Page 223 - Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere

vision programming. The concept of “®ow” was described by Raymond Wil-
liams (1975) and is an often-cited phenomenon in television (e.g. Abu-Lughod
1995, 206; Mankekar 1999, 91). Williams suggests that television differs from
other media in that viewers tend to experience it as a ®ow, or an organized se-
quence, rather than as the staging of discrete events. According to Williams, the
key to creating a sense of ®ow, rather than of event, is ¤lling the “interval” be-
tween programs in such a way that the television-watching experience, includ-
ing both “content” and advertising, is continuous. The point is to make the dis-
tinction between content and advertising as seamless as possible. Announced
programs grade into one another and into unannounced advertising. Williams
suggests that in the United States viewers no longer even have a sense of the
space between programs constituting a break, because the programs are spon-
sored by intrusive advertisers, whose presence is felt throughout a show, and be-
cause later shows are continually foreshadowed in whatever show one is watch-
ing. Of course this form of television is hardly inevitable and is not the only
way that programming can be organized. As Williams (1975, 90) puts it, “What
is being offered is not, in older terms, a programme of discrete units with par-
ticular insertions, but a planned ®ow, in which the true series is not the pub-
lished sequence of programme items but this sequence transformed by the in-
clusion of another kind of sequence, so that these sequences together compose
the real ®ow, the real ‘broadcasting.’” Although Williams undoubtedly overstates
the confusion caused by televisual ®ow, and too easily discounts the obviously
common practice of television watching that is event-oriented, his argument
that television spectatorship differs qualitatively from other kinds of spectator-
10
ship is nonetheless valuable. Advertising certainly is an integral part of televi-
sion programming in many places, and the programming of advertising surely
changes the nature of television events.
In much Egyptian television the advertising does not fall within programs
but rather occur in blocs of time between shows. In the early to mid-1990s, and
substantially still today, advertising intervals could last up to half an hour. 11
Then, as now, longer advertising segments were grouped before the most desir-
able television events, such as the main prime-time dramatic serials of the
evening. Prices for prime advertising time rise, and the period before prominent
Ramadan programs commands some of the highest rates of the television cal-
endar.
Williams (1975, 95) suggests that the “central television experience” is of
®ow, not of event. He also pointed out that there are various ways to structure
®ow. He had in mind the differences between British and American television
(at a time before British television had begun to incorporate elements of Ameri-
can programming patterns). In Egypt, advertising is an increasingly important
part of programming, although the system is far more state-dominated than
television is either in the United States or Britain. But in all cases the analysis
of television ®ow hinges crucially on the intentions of planners. In U.S. televi-
sion, commercial programmers have to structure the ®ow so that it continu-
ally ®ashes forward from the event being aired at any given time to upcoming

212 Walter Armbrust