the grammar of hypertelevision - scolari

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Journal of Visual Literacy, 2009 Volume 28, Number 1, 28-49

The Grammar of Hypertelevision:An Identikit of Convergence-Age

Fiction Television(Or, How Television Simulates New

Interactive Media)

Carlos A. ScolariDigital Interactions Research Group (GRID)

University of Vic

AbstractThe arrival of “new media” such as the Web and multimedia mobile devices is transforming “old media” such as television. If we consider that these new media coexist with the old ones in the same system, then it could be a valid exercise to analyze the contaminations between them. In this article, I analyze the aesthetics of new audiovisual productions-–i.e., the acceleration of rhythm, the multiplication of characters and narrative programs—and the transformations of the television interface in order to identify the pertinent traits of what I define as hypertelevision. The article concludes with a reflection on the simulation of interactive experiences in contemporary television.

Keywords: paleotelevision; neotelevision; hypertelevision; convergence; remediation; media reconfiguration

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Scolari- The Grammer of Hyper Television … ...

The arrival of “new media” like the World Wide Web and multimedia mobile devices, the diffusion of collaborative environments like the Web 2.0 (O’Reilly, 2005), and the increasing importance of interactive

experiences in cultural consumption such as videogaming are transforming “old media” such as the press and television. It could be said that the arrival of new species in the media environment is changing the whole media ecosystem. It is not so easy to develop a scientific discourse about these transformations while they are developing at such an accelerated rate. Theoretical reflection on these mutations is an ongoing process that must evolve while the diffusion of new technologies and practices are still transforming, until recently, the solid bases of the broadcasting system (Scolari, 2008a).

In the last fifteen years, many digital communication researchers have been so occupied by analyzing the “new media”—characterized by traits like hypertextuality, multimediality, and interactivity (Bettetini, 1996; de Kerkhove 1997; Lister et al., 2003; Marshall, 2004)—that they have forgotten about the consequences of this irruption for “old media.” Television research was very intensive in the 1990s but it was almost totally existent TV-centered research. In other words, few researchers analyzed television transformation from the perspective of “new media.” If we consider that the new media coexist with the old ones in the same system, then it would be a productive exercise to analyze the intertextual contamination between them.

The transformation of television runs in parallel to the transformation of viewers. The hypertextual experience–-a sense production and interpretative practice that is part of Web navigation, videogaming, computer-mediated communication, or mobile phone interactions—has affected conventional audiovisual production. Television’s implied viewer (Casetti, 1988; Eco, 1979

[1]) has changed since hypertextual experiences between users became common practice. In other words, twenty-first century television “is talking to” a different viewer, a viewer formed in different media experiences.

In this article, I analyze a series of “symptoms”—such as the aesthetics of new audiovisual production, the multiplication of characters, and the transformations of the television interface—with the objective of presenting the pertinent traits of what I call hypertelevision. In this context, the article concentrates on certain topics and only mentions other important issues of today’s television research agenda, like the advent of novel formats, such as reality television (Holmes & Jermyn, 2004; Murray & Ouellette, 2004), or the analysis of “transmedia storytelling” (Brooker, 2001; Evans, 2008; Jenkins, 2003, 2006; Scolari, 2008b). The article starts by describing the transition from paleotelevision to neotelevision (Casetti, 1988; Casetti & Odin, 1990; Eco, 1983) and from neotelevision to hypertelevision. The second section presents

Journal of Visual Literacy, Volume 28, Number 1

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an identikit of hypertelevision (fragmentation of the screen, multiplication of characters, diffusion of non-linear narratives, among other changes). The article concludes with a reflection on the simulation of interactive experiences in contemporary television.

The article is mostly based on a narratological approach to audiovisual production, and focuses on television series.

The analysis of recent TV series is of particular narratological interest, since during the 1990s TV series increasingly began to employ experimental narrative techniques like multiperspectivity and unreliable narration as well as innovative functionalizations of voice-over narration and audiovisual presentation of consciousness. Quite often it is also possible to observe such experimental techniques as intramediality, intermediality and metafictionality. (Allrrath, Gymnich & Surkamp, 2005, p. 4)This focus on new productions does not mean that traditional television

formats or rhetorics are no longer present in the new context. Paleotelevision did not dissolve inside neotelevision, just as printed books still survive in the kingdom of digital text. It could be said that old television does not vanish but instead survives in the media ecosystem, adapting to the new conditions and combined with the new configurations. In this sense, this article may be considered as a contribution to the scientific conversations about “old media in transition” (Spiegel & Olsson, 2004).

