Table of contentsHow does 'flow' influence the aesthetics and experience of television viewing? So what is it? than “flow”?ConclusionREFERENCES:The changing experience of television viewing. Based on Raymond Williams' theory of “Programming: Distribution and Flow” Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get an original essay How does “flow” influence the aesthetic and experience of watching TV? Have you ever wondered why all the furniture in a house faces the same direction; television? A small box which, much more than being a radio wave transmission system, offers inconceivable experiences. A drawer of programs and channels. A window of information and broadcasts which, however good or bad, has become a daily companion to our tasks. Television is part of our daily domestic experience, an essential machine that seemingly never stops delivering content. It doesn't matter what time you turn on the TV because you will always enjoy entertainment. Nevertheless, due to its popularity, television has entered the competitive sector, radically changing its meaning and experience; which does not always have the same impact on the viewer. This is a consequence of "flow", a term deeply debated and analyzed by Raymond Williams, a theorist who revolutionized the television landscape by discussing the idea in ​Television: Technology and Cultural Form​ (Williams, 1974 ). This essay will evaluate how the idea of ​​"flow" can reshape the aesthetic and experience of television viewing, and discuss how it has become one of the governing terms for understanding television broadcasting. The term "flow" first emerged as a catchword for television studies in the 1970s, which over time gave rise to a multitude of ideas due to its ambiguity. In ​Television: Technology and Cultural Form​ (Williams, 1974), the author introduces "flow" as a concept to describe the provocative way in which the distribution of television has changed its nature. Yet this term has also been used as a primary idea with regard to new social examinations and as a regulative concern for measures that political economy could implement to deal with global television; This topic will, however, be discussed later in this essay. “In all developed broadcast systems, the characteristic organization, and therefore the characteristic experience, is a sequence or flow. This phenomenon of planned flow, then, is perhaps the defining characteristic of broadcasting, both as a technology and as a cultural form. (Williams, 1970; 80). With this statement, Williams perhaps defines flow not only as an important element to consider when textually organizing television, but also when it comes to the viewing experience and response offered by the public. This is why Williams uses “characteristic organization” and “characteristic experience” in an attempt to connect the two ideas in “this phenomenon of planned flow” (Williams, 80). In other words, Williams believes that the term sophisticatedly connects the technical meaning of television textuality with the abstract idea of ​​experience. Indeed, the author suggests that the real intention of the stream is to foster the reconfiguration of the nature of television and the experience of cultural texts. As he argues, “the real proposed program is a sequence or set ofalternative sequences of these and other similar events, which are then available in a single dimension and in a single operation. (Williams, 1970: 86). Nevertheless, the semi-technical meaning presented by Williams has proven quite ambiguous to other theorists such as John Corner, who openly debates Williams' definition of the concept in ​Critical Ideas in Television Studies.​(Corner, 1999) by asserting that the flow “has become a notion of criticism of the evidence, carrying negative hypotheses about the temporality and the power of television and the viewing relationships that it encourages” (Corner, 1999: 60). Corner thus asserts that the term was introduced into a bubble of judgment and debate that still persists today and that many critics had something to say because the concept "can't really support the weight of the theory behind it." has often been imposed” (Corner, 1999; 60). One such critic is Lynn Spigel who notes: "Perhaps because it has been so influential, the flow concept has also been criticized for its attempt to explain too much about television by creating a law covering The we have very diverse experiences when we watch television. (Spigel, 1992: 25). What the term suggests is so comprehensive that it contains many refinements in order to more precisely describe the essence of the cultural experiences it offers to the public. John Ellis also offers a new discussion of "flow", which comes quite close to Williams' initial idea of ​​what the term means. He proposes that the textual system of television is based on “segmentation”. The theorist introduces the concept primarily with the aim of sharing how television presents a unique and particular textual and cultural format. In Visible Fictions (Ellis, 1982), the author outlines how Broadcast TV developed a new set of aesthetics that, instead of adopting the original format of entertainment cinema - as being a single, coherent text - Broadcast TV presents now relatively distinct sections which are characterized by small sequential units, the maximum duration of which is around five minutes, combining images and sound. He continues his explanation with: "These segments are organized into groups that are either simply cumulative, like newscasts and commercials, or have some kind of repetitive or sequential connection, like the groups of segments that make up the series(es)" ( Ellis, 1982; Following the idea that Ellis presents on his theory of segmentation, Jane Feuer deepens the concept of "flow" by introducing philosophical reasoning and speculation. Feuer describes the concept by keeping Williams' arguments in mind but transforming them into an illusion. For her, “flow” is just abstract content that fails to fulfill its meaning since television explicitly exposes these discrete segments of information and stories in its textual system. She also adds that "Williams should say more precisely that television has segmentation without closure, because that is what he actually means by flow." (Feuer, 1983; 15-16). As I mentioned previously, there are many beliefs about "flow" as a component of commercial television - the main goal of which is to maximize the number of viewers intended by programs and networks - and Feuer particularly emphasizes this belief by adding in his argument that “The flow as such is neither natural nor technologically determined. This is a historically specific result of the practice of networks: the “organization charts” are constructed by the leaders of the network before being reconstituted by the structuralists. (Feuer, 1983: 16). Distinct