Social Media Takes Television Back in Time

Illustration by Cristiana Couceiro; photograph by Steve Bonini
"... Every Thursday since the show’s premiere, most of the 'Scandal' cast and crew have used Twitter to add live commentary that runs during the broadcast. The cast’s social media presence — which, according to the ratings firm Nielsen, inspires hundreds of thousands of tweets from viewers during every broadcast — has been credited with deepening the program’s relationship with its audience. Television used to be a supremely solitary experience, for its creators and for its viewers. The writer David Foster Wallace called it 'an absolute godsend for a human subspecies that loves to watch people but hates to be watched itself.' For a time, digital technology seemed to be deepening the rift. TV has always been spatially isolating, with each of us cut off from everyone else who was watching. Then DVDs and DVRs and, later, on-demand services like Netflix added a temporal disconnection, too, making it increasingly unlikely that everyone else everywhere else was watching the same schlock at the same time. ..."
NY Times (Video)
NY Times: Social Media Takes Television Back in Time - Platforms like Twitter and Vine are helping make TV more communal, increasing the likelihood that programs are watched when they are broadcast. (Video)