. This ability is similar to the control offered by DVR devices for television sets.

What these case studies show is how virtual spaces can become places to offer two types of interaction that have not become widely available in the public marketplace: social interaction and narrative interaction.

While we are seeing progress being made towards interactive TV, and the potential such interactive TV would hold for empowering the consumers, the current experiments also seem to indicate that the consumer/producer power dynamic and tension continues to underlie much of the structuring of online virtual environments and worlds for television production, distribution, exhibition and consumption. The producers are increasingly responding to the interactive desires of the consumers in the marketplace, especially to those who are Internet-savvy and thus most likely to go to such places. However, if the majority of the marketplace does not indicate the desire for that control, then there may be less experimentation that could offer more empowering interaction, such as true narrative interaction. Then the minority who do wish for such control may have to continue to colonize virtual worlds like Second Life, which is founded to promote userdriven innovation, to have their needs met.

In the discussion of these experiments, I have attempted to consider the remediation occurring as neither completely oppressing or empowering the consumers or producers. Indeed, indicating either as occurring would be to see a resolution to the tension, and I do not believe such

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a resolution has occurred, or is likely to occur. The experiments illustrate the result of the intertwinement of structure and agency, as discussed by such scholars as Giddens (1984). The experiments were developed in response to the changes in the activities of consumers, and these activities were themselves in response to changes in the media landscape. Perhaps the interactivity offered in these cyberspaces do not promote completely empowering the audience, but should the places fail to produce measurable consumption, especially among the corporate controlled experiments, then these spaces will be restructured. Indeed, their very presence, and their promotion of interactivity, may foster greater desire in the marketplace for such control, thereby prompting more manipulations of cyberspace. Or the experiments could be economic failures, and such attempts to create online places of interactive consumption may stop or be delayed.

As long as both structure and agency are constituted by changeable actions and material conditions, there cannot be an either-or resolution to the tension of producer-consumer. There will only be the tension manifesting in new ways and in new sites, such as these experiments. My analysis of these sites attempted to focus on their structures in how they relate to, reflect upon, and are influenced by the surrounding cultural and economic forces at the time of their manifestation.

Situating the experiments in this larger fabric provided a way to speak to both the concerns of political economics on the positioning of the producer and reception studies on the understanding of the consumer. As Jenkins (2004) spoke to, these new media sites can provide us the opportunity to understand the necessity of combining these disciplines, so as not to succumb to the need for an either-or resolution to what is a very complex situation. Investigating these sites from both perspectives can help us understand the complexities of these tensions and what and how they speak to the sociohistorical moment(s) in which they exist.

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Internet television remediating conventional television

Figure 3.1.1a. List of shows available for CBS Social Rooms

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Internet television remediating conventional television

Figure 3.1.1b. Example of CBS Social Room chat

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Internet television remediating conventional television

3.1.1c. Example of CBS Social Room icons

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Internet television remediating conventional television

3.1.2.a. NBC Viewing Party selection process

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Internet television remediating conventional television

3.1.2.b. NBC Viewing Party creation process

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Internet television remediating conventional television

Figure. 3.2a. Ghost Hunters Live Panic Button

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Internet television remediating conventional television

Figure 3.2b. Ghost Hunters Live fields for asking questions

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Internet television remediating conventional television

Figure 3.2c. Ghost Hunters Live Amy Bruni answers questions

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Internet television remediating conventional television

Figure 3.2.1a. Ghost Hunters Live examples of viewers' suggestions

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Internet television remediating conventional television

3.3a. Metanomics Sage Hall stage

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Internet television remediating conventional television

3.3b. Metanomics event partners theatres, MetaPartners and New Media Consoritum

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Internet television remediating conventional television

Figure 3.3c. Metanomics chatbridge at Sage Hall

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