ideas have been expounded by criticssuch as Horace Newcomb and Paul M. Hirsh, who proposed a specific method for analyzing how well television executes its textual system. Their proposal is to “strive” a sequence of programs during viewing in order to be able to analyze it correctly. “Our most traditional, most repressive and reactionary opinions, as well as those which are surviving and emancipatory, are defended, examined, maintained and transformed. The emphasis is on process rather than product, on discussion rather than indoctrination, on contradiction and confusion rather than coherence. » (Breines, 1983: 6). They see television as a forum for exposing different points of view addressing the same subjects, whether they have a cultural or social connotation, continuing to expose social problems from a wide variety of perspectives. With this in mind, they conclude that to fully analyze the range of cultural meanings that television offers requires an in-depth examination and study of the "viewing tape" rather than an analysis of the programs or units individually. "We now examine the 'viewing tape' as a potential text and discover that, among the range of options offered by a given evening's television, the forum is indeed a more accurate model of what is happening on television than any other we know of." (Newcomb and Hiris, 1994; 509). This idea is quite close to Williams's view of how audiences tend to stay for more than one program at a time, as he argues: "Again, it is a largely, although often admitted with regret, that many of us find the television very difficult to turn off; that, again and again, even when we have turned on a particular "program", we find ourselves watching the next one, then the one after that." (Williams, 1974: 94). To conclude this section of juxtaposed ideas on the “flow”, I will introduce John Fiske and his “intertextuality”. He suggests that “Flow, with its connotations of a languid river, is perhaps an unfortunate metaphor: the movement of the television text is discontinuous, interrupted and segmented. closure, unitary meaning or unified subject of vision, are constantly subject to forces of fracture (Fiske, 1987; 105). among the continuities and discontinuities each unit structures the flow. Having an interpretive vision and reading beyond the superficial, finding meaning in the subtext that connects each segment. flow” has also been criticized from another point of view: an institutional point of view. It has been said that the term "flow" gives television a connotation that undermines its honest value as a critical term for a medium to conceptualize away from its consumerist goals. That said, flow has become a concept used in the industry as a marketing strategy. This includes carefully planned programming, which chooses the place for advertisements and whose main determination is to increase and maximize the continuity of the audience on a separate channel. This last sentence brings us to the next topic, which is advertising, because it has a powerful influence on flow. Advertising occupies, especially physically, an important place in television programs. Indeed, it is claimed to be “the longest running show on television”. The spots and other commercial communication media inserted in the programs cover a notable number in percentage of time until reaching the maximum quotas in prime time. They sayoften that television does not produce programs but viewers for our advertisements. ​In fact, advertising constitutes the main point of reference of the television system; the source of almost exclusive financing. Likewise, advertising manifests itself as the “soul” of communication and mass culture. Intentionally, this not only causes direct influence through the content of the advertising conveyed by the messages; but also an indirect influence based on programming (choice of genres that guarantee maximum audience), which makes advertising one of the main sources of influence, if not the main factor, on the culture of our time. Williams openly explains how the ads stole most of the audience. spaces in the “concept of interval” (Williams, 1974: 90). One of the major elements that characterize “flow” are intervals. These were first introduced in earlier phases of broadcasting services, both on television and radio. They both had a particular sound or image that distinguished them from the program itself in order to announce that an interval was part of the program schedule. However, as Williams argues, this notion of interval has been re-evaluated. "This intensified under competitive conditions, when it became important for broadcast planners to hold viewers - or, as they say, 'capture' them - for an entire evening's sequence," adding that "the possible unification of these two or three sequences, a new type of communication phenomenon must be recognized" (Williams, 1974: 91). Moreover, a tendency towards confusion is added here: the messages emitted by advertising are often mixed with "primary" content broadcast by the media - mainly through information, entertainment, fiction, etc. - And this too through a confusion of roles: presenters and journalists become carriers of commercial messages, emphasizing , implausibly, the commercial character of television programs Authors and the complex editorial autonomy of broadcasters are sacrificed, favoring the conquest of advertising space. As far as I am concerned, it is understandable that this happens in the field of. commercial broadcasting, but it seems quite alarming that the same public service falls into the same advertising networks, thereby reducing the quality of its programming. Thus, competitive pressure has led official channels to schedule their programming with the same percentage of programs as advertisements. Once again, everything is intended to captivate the viewer. Faced with this confusion, Williams presents his personal experience during our stay in America, recounting his “first encounter” with American television. He then explains how, while watching a film, he encountered some difficulty 'adapting to a much higher frequency of commercial breaks' (Williams, 1974: 92). The author then adds: “Here there was something quite different, since the transitions from film to commercial film and from film A to film B and C were in fact banal” (Williams, 1974: 92). It then analyzes and compares television programs in Britain and America as part of a more in-depth study of 'flow'. With these results, it can be concluded that television is hypothetically examined as a social and mechanical "other", rather than being absorbed into a European social convention by means of elegant research and norm development, it is in any case Europeanized by the excellence of its layout. from a Western anthropological point of view. The full meaning of this “other” social structure, 72-112.