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Showing posts from October, 2023

Based On a True Story

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We all love storytelling––whether you love books, music, art, poetry , movies, or TV, we engage with stories on a daily basis. But there is nothing more successful than the intersectionality of these art forms, like the combination of Emily Dickinson’s poetry and the series Dickinson or Red Hot Chili Peppers’ hit song “ Throw Away Your Television. ” Most recently, with the rise of podcasts, TV has collided with podcasts. Only Murders In the Building started the podcast/television lovefest, sparking a new TV trend.  On this Google Trends graph featuring the SEO tendencies for “podcasts,” we can see that around July 2021, there was an incline in popularity.  In August 2021, Only Murders In The Building was first released. Season three began releasing weekly episodes this summer; the first two episodes airing on August 8th (totaling 70 minutes) earned 719 million minutes streamed , showing that roughly 10.3 million people watched the first episodes. According to the book Groun...

Television's Changling: Netflix

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When we think of TV, we often think of streaming, cable, commercials, TV shows, and maybe even Hallmark’s made-for-TV movies. But we don’t often think about how we got to where we are, who we should be thankful for, and who we should curse. The answer is simple. Thank and blame the people who utilized the ever-changing landscape of technology to create one of the largest storytelling (and money-making) industries.  There is no simple answer for who created television; this was a collaboration of brilliant minds. Samuel F.B. Morse developed the telegraph in the 1830s and ‘40s, and similar technology was necessary to build the TV. Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone in 1876, progressed the telegraphs of beeping sounds to voice. Thomas Edison and Bell believed that phones could transmit images as well as sounds, hinting at what we know today as smartphones and pushing technology forward. However, it wasn’t until 1884 that German researcher Paul Nipkow created a syst...

A TV Show Disguised as a Brand: Grey’s Anatomy

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The Introduction In the modern age, lengthy television shows are just as, if not more popular than, movies, yet few shows carry on cinema’s long history of melodrama like Grey’s Anatomy . This series features doctors with soap opera-esque storylines where hearts and lives are on the line. Birthed in 2005 from the great mind of Shonda Rhimes and her production company, Shondaland, this medical drama takes fans on a rollercoaster ride of emotions. While television series are more often viewed as products from a brand, this singular TV show has made over $3 billion for ABC’s parent company, Disney. This astronomical revenue is due to the public’s positive outlook. In other words, Grey’s Anatomy is a cultural icon that has shifted from a product to a brand with a powerful brand image.  The Trends Despite the generally positive outlook, outside of the fandom and groundswell, the haters demand that the show be canceled––deeming that it just needs to be over . But Grey’s Anatomy does no...