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Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies
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ARTICLE
London, Los Angeles, New Delhi, Singapore, and Washington DC
Vol 16(2): 185–200
DOI: 10.1177/1354856509357583
http://con.sagepub.com
TV Comedy Audiences and
Media Technology
A Comparative Study of Britain and Norway
Inger-Lise Kalviknes Bore
Birmingham City University, UK
Abstract / Drawing on focus group data, this article explores the ways in which British and Norwegian viewers constructed the role of media technology in their engagement with TV comedy.
Arguing that TV comedy on pre-recorded DVDs tended to have far greater significance for British
participants than Norwegian participants, the article maintains that this technology had different
sets of cultural meanings in the two national contexts. The discussion examines factors that might
contribute to this national difference, and considers how DVD usage may affect audience engagement. While DVDs have been seen to address viewers as fan consumers or collectors, most of these
users primarily associated this technology with the convenience of timeshifting. Along with VHS
and video files, DVDs were seen to offer viewers greater control over when and how they wanted
to engage with TV comedy.
Key Words / audiences, DVD, TV comedy
This article explores the media technology usage of middle-class TV comedy viewers in
two different national contexts. Considering the development of audience research, Helen
Wood (2007: 492) argues that such studies have tended to focus either on the relationship between the text and the reader, or that between the product and its consumer. The
first of these was introduced by Stuart Hall’s (1973/1980) encoding/decoding model,
while the second route has concentrated on ‘the location and politics of consumption of
the media as technology’. Writing about television, Wood emphasizes the need to
examine these engagements together, maintaining that they ‘are not separated out in
the lived realities of the social use of television’ (Wood, 2007: 492–3). Similarly, Uma
Dinsmore (1998: 315) notes the importance of combining the study of screen texts and
viewing contexts. In this article, then, I draw on focus group data from Britain and Norway
to examine how my research participants constructed their engagement with TV comedy
through the use of media technology such as broadcast television, VCRs, DVDs and
computer video files.
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The study makes a significant contribution to debates around the post-television era
by considering audience habits both inside and outside of ‘the Anglo-American nexus
that has overwhelmingly driven the field of television studies’ (Turner and Tay, 2009: 3).
Mostly notably, the analysis identifies marked national differences in terms of participants’
attitudes towards the DVD. While many British participants regularly watched TV comedy
on DVDs, such viewing habits were rarely described in the Norwegian groups. My research
indicates, then, that the DVD has different sets of meanings in the two national contexts.
As Ann Gray (1992: 192) notes, we should not assume ‘that the existence of a technological facility in the home will automatically lead to its use’, and we should therefore
explore the relationship between broadcast television and other forms of media technology, as well as the practices of their users. Drawing on this idea, I here examine factors
that might contribute to the relative absence of the DVD in talk about TV comedy within
my Norwegian focus groups.
The Focus Group Study
This research was carried out in 2006, and included 13 British and 12 Norwegian focus
groups with a total of 97 participants. These viewers were primarily white and middleclass. Moreover, while ages ranged from 17 to 59, most were in their 20s and 30s. The
participants were therefore relatively homogeneous in terms of age, class and race, which
was intended to facilitate comparison in terms of nationality and gender. However, my
subsequent analysis of the focus group data identified no notable gender differences in
terms of media technology usage in TV comedy viewing. This corresponds with the
findings of M. Mar Azcona et al.’s (2005: 28) research on the video and DVD viewing
habits of Spanish adolescents and university students. Thus, while I am certainly not
denying the existence of such gender differences, nationality appeared to be a far more
significant factor in this particular context, and that will be the focus of this article.
Within my two case study countries, the cities of Cardiff and Stavanger were chosen
as research locations for the pragmatic reason that my social networks there would
facilitate access to organizations and individuals in the recruitment process. Many of my
British participants were recruited through an advert placed on the electronic bulletin
board for employees at a civil service organization, while some responded to an email
sent out to Cardiff University students, and others were recruited through my own friends
within the local area. When recruiting for my Norwegian groups, I also tried to go through
various organizations, but this only produced one response (leading to the participation
of a comic book shop manager). Similarly, a local security guard assisted the research by
putting up recruitment posters in the city centre of Stavanger, but they did not lead to
any responses. My recruitment in Norway thus relied primarily on a ‘snowballing’
approach in which my own friends and family put me in contact with their friends,
colleagues and family members who might be interested in participating.