Towards hypertelevisionFrom paleotelevision to neotelevision

Television was one of the most impressive media experiences of the twentieth century. Born with a strong commercial spirit in the United States, in Europe television has been characterized by a public service philosophy since its origins. Between the 1970s and the 1980s, television underwent a radical transformation. While in the United States the diffusion of cable and satellites multiplied the number of channels and immersed the audience in a flow (Williams, 1975), in Europe the creation and consolidation of private networks—like Silvio Berlusconi’s empire in Italy—also introduced viewers to new, richer screen experiences, like talks shows (Abruzzese, 1994; Pezzini, 1999).

This non-miraculous multiplication of channels influenced the television economy (the segmentation of audiences and advertising), television consumption (now fragmented following the pace of channel surfing), and television research. If Raymond Williams proposed the concept of flow to describe the new situation, in Italy Umberto Eco described this transformation

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as the transition from paleotelevision to neotelevision (Eco, 1983). This successful opposition—at least among European and Latin American scholars—was later introduced into a theoretical framework by Francesco Casetti and Roger Odin (Casetti, 1988; Casetti & Odin 1990). In Table 1, we present the main characteristics of paleotelevision and neotelevision as they have been interpreted by different researchers.

Table 1Paleotelevision versus Neotelevision

Paleotelevision NeotelevisionPublic service philosophy (public monopoly).

Commercial philosophy (private/pri-vate and private/public competence).

One channel. Multiplication of channels (public and private) and technologies (cable, satel-lite, VTR, etc.).

Genre differentiation: spectacles and games are not compatible with infor-mation and knowledge. Three basic genres: education, infor-mation, and entertainment.

Dilution of fiction/information fron-tiers. Diffusion of a mosaic culture.Two macro-genres (fiction and real-ity) sometimes integrated in a unified format (i.e., news).Syncretism and contamination of genres.

Fixed cameras in studio. There is no outdoor registration or invasion of private spaces.

Camera mobility.Registration from public spaces and private space intrusions.

The TV set is a totem in the home liv-ing room.

TV sets everywhere in home (kitchen, dining room, bedroom) and public spaces (bars, train stations, airports, waiting rooms, etc.).

Television represents reality. Television constructs reality.

Receptor-viewer attentive and exclu-sive (“all ears”).

Consumer-viewer active and fragment-ed (surfing culture).

Audiences are big collectivities. Audiences are collection of individu-als.

Pedagogical relationship between television and audiences (transmission of knowledge).

Interpellation of audiences (televi-sion “looks for” the viewer creating a participation effect). Questions/exchange of opinions.


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Paleotelevision NeotelevisionInserts are exceptional in the large syntagma of television discourse.

Hyperfragmentation of texts (inserts are not exceptional).

Rigid temporal/syntagmatic structure of programs (regularity of program-ming).

Structure of programs based on the pace of everyday life (protoform emis-sion).

Based on Carlón (2004, 2006), Casetti & Odin (1990), Cavicchioli Pezzini (1993), Eco (1983),Farré (2004), Imbert (1999), Semprini (1994), and author contributions.

The paleo-neotelevision opposition was particularly successful in the 1990s. We can identify the traces of Eco’s contribution in research on participatory shows (Marturano et al., 1998; Tomasulo, 1983), reality shows (Abril, 1995), and news (Farré, 2004), and in more general studies like Bruno (1994), Stella (1999), Imbert (1999), and Carlón (2004, 2006). The opposition was also considered useful by researchers that investigate inside different paradigms, such as critical theory (Malmberg, 1996) or cybercultures (Piscitelli, 1995).

Television and media ecologyThe media ecosystem may be considered a socio-technical network,

a hypertextual structure made up of producers, consumers, texts, media, and interfaces that maintain reciprocal relationships. At certain times, a group of nodes of this network activates and creates new relationships and configurations. The arrival of a new medium—or, in other words, the creation of new nodes—changes the structure of the whole network and produces new hybrid species that integrate the new and the old. For example, the spread of mobile devices is activating the production of new audiovisual contents with particular aesthetics—like mobisodes (a TV program or commercial created for the cell phone market)—and offering a new diffusion channel for online videos and traditional music clips. From this perspective, we could analyze how the arrival of cinema changed theater or the collateral effects of television diffusion in the 1950s on cinema and radio. A linear model of media evolution (i.e., from paleotelevision to neotelevision) only represents one single aspect of this larger historical process.

