Page 531 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

10 | T Vo: T mesh ft ng Amer ca

tiVo For kids
One of the most interesting facets of a new technology’s adoption is how it redefines how a
generation engages with a medium. For children growing up in DVR households, television
is a very different experience than it was for previous generations. When such children ask,
“What shows are on?” they are not referring to the TV schedule—rather they mean, “What
is on the TiVo’s menu?” The transmission of television via a predetermined schedule is a
foreign concept to a DVR child, even though this has always been one of the defining ele-
ments of television as a medium. For such children, all television is part of an ever-changing
menu of programming to be accessed at their convenience, not a steady stream of broad-
casting to be tapped into at someone else’s convenience. Scheduling practices that can
often define a generation’s media memories, like Saturday morning cartoons, are irrelevant
to TiVo children, who always have their favorite shows waiting on demand. When DVRs be-
come commonplace, how will the TiVo generation view the media?

a weaker show in a hammock between two hits, and counterprogramming against
another network’s hit to appeal to a different audience. Specific time slots were
developed to appeal to particular audiences, such as daytime soap operas for
stay-at-home women, Saturday morning cartoons for kids, and prime time for
the largest mass audience. The most important scheduling technique for net-
works was the placement of advertisements within a single program, paying for
the network’s operation by charging sponsors to access the attention of a show’s
viewers. The entire commercial broadcasting system depended on the ability to
attract viewers via a consistent schedule of programming with embedded adver-
tising slots that could be sold to the highest bidder.

PLayBaCk CuLTurE
DVRs were not the first technology to threaten this model of broadcasting.
The VCR emerged as a popular device for consumers in the late 1970s and early
1980s, offering viewers the ability to both record television broadcasts and play
back prerecorded videotapes. While the ability to record broadcasts was a major
feature of the VCR, the device’s popularity was driven by the video rental mar-
ket, as consumers used their televisions to watch films on demand. The practice
of timeshifting television programming using the recording function of VCRs
was far less common, popular only with a minority of technologically savvy
viewers, dedicated fans, and video collectors. In part, this was due to the notori-
ously complicated procedures needed to program a VCR to record, leading to
widespread jokes about unprogrammed VCR clocks flashing 12:00 due to con-
fused users. With a VCR, timeshifting was a practice that required extra effort,
planning, and technological savvy.
While DVRs enable a similar possibility of timeshifting, they offer more
than just a sophisticated VCR. DVRs take the signal from cable, satellite, or an