Television Comedy as Commodified Object
Previous research on the DVD has emphasized the ways in which this technology has
provided new ways of watching and thinking about TV series. Derek Kompare (2006:
352) argues that DVD box sets construct TV series as ‘objects for acquisition’, providing
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texts in an organized and complete form, without advert breaks, and often including
features such as deleted scenes and ‘behind the scenes’ documentaries that are not available on television: ‘In other words, DVD box sets provide the content of television without
the “noise” and limitations of the institution of television’. The VHS format has also been
used for the release of TV series, but Robert J. Thompson (2007: xix) argues that such
pre-recorded collections would often be limited to a few episodes, rather than an entire
series. As Kompare (2006: 337) notes, the DVD is smaller, but has a larger storage
capacity, and this means that the collection of a series takes up less shelf space. In
addition, the DVD’s image and sound have far higher resolutions, and users can more
easily access individual episodes or different points within the episodes. VHS technology
was rarely brought up in either the British or the Norwegian focus group discussions,
presumably because it was then in the process of being phased out in both countries. In
2003/2004, 83 per cent of British homes had a VCR, but at the time of my focus group
study in 2006, 83 per cent of British households owned at least one DVD player (National
Statistics, 2008), while the figure for Norway was 80 per cent (Vaage, 2006: 42).
Previous arguments around the introduction of DVD technology (and, to a somewhat
lesser extent, VHS technology) can be seen to identify a shift in which the TV viewer
becomes addressed as a collector or fan consumer. However, when comparing discussions of DVD technology, I identified a marked national difference in the extent to which
participants claimed to use DVDs for TV comedy viewing. Out of 48 British participants,
28 stated that they would sometimes watch TV comedy on DVD, and 13 maintained that
this was their main or preferred form of viewing. In contrast, only 14 out of 49 Norwegian
participants said that they sometimes watched comedy shows on DVD, and only one of
those – 21-year-old Ivy (group 19) – said that she primarily watched DVDs. It is also worth
noting that Ivy explained that she had recently adopted this viewing habit because she
had started an undergraduate degree in Britain and found that her new schedule had
little room for regular TV viewing. Two other Norwegian DVD users had also spent several
years at British universities.
Statistics from 2006 show that many Norwegians did regularly use DVD technology at the time when the focus groups were conducted. In that year, 10 per cent of
Norwegian viewers watched a VHS tape or a DVD on any given day, and 77 per cent
of those were then watching pre-recorded DVDs. The number of daily VHS/DVD users
further increased to 21 per cent for those aged 16–24 (Vaage, 2006: 42–3). However,
while several of my Norwegian participants emphasized that they owned films on DVD,
they expressed bemusement at the idea of renting or buying TV comedy DVDs when
comedy series were shown so frequently on different TV channels. Writing about the
USA, Kompare (2006: 342–3) underlines that ‘the number of television series made
available on home video represents only a minute percentage of the output of the
American television industry’, whereas most of the sound era Hollywood feature films
have been released on VHS or DVD. He argues that home video (including both VHS
and DVD) has primarily been promoted in association with film, with video outlets often
stocking TV series within the categories of recognizable film genres such as ‘comedy’
or ‘science fiction’. David Gauntlett and Annette Hill (1999: 154) also note that, in the
mid-1990s, video rentals in Britain mostly involved feature films, while purchased, prerecorded VHS tapes tended to be children’s videos. In 2006, many TV comedy series
were released on DVD, but the consumption of these products appeared to be less
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significant in Norway than in Britain and the USA. A price comparison suggests little
difference between British and Norwegian DVD prices, but I will now go on to consider
other factors that might contribute to the different cultural positions of the DVD in these
two national contexts.
DVD Consumption and TV Comedy Genres
The relative lack of interest in watching Norwegian comedy series on DVD might be partly
related to genre. In Britain and the USA, the sitcom is a highly popular genre and domestic
productions are prevalent in TV schedules (Mills, 2005: 5–6). The strong emphasis on
narrative continuity within this genre is designed to draw viewers in week after week
(Mills, 2005: 38), and it could also be seen to encourage consumers to buy DVDs in order
to have access to a full set of episodes. As suggested by the following extract, some of
my participants saw DVDs as a means to follow a series without organizing their schedule
around the TV guide. The undergraduate students in the British group 1 had here been
asked how they preferred to watch TV comedy:
Dave:
Moderator:
Dave:
Michael:
Dave:
Michael:
Dave:
Ellie:
Dave:
How do we prefer to watch it?