Eco’s opposition between paleotelevision and neotelevision may also limit researchers to considering that one television substitutes for or replaces the other one. However, this is not correct. Within the neotelevision flow, it is still possible to identify paleotelevision experiences, for example in the form of pedagogical attitudes in certain productions or the public service philosophy

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of many broadcasting corporations (the BBC in the United Kingdom, the CBC in Canada, etc.). In other words, in present-day television we find that archaic (paleo) and modern (neo) traits coexist.

Furthermore, the configuration of the media system is not the same in all societies. Verón suggests that the opposition between paleotelevision and neotelevision “has marked the European history of public television” but this “evolutionary scheme has also been valid, with certain arrangements, in the history of general mass television.” In any case, we must consider that there are “different rhythms in the implantation of television in different regions of the world, and in some cases the trends cross themselves and coexist” (Verón, 2001). For example, the existence of military regimes in Latin America at the beginning of the 1980s—characterized by centralized and authoritarian public television structures—delayed the development of neotelevision traits in this region of the globe until the end of the decade.

Hypertelevision: a first definitionAt the end of the 1990s, many characteristics and transformations of

neotelevision accelerated and went deeper—for example, the confusion between information and fiction. These developments made it clear that the mass media in general and specifically television do not “represent” reality but rather “construct” it (Verón, 1983, 2002).

However, television transformations in the 1990s may not only be reduced to an augmentation of neotelevision properties. The combination with other media species such as Web pages or videogames, the process of industrial convergence, and the appearance of new formats and audiences have re-designed the television system. I consider that these transformations are so deep that the classic opposition between paleotelevision and neotelevision has been surpassed by the media ecosystem evolution. In the last fifteen years many scholars have reflected on the limits of the concept of neotelevision. They have found that many productions and styles do not fit the definition and so cannot be considered neotelevision (Cavicchioli & Pezzini, 1993; Semprini, 1994; Verón, 2001).

How can we define the “new television”? In European and Latin American research circuits, authors such as Piscitelli (1998), Ramonet (2002), Riera (2003), and Missika (2006) have opted for the concept of postelevision. Other researchers have criticized this term. After discarding the concept of postelevision, scholars like Verón (2001) predicted the death of traditional television without proposing a new term.1

After several decades of discussions about postmodernism in politics, sociology, architecture, literature, cinema, history and design, I consider that the


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prefix post is not very useful for describing the new traits of television (Verón, 2001). In addition to this, to talk about postelevision means to support the idea of the death of the medium, something that I do not necessarily agree with.

In a completely operative and provisional way, I propose the concept of hypertelevision to define the current television system situation. Hypertelevision should not just be considered a new phase of the paleo-neo series but a particular configuration of the media system.

Before exploring the world of hypertelevision I will reflect on the prefix hyper- and the hypertextual experience. What are the properties of hypertext? For theoreticians of hypertextuality (e.g., Bolter, 1991; Landow, 1992, 1994, 2006), the text in these structures is fragmented and atomized, so that it promotes non-sequential reading paths and augments the spectrum of possible interpretations. In this context the reader—now practically transformed into a user—assumes a more (inter)active role during the reading process. For George Landow:

The figure of the hypertext author approaches, even if it does not merge with, that of the reader […] Hypertext, which creates an active, even intrusive reader, carries this convergence of activities one step closer to completion; but in doing so, it infringes on the power of the writer, removing some of the it and granting it to the reader (Landow, 2006, p. 125). This hypertextual experience is currently present in many everyday

situations, from Web navigation to interactive fiction reading, from videogaming to collaborative writing experiences in blogs or wikis. Therefore, the prefix hyper references not only a large number of texts but also the reticular structure that allows active readers to jump from one textual unit to another, to interpret simultaneously a jungle of open windows and applications and to deal with stressing situations inside virtual worlds. The concept of hypertelevision, by extension, is not just expressing “a large amount of (television) programs” but rather it attempts to map the complex and rapidly changing network of formats, screens, narratives, audiences, and practices that compose the contemporary television environment. From the perspective of semiotics and narratological studies, hypertelevision proposes a new aesthetics based on a series of rhetorical forms and narrative structures that are not necessarily “new.” These will be described in the following section.

