Page 530 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

T Vo: T mesh ft ng Amer ca | 0

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“The Inoculation Approach.” In Media Education: An Introduction, ed. Manuel Alvarado
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Peter L. Mclaren, eds. Critical Literacy: Politics, Praxis, and the Postmodern. Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1993; Molnar, Alex. Giving Kids the Business: The Com-
mercialization of America’s Schools. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996; Saettler, Paul. The
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Brian Goldfarb

tiVo: tiMeshiFting aMeriCa

At the turn of the twenty-first century, television transformed from a self-
contained medium controlled by broadcasters into a key part of broader digi-
tal technology systems. One major innovation that helped lead this change
was the digital video recorder (DVR), best known by the brand name TiVo.
How did TiVo transform television, and who ended up better or worse in its
wake?
In 1999, two rival companies introduced similar products that would even-
tually change the way that Americans watch and think about television. Both
ReplayTV and TiVo marketed DVRs, devices that shifted control of the televi-
sion schedule away from networks and into the hands of viewers. At first glance,
a DVR seems to be little more than a high-tech videocassette recorder (VCR),
allowing viewers to easily record programs onto a compact hard drive instead
of bulky tapes. But the functions and possibilities of DVRs proved to be much
more of a radical break from conventional television viewing than even the de-
vices’ inventors had probably anticipated, challenging long-established norms of
television production and reception.

ThE BroaDCasT TELEvision moDEL

Throughout the last half of the twentieth century, television was the domi-
nant mass medium in the United States, offering the most popular leisure time
activity for most Americans, and trailing only sleeping and working as a dedi-
cated portion of everyday life. Viewers took the basic system of watching televi-
sion for granted—channels were received over the air or later through cable or
satellites, and the programming on each channel was scheduled and controlled
by the broadcaster. If you wanted to watch television, you had to watch whatever
was airing at that moment on whichever channels you received. Viewers learned
when their favorite show was on, and TV Guide became the magazine with the
highest circulation by helping viewers navigate the television schedule.
The television industry took advantage of their ability to schedule programs
by developing clever techniques to attract viewers—running similar shows
together in line-ups, placing new shows after an established lead-in, placing