Backstage TV Humboldt TV Humboldt's Audience Network

A Return To Real Media

Paul Benson
February 21, 2009

Ever since humankind first gathered around fires to sing, dance, and tell each other stories, entertainment has been a community activity. Tonight's audience member is tomorrow night's performer, and vice versa. Audiences and artists have always been largely interchangeable, and extremely interactive. The storyteller shouts, the audience says "oooh;" the storyteller cracks a smile, the audience laughs along. 

And on stages throughout time, audiences and performers have interacted richly. Every belly-gurgle in the audience is heard and responded to by every performer on stage. Everyone in the room is integrally involved, and the community is together, around that stage or that campfire.

That's the kind of media our brains are wired for. To be truly suited to our five senses, media must be as social and interactive as possible. And until the 20th century, for the most part, media WAS very interactive and social.

Yes, the printed word long ago began to break down the immediate connection between artists and audiences, but that was nothing compared to what became of media in the previous century, particularly when broadcasting was introduced. Suddenly, entertainment was delivered by performers who were often, if not usually, hundreds or thousands of miles away from any given audience member, with virtually no possibility for interaction between audience and entertainer.

Although the age of broadcasting brought many treasures of media magic, we lost a great deal in the bargain. We lost connection with the talents of people nearby in our own communities. We became more isolated. We disengaged from our communities in favor of a lonely, lazy, stupefied existence, connected to the world only through an unresponsive flickering box.

In broadcasting, the flow of communication flows one way. Audiences pretty much have to laugh or cry alone when the performers move them. Here, the community is NOT together. 

It must be noted here that local Humboldt County broadcasters do an exceptional job bringing a sense of community to the local airwaves, especially when compared to most other places in America. But Americans, on the whole, have been cognitively, emotionally, physically, and spiritually damaged by the TV lifestyle.

Accustomed to a top-down flow of communication, citizens have become more passive, lethargic, and less prepared to speak out when the network news refuses to report that the emperor is naked or that the economy is being looted. The futility of talking back to a TV screen fosters a feeling of powerlessness. And so we got more apathetic and disengaged, with an ever-diminishing attention span, and a deeply impaired ability to imagine new possibilities. Which in turn made us all the more vulnerable to abuses by those in places of power, and before you knew it a plague of corruption and decay began devouring our public institutions and our very freedoms.

But, hey, don't sweat it! Those days finally drawing to a close -- at least if we as a People play our cards right. Through new technologies that allow nearly limitless ways to communicate and interact, media is once again becoming a two-way experience in which the line between audience and performer is blurring again. People who watch YouTube videos are very often the same people who MAKE YouTube videos. And if your belly gurgles, you can comment about it!

Over the last few years, cyberspace has been reorganized around the "web 2.0" principles of social networking and online community, giving rise to today's "social media." Audiences of online media are extremely connected to each other, and to the performers. Americans are finally learning to engage their hearts, minds, and spirits again as they express themselves creatively and expose themselves the expressions of others through internet-based media. Who need to talk back to your TV screen in vain in the age CONTACT US buttons, RATE THIS links, POST A COMMENT options, and SHARE THIS widgets!? Each piece of media, no matter how humble or obscure its creator, has the potential to develop into a collective discussion, spark a cultural shift or snowball overnight into a social movement. 

Make no mistake -- THIS IS BIG STUFF! 

Sure, on the surface, these developments are old news to most of us, until we stop to think through the revolutionary implications of what's going on all around us. The way humanity communicates with itself is undergoing a quantum leap of evolution, and in the new emerging order, the power of media is spread out millions of times farther and wider than was ever even remotely imaginable in the highly centralized media of the last century.

In fact, that quantum leap's pretty much already a done deal. The electronic infrastructure is in place. The typical home now has the equivalent of a printing press, a recording studio, a TV studio, and a global satellite system capable of pushing media of virtually all types to the far reaches of the globe. That's a media empire by the standards of even a decade or two ago, and it's all rolled into a little unassuming box sitting your desk.

Still, we must not take for granted that this media revolution will mature. We've only just by the skin of our teeth managed to keep the internet free so far. Certain giant telecom companies are very actively working to shut down the internet freedoms we enjoy so they can regain the kind of control they enjoyed in the Age of Broadcasting.

Although the Obama administration has taken a promising stance on most media issues, it is up to the People to ensure that these positions do not end up being empty rhetoric. Specifically, we must demand that federal lawmakers make "net neutrality" the law of the land, and not just a regulatory posture. As long as the internet continues to operate on the principle of neutrality, media will continue to become more free, more diverse, more fair, more participatory, and MORE FUN.

Keeping it neutral will require the People to demand that big companies not be allowed to segregate internet access into fast lanes and slow lanes, block domains they don't approve of, or any such monkey business. We as a People MUST get serious about this. Securing net neutrality is essential for a bright future, and is what makes new media like TV Humboldt possible!