Grammar of hypertelevisionIn this description of the most relevant characteristics of hypertelevision

grammar I will focus on certain texts and situations that may be considered “symptoms”—like the emerging tips of an iceberg—of the new configuration of

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television in the media ecosystem. Every one of these pertinent traits deserves a longer analysis but in the context of this article I will just introduce and briefly explain them. These characteristics of the grammar of hypertelevision will be complemented with the descriptions of other transformations in the television system—for example, the diffusion of a many-to-many distribution philosophy or the explosion of new screens.

Multiscreen (screen fragmentation)In broadcast television screen fragmentation was first applied in news

transmissions to modularize information and show different interlocutors—the anchorman in the studio and the remote correspondent—at the same time. News programs also include modules to present last-minute information, financial data, weather information, or sports reports in the lower part of the screen. Screen fragmentation and the expansion of information visualization devices run parallel to the massive diffusion of graphic user interfaces in the 1980s and 1990s. Scholars like Vered (2002) described this trend as the consolidation of a “windows aesthetic” in contemporary television. Presenting news in easy-to-read modules may also be found in online and printed journals (Cooke, 2005). As we can see, the hybridization of interfaces in the media ecology was extremely elevated in the last decade and simultaneously affected different media (press, television, Web, etc.). While television introduced information visualization devices derived from the graphic interfaces of computers, browsers like MS Internet Explorer 4—presented in 1997 in an attempt to establish a broadcasting logic in the World Wide Web—included “active channels” for synchronizing specific website content and viewing it offline.2

Series like 24 (Fox, 2001- ) introduced screen fragmentation to increase the sense of “real-time” and represent the parallel development of different stories. Multiscreen (or some might say “multi-image” within an overriding screen frame) representation is one of the distinctive traits of 24; it is usually employed many times during each episode to show what the main characters are doing at the same time. This audiovisual rhetorical device, first applied by the pioneers of cinema a hundred years ago—for example, in Suspense by Weber and Smalley (1913 [2])—and employed by modern cinema directors in specific situations—like the high school prom scene in Brian de Palma’s Carrie (1976)—has been reintroduced today on our screens by one of the most innovative television series of the decade.

Acceleration of rhythmSpeeding up the rhythm is not new in television—it has been present for

many years in news or sports—but the introduction of high-speed narratives in


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fiction may be considered a characteristic of hypertelevision. This introduction runs parallel to the diffusion of “brief formats” (Pezzini, 2002), such as music videos, clips, trailers, and promos in the last decade. The frenetic succession of images, camera movements, and stories has converted fictions like 24, ER (NBC, 1994-2009), or Desperate Housewives (ABC, 2004-) into something like an hour-long music video clip.

Real-time effectReal-time effect used to be a characteristic of artistic productions or

a particular author’s style (like the “live” transmission of Orson Welles’s “Martian invasion” in 1938 or the “live theatre” of 1950s television drama broadcasts). In the 1990s, a few episodes of The X Files (X Cops—Season 7—Fox, 2000), and ER (Ambush—Season 4—NBC, 1997) had already experimented with reviving the real-time effect in mainstream television. In The X Files (Fox, 1993-2002), the real-time effect was constructed in post-production (the episode appears to be an allusion to The Blair Witch Project [Myrick & Sanchez, 1999] and was completely filmed with a handheld camera to create a live effect), but in the second case an NBC camera crew was disguised as a crew making a documentary film in the hospital. The actors performed the show again three hours later so that the West Coast airing would be live as well. Series like 24 exploited this real-time transmission sense-effect and extended it to the entire season.

Endless intertextualityIntertextuality is a basic feature of any kind of textuality; however,

citations, excerpts, tributes, and quotations are other traits of postmodern textual aesthetics that are also exploited on hypertelevision screens (carrying on prior uses of these self-referential devices from 1950s broadcast pioneers such as George Burns and Ernie Kovaks). For example, contemporary fictions like The X Files introduced a dense network of textual references to science fiction, thriller, and horror narrative universes, which is now a characteristic of many other productions. Hypertelevision productively consumes other mass media and itself, amplifying a trend that was already present in neotelevision. This trend—that could be defined as audiovisual cannibalism—is also present in reality shows such as Big Brother (CBS, 2000-). In this case, the contents of this show are consumed and exploited at any hour in every program. This cannibalization of contents, that lets the viewer follow the stories inside the house while watching a news program or a talk show, could be complemented with another trend: the diffusion of metatelevision (Carlón, 2006), a second-level television structure that presents dissections or critical citations of other

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programs.3

Rupture of linearityEven if the flashback is a basic and classic component of audiovisual

grammar, what is new for mainstream television is constructing complete episodes with flashbacks and flashforwards, sometimes coming back to the same event but from the point of view of different characters. We can find interesting examples of these temporal narrative breakdowns in episodes of ER, The X Files, House M.D. (Fox, 2004-), Reunion (Fox, 2005), Lost (ABC, 2004-), and The Nine (ABC, 2006-2007). These sometime frenetic timeline breakdowns in contemporary series substantially challenge the cognitive skills required to interpret these fictions, just as the older use of temporal dislocation provided cinema audiences with opportunities to better understand the fragmentation of linearity whether presented in Griffith’s Intolerance (1916) or Renais’ Last Year at Marienbad (1961). Hypertelevision productions, as we have already indicated, are constantly constructing an implied viewer that needs to apply a new set of competences and experiences to interpret them.

Multiplication of charactersIn hypertelevision fiction, the characters multiply and integrate themselves

in a very complex choral structure. Sometimes it is really difficult to identify the protagonist of these contemporary fictions because most of the characters have about the same status in the narrative. When the main characters are perfectly defined (like Jack Bauer in 24 or Gregory House in House M.D.) they are always surrounded by a dense network of other characters—not just secondary ones—that support and make the narrative more complex, thereby extending and enriching the ensemble approaches of earlier broadcast work such as Hill Street Blues (NBC, 1981-1987).

Television series have actively increased the number of characters in the last decade. Traditional series developed a model founded on a basic set of characters (between four and six) with one of them as the main focus (Lucy in I Love Lucy, Cliff Huxtable in The Cosby Show, among countless others.). The simplicity of these structures cannot be compared with contemporary series like ER, the various CSI sagas (original Las Vegas series, CBS, 2000-) 24, Desperate Housewives, or Grey’s Anatomy (ABC, 2005-), in which more than ten characters are present in more than 50% of episodes (Scolari, 2008b).4 Even choral structures like Dallas (CBS, 1978-1991)—the most watched fiction in the 1981, 1982, and 1984 seasons—are distant from the complexity of these new productions.

24 presents a network that is at least three times as complex as


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Dallas: the number of characters; the number of distinct groups; the connections between characters, and between groups; the number of relationships that are central to the episode’s narrative. (Johnson, 2005, pp. 112-113) This augmentation of characters is not only present in fiction series; it

can also be found in other formats like reality shows, in which a high number of participants must “survive” by fulfilling different tasks and earning the public’s approval.

Multiplication of narrative programsHypertelevision expands the number of characters and therefore multiplies

the narrative programs. These characters have desires and they do something in the plot: as seen in Vladimir Propp’s folktales, they have objectives to accomplish and receive support from helpers in order to defeat their opponents (Propp, 1928/1968). In hypertelevision, these narrative programs constitute a complex network of stories far beyond the simple structure of traditional series in the 1960s and 1970s.

In short: while paleotelevision fictions introduced unitary and basic lineal stories—for example, Inspector Columbo used to concentrate on one crime and the rest of the characters were secondary ones, with the exception of the criminal—hypertelevision productions propose a text made up of a network of narrative programs. The same complexity as ER can be found in Twin Peaks (ABC, 1990-1991)—a harbinger of hypertelevision—24, Lost, Desperate Housewives, Sex and the City (HBO, 1998-2004), The Sopranos (HBO, 1999-2007) or Six Feet Under (HBO, 2001-2005).

After this brief description of the increasing number of characters and the multiplication of narrative programs, many pertinent traits of hypertelevision may now be re-signified: for example, in Fox’s 24 the use of multiscreens supports the multiplication of characters and narrative programs. It could be said that one screen is not enough to represent the simultaneous development of different narrative programs. The same may be said about the accelerated rhythm and fragmentation: this is the only way to tell so many stories in a single 45-minute episode.

Many-to-many televisionThe contamination between television and the Web is producing new

phenomena like collaborative television or television 2.0. Platforms like Google Video or YouTube™ challenge traditional television by promoting amateur creation and many-to-many distribution of audiovisual productions. The explosion of collaborative television and user-generated contents was the “new

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thing” of 2006 (that year YouTube™ was selected by Time magazine as the “Person of the Year”) and it is still difficult to evaluate its effects on the media ecosystem. However, audiovisual production and distribution companies need only look at the music market to form a picture of the possible consequences of the diffusion of many-to-many distribution in television (Knopper, 2009; Kot, 2009; Kusek & Leonhard, 2005).

New screensThe consolidation of the third screen (PC) after cinema (first screen) and

television (second screen) and the rapid diffusion of the forth screen (mobile devices) represents a challenge for television aesthetics (Dawson, 2007). If the diffusion of television in the 1950s changed the aesthetics of cinema, the spread of mobile phones and other ubiquitous devices are now introducing new transformations in audiovisual grammar. It is not the same thing to develop a story for a “big” screen (cinema or television) as creating a mobisode to be consumed on a 2” screen. If cinema stories are designed for a sedentary viewer inside a big dark cave, and television productions are mostly made for a home viewer, mobile television must construct a different implied viewer: nomad, used to fast interactions, with a few minutes of free time for consuming news or fiction.

Asynchronic consumptionThe revolution of video tape recorder (VTR) in the 1980s has gone

deeper with digital devices: now Williams’s concept of flow is the personal construction of each viewer. The diffusion of digital video recorders (DVR) like TiVO and the successful introduction of DVD box sets onto the market (Kompare, 2006) are changing viewers’ consumption routines. If traditional television imposed its rhythm (and schedule) on the viewers, now hypertelevision can be easily recorded, manipulated, and re-emitted so that it is adapted to the viewer’s rhythm.

This everyday practice challenges traditional television in two ways. First, it breaks television’s classic business model, which is based on the diffusion of advertising spots. The disappearance of “appointment TV”—big audiences watching the same program at the same time may be an exceptional event in the future—is introducing new logics into the televisual economy:

Consumers may opt to buy episodes without advertising or skip through content on demand where possible. Unlike the DVR the on demand model is managed intensively by content owners and networks. The bottom line is that as these new technologies move from the early adopter stage to the mass audience, we expect continued


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downward pressure on TV advertising (and the traditional 30-second spot) as even the most passive viewer enjoys ad-skipping and time-shifting (choosing when a TV program is viewed). (Berman, Duffy, & Shipnuck, 2006, p. 5)Second, this asynchronous consumption fractures Marshall McLuhan’s

idea of the global village. In the near future the community of viewers in front of the television set, watching the same program at the same time, may be substituted by thousands of different consumption practices. If one-to-many television is no more than the ideological cement of society, which medium/institution will develop this function? How will hegemony be constructed in a fragmented environment where viewers live different and personal screen experiences throughout the day (Missika, 2006)? The social and political consequences of this breakdown of traditional television’s social-sense production device are not clear and should be kept under scientific surveillance.

Hypertelevision: a new audiovisual language?As we can see, over the past few years television has introduced different

mutations into its communicational apparatus. Many transformations—like changes in rhythm or narrative structure—have affected television textuality. However, it would be risky to say that television is developing a new language; the grammar of hypertelevision is simply recuperating and integrating traditional rhetorical devices, originally developed by cinema avant-gardes, such as flashback, flashforward, screen fragmentation, and other techniques into a new framework. In a few words: we are dealing with a new configuration of old forms.

Other transformations that have influenced television distribution or reception processes—for example, the introduction of a many-to-many logic or the diffusion of new asynchronic consumption practices —come directly from the digitalization of the media ecosystem.

The properties of hypertelevision could also be found in many contemporary (hyper)cinema productions (Bordwell, 2006; Buckland, 2009; Gosciola, 2009). Narrative complexity, non-lineal stories, fragmentation, and high-speed narratives are the main traits of films like Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994), Memento (Nolan, 2000), Amores Perros (González Iñárritu, 2000), 21 Grams (González Iñárritu, 2003), Crash (Haggis, 2004), Sin City (Rodríguez & Miller, 2005) or Babel (González Iñárritu, 2006).

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Conclusions: Hypertelevision and the Simulation of Interaction

Why has television introduced all these innovations into its rhetorical device? If every text constructs its reader (Eco, 1979) and every interface constructs its users (Scolari 2001, 2004), it would be useful to ask what viewer is constructing contemporary television. The implied viewer of hypertelevision is not the same as the viewer of paleotelevision or neotelevision. Roughly, paleotelevision talked to a post-war viewer formed in radio, cinema, and press consumption experience. Neotelevision talked to new generations that had grown up watching television, with high interpretative competencies in audiovisual language. Hypertelevision is talking to viewers with an elevated expertise in fragmented textualities and advanced skills in navigating interactive environments. In this context, contemporary television must evolve its aesthetics and contents to satisfy the desires of a new generation of viewers formed in hypertextual experience. To survive, the “old media” must adapt to the media ecosystem and adopt traits of the new interactive environments.

Why adapt? Because television must talk to a new generation of digital natives: younger generations that grew up with a joystick in their hands and an interactive screen in front of their eyes. The television for audiences formed in cinema, radio, or press experiences cannot be the same as the television for expert videogame players, software users, or Web navigators. In this sense, the adoption of a “windows aesthetic” is a logical response to new audiences:

By presenting and representing the illusion of interactive capability, framed within the safety of the fully domesticated TV screen, windows TV is aggressively marketing the idea and desire for interactive TV through the illusion of an interface. (Vered, 2002, p. 51)Why adopt the pertinent traits of interactive media? For over fifty

years television has been the perfect paradigm of the one-to-many and non-interactive media. Now broadcast television has a competitor in interactive environments.5 In this period of transition, characterized by strong tensions in the media ecosystem, we propose the following hypothesis to explain the changes that affect an “old” medium like television: television is simulating digital interactions. From our perspective, this remediation (Bolter & Grusin, 1999) of new media is the key element to understanding hypertelevision.

The convergence of media outlets, technologies, and processes creates a unique cultural/visual environment in which designs distinctive of one medium can easily be appropriated by other media. This is significant because a single communication style is no longer predicated on a specific medium. That is, the pictorial mode of communication that has been associated with television news appears


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in the information graphics of a newspaper front page and in the thumbnail-sized icons on a news Website. Similarly, the ticker-tape delivery style that was made popular by news Websites is now a standard feature of many cable news programs. (Cooke, 2005, p. 25)This mutation of traditional television may be simplified by a single

axiom: “if an interface can’t do something, it will simulate it” (Scolari 2004, p. 191). In other words, hypertelevision is not “interactive television” but old television simulating new interactive experiences. How can television simulate interactive media? By splitting the screen, creating “pop-up” information like in the MTV classic Pop-up Video (Rutsky, 2002), increasing the number of characters, introducing real-time effects in storylines, programming multi-camera productions like Big Brother, and other changes described in previous sections.

A theoretical approach to television should refuse the linear conceptions that would consider hypertelevision as just a new phase of media evolution (paleo – neo – hyper). How can we represent these mutations from a non-lineal perspective? In conclusion, we propose a conceptual map that integrates different television characteristics in the context of a media ecology approach. At this moment in the evolution of the media ecosystem, one area of the network is particularly active and the contaminations are very high in this sector of the map. The keywords of this sector are fragmentation, multiplication of characters, augmentation of narrative programs, and simulation of interactivity (Figure 1). The future evolution of the media may activate other sectors of the map, introduce new “species,” and articulate new configurations of the ecosystem.

Figure 1Semantic map of television evolution

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Scolari- The Grammer of Hyper Television … ....

This article has introduced a first approach to hypertelevision. Further research should analyze many other characteristics and experiences—for example, the everpresent question of television genres. If neotelevision programmers in the 1980s contaminated genres and proposed syncretic formats, what is happening to genres in hypertelevision? Are we witnessing the birth of new hybrid genres? The reciprocal influences between television, Web interfaces, mobile aesthetics, and old media should be kept at the center of media research.