Yeah.
Normally I guess on DVD having bought it.
[interruption] Yeah.
in big binges.
[interruption] Mmm.
because we’re far too disorganized to watch a series.
[interruption] Mmm.
when it’s on terrestrial TV.
DVD technology was here seen to enable the participants to watch programmes they
were interested in when it suited them. This possibility was first seen with the VCR, which
offered viewers the possibility of ‘time shifting’ by recording programmes that they could
then watch when they wanted (Rixon, 2006: 178–9). As Gauntlett and Hill note:
It is not really an exaggeration to say that this made a significant difference to the way in which
these people could live their lives. It was important to them that they should see particular
programmes, but being no longer tied to watching them at the broadcast time meant that they were
cut ‘free’ from the fixed schedules by which television previously, presumably, used to tie viewers
down. (Gauntlett and Hill, 1999: 143)
However, while that suggests a greater amount of viewer control, this control can be
limited by the cost of DVDs. The discussion in group 1 demonstrated that Michael bought
a lot more DVDs than the others because he had more disposable income, and so Dave
and Ellie would presumably have less influence over what kind of programmes were
available in their shared house. The possibility of timeshifting has more recently also been
provided by the Digital Video Recorder (DVR), such as Sky+ and BT Vision in Britain, as
well as Get and Viasat in Norway. Wood (2007: 490) notes that such technology ‘offers
a hard drive memory which provides the live pausing and storage of programmes’.
However, DVRs were never brought up in my focus groups, which indicates that, at the
time of my research, this technology had yet to become a significant part of their TV
viewing.
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My research suggests, then, that many British participants saw timeshifting and
access to a complete set of episodes to be benefits of DVD technology. Considering this
in relation to Norwegian audiences, it is important to note that the number of Norwegian
comedy series released in full on DVD is quite limited. This can be linked to the lack of
Norwegian sitcoms. For the Norwegian public service broadcaster NRK, the scheduling of
‘alternative’ comedy has been part of a deliberate strategy to attract younger audiences,
and this output has primarily included variety, talkshows, satire and experimental comedy
(Kjus and Kaare, 2006: 28–9). While these types of comedy shows may include recurring
segments or use the same sets and actors, their emphasis on continuity tends to be
weaker than that of the sitcom. Moreover, the DVD releases of these series will often be
edited into ‘best of’ compilations, thus undermining the idea of collecting if the purpose
is to gain a full set of episodes.
Norwegian viewers would also have the opportunity to buy box sets of Anglophone
sitcoms. However, while British and US comedy series far outweigh Norwegian ones on
TV, few participants expressed an interest in such DVD consumption. When participants
mentioned specific titles that they had bought on DVD, five named Norwegian shows,
five mentioned British shows, and only two mentioned US shows. In an article from 2003,
a trade journal for the Norwegian video industry argues that [translated from Norwegian]
the selection of box sets in Norway ‘is minimal compared to the USA’, so that ‘collectors’
need to import products themselves, or via specialist retailers (Berge, 2003). This suggests
that the promotion of TV series as commodities was then far less marked in Norway than
it had been in Britain and the USA. In 2006, Oslo-based newspaper Aftenposten
(Weldeghebriel, 2006) still argued that consumers could save money by ordering US TV
series like Seinfeld and The Simpsons from online US shops. However, as the article
pointed out, Norwegian viewers will need a multi-region DVD player to watch these
series, and they are also unlikely to include Norwegian subtitles. While Norwegians tend
to have high levels of English literacy (O’Regan, 2000: 305–6), focus group discussions
suggested that my participants still found subtitles a helpful supplement to make sense
of the dialogue in Anglophone TV series. Only four out of 49 participants said that they
rarely read them, while another four specifically stated that they preferred English subtitles to the Norwegian translation. I will now move on to look at scheduling as another
factor that might contribute to the different attitudes towards TV comedy DVDs in Britain
and Norway.
The Ordinariness of TV Comedy
When I asked participants in the Norwegian group 23 about DVD purchases, Henning
and Arve highlighted the perceived availability of comedy series on TV:
Arve:
Henning:
Arve:
Henning:
Arve:
To buy series, I’m thinking, to buy, to buy series
[Interruