We get our news from newspapers (for the folksy types), television, radio or the Internet. These various forms of media were inherently stand-alone but because the demand for more information faster, they’ve found themselves working together to provide the latest information to the world at remarkable speed. Most major newspapers have a website and most television stations have a partner radio station but a new combination of these media has emerged. It is the bastard child of media convergence: an object of undeserved but not entirely baseless ridicule.
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DZMM’s Teleradyo channel is madness. A TV channel that basically airs the same thing as its partner radio station with accompanying live video feed of said radio station isn’t exactly groundbreaking. It’s pretty much on the tri-border of ingenious, insane and useless. TV and radio may be two different things but when it comes to the news, they’re pretty much the same. A marriage of the two would be semi-redundant like roast turkey-stuffed roast pork; novel- yes but come on.
In this “age of convergence” where almost any content from your regular news to condom ads bombard you from the time you walk out of the house to the moment you connect to the Internet, this TV-radio combo station would sound pretty lame but readily judging it without considering the local context (where lame-ness is oft rewarded) wouldn’t be right. I could only figure out that this is DZMM’s way of taking a step ahead of the competition by being omnipresent. It seems like the ABS-CBN (DZMM’s parent TV station) thing to do.
The merging of two news sources won’t really do much for content diversification but what it does provide is unrivalled convenience for a select few. For a radio listener (or a DZMM faithful), Teleradyo is that wonderful blessing that provides your daily dose of radio news and content with the options and convenience brought by television. Boring broadcast? Switch channels! Overwhelmed by the inanity of noontime shows? Go Teleradyo. It does provide convenience for some but it’s too early to tell how people will receive this “new” form of media. The whole set-up must have been cheap because the “set” is already there. All you need are cameras inside the radio station.
I’d like to think that the need to spread news fast was primarily the cause for the concept of convergence to emerge. News spreads almost instantly now with the three major mass media platforms, the Internet, radio and television working together. I get Internet radio and Internet television or a mix of the three but TV-radio? Will it thrive in the long term under our radio and TV obsessed culture? The future is really uncertain and it looks bleak because, well, it’s a very unspectacular idea. The start-up cost was surely very low and I guess they thought that they had nothing much to lose anyway. I really wish Teleradyo some success just for trying their hand at something relatively new but I can’t just wrap my mind around it. They still can’t be worse than ANC anyway.
-Wacky
-Wacky
This post caught my interest particularly on how you brought to discussion NOT the wonders and innovations of convergence, but rather, the slack use of it. You're right, 'playing' the same program simultaneously in both TV and Radio might not be an ingenious idea, it's actually wasting their potentials in bringing in innovation in their news operations (and airtime for both parties). It's an example of convergence, the not-so-good way.
ReplyDeleteBut if we come to think of it, there might be a reason for this, except for being cheap and convenient. Maybe the program has the same target audience, and the stations belong to the same network. I've studied in my BC172 class that this is indeed a programming strategy. For example, crossing TV Patrol over TV and Radio, and putting on TV what is inherently for radio might be a way for them to maximize their audiences, so that those listening in their cars and those with TV at homes can listen and view the same content. Also coming from the same parent network, they would not want to divide their audience by putting different content in radio and TV as this would stratify their potential listeners and viewers.
But other than that, you brought a fresh angle to our issue of convergence, and for that, congratulations Wacky. :)