Another basic question for many-to-many environments is, who decides on the genres? The practice of tagging—that is, the creation of data about data (metadata) by professionals and users—and the development of taxonomies based on the user contribution (folksonomy) are re-modeling the traditional concept of “genre.” When a series of categories are introduced after uploading a photograph in Flickr™ or a video in YouTube, the user is participating in the organization of the content (Mathes, 2004). The user creates non-professional categories and possible consumption paths that may challenge the genres and substitute them with a cloud of concepts. It is possible that we are leaving behind the traditional genre conflicts and entering the age of tagging and folksonomy (Vander Wal, 2007), a place where genres are defined by viewers and not by programmers.

As we can see, the study of hypertelevision introduces many challenges into social and media research. The most relevant traits of hypertelevision grammar tell us that we are dealing with a new configuration of the television discourse—not necessarily based on new rhetorical forms--and the consequent new consumption practices. In this context the narratological and semiotic approach to the phenomena introduced in this article must be complemented with sociological and anthropological research into consumption situations. Like in any other medium, the future evolution of hypertelevision will depend on the dynamics established by the main actors of the media ecosystem: producers, consumers, and texts.

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Endnotes1. Gilder’s book Life After Television. The Coming Transformation of Media and American Life (1992) may be considered the first reference to the “death of television” movement. But viewers shouldn’t worry; television survived Gilder’s text and was so alive that Missika killed it again in La Fin de la Télévision (2006). An up to date reflection on the “end of mass media” may be found in Carlón & Scolari (2009).2. Large corporations like Disney, Warner Bros., and AOL offered active channels based on the DHTML (Dynamic HTML) technology.3. The concept of metatelevision must be considered an extension of Genette’s (1997) metatextuality—that is, an explicit or implicit critical commentary of one text on another text. The Argentine researcher Mario Carlón has detected an increasing number of audiovisual productions based on the citation and commentary of other productions, like Perdona Nuestros Pecados (Forgive Our Sins, 1994-2002) (Carlón, 2006). In Italy Blob—a program made of fragments of everyday television—is a classic example of metatelevision that has been successfully transmitted since 1989.4. This analysis included the most popular TV series in the United States since the 1950s (based on Nielsen ratings). Other successful transmissions like the Superbowl, news programs like 60 Minutes, or reality shows like Survivor or American Idol were not included. The series analyzed belong to different genres (thriller, western, sit-coms, etc.): I Love Lucy (most popular series in 1953, 1954, 1955, and 1957), Bonanza (1965, 1966, and 1967), All in the Family (1973, 1974, 1975, and 1976), The Cosby Show (1987, 1988, 1989, and 1990), ER (1996, 1997, and 1999) and CSI Las Vegas (2003 and 2004). The study included a pre-semiotic quantitative study of the char-acters and a comparison of the narrative structures of the episodes from a semiotic perspective (Scolari, 2008b).5. The Statistical Abstract of the United States published by the U.S. Census Bureau included a prevision of the Media Usage and Consumer Spending: 2001 to 2011. The estimated projections show an overall increase in television consumption, but a clear decrease in the consumption of traditional broadcast television (from 777 hours per person per year in 2001 to 669 hours in 2011) in favor of cable and satellite television. Interactive experiences like pure-play Internet services and videogames increase from 56.22 hours to 66.17 hours, and from 29.36 hours to 51.89 hours respectively (U.S. Census Bureau, 2009). This prevision was made before the explosion of social networks in 2006, considering only the average media consumption, and does not take into account the differences between ages.

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[1 Editor’s note: See also on this topic in this issue of the JVL the Pauwels and Hellriegel article’s useful Booth (1961) and Chatman (1978) references.]

[2Editor’s note: For a more extensive exploration of multi-screen cinema see L. Ken Burke (1972) A History of Multimedia (Masters thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 1972), Education Resources Information Center, ED 126 889; Ken Burke and Bernard Fradkin (1978), History, Theory and Research Related to Multi-image, in Roger L. Gordon (Ed.), The Art of Multi-Image (pp. 7-17) Abington, PA: Association for Multi-Image; and Ken Burke (1980), A History of Intermedia and Related Multimedia Works, in Ken Burke (Ed.), An Anthology of Multi-Image (pp. 7-111) Abington, PA: Association for Multi-Image. However, except for the ERIC document these may be difficult to obtain so some of this information is also available in J. Wyver (1989), The Moving Image: An International History of Film, Television, and Video, New York: Blackwell.]


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