Obama's inaugural showed TV's superiority to other mediums
With television, we were there, says Robert Bianco. "At an event dedicated to a dream no longer deferred, TV did what no other medium, from print to blogs to webcasts, can do as well: It conferred a sense of union and participation, a feeling that you were sharing the experience, not only with those who were there but with everyone who was watching," he says. "The peak arrived when Obama was sworn in and made his first speech as president, an 18-minute stretch that may remind an industry prone to sound bites of the pleasures of sustained eloquence. Still, television is a visual medium, and more gripping than the words were the images: those shots of Obama with the Capitol dome rising behind him and a huge, varied throng stretching in front." PLUS: Check out Oprah at the inauguration. Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Will Obama's inauguration be one of the last shared TV events?
Eric Deggans says of today's historic event: "In today's super-fragmented media environment, little beyond American Idol and the Super Bowl can draw us together around TV's electronic hearth. Once upon a time, everyone could remember where they were when news broke that President Kennedy was shot or Saigon had fallen. These days, when even the selection of a vice president is announced by text message, that memory is gone, swallowed by technology's new ability to bring us instant reporting from just about anywhere to wherever." PLUS: Inauguration will be all over primetime. [ TV t a t t l e . c o m ]
2 comments:
Eric Deggans doesn't seem to realize the flaw in his own logic - the inauguration did draw people around their tv for a shared event. He seems to be suggesting that people were sitting around the tv watching JFK's assassination instead of hearing about it in the various ways in which it came to them - via the radio, phone-calls from family, or the principal of the school making an announcement. Current devices have simply made word-of-mouth a much quicker experience. That tv has become less of a constant shared event is probably true, but there will always be that one event, or another, that draws people around the tube (or some variation) at the same time.
Current devices have simply made word-of-mouth a much quicker experience. -- yes, well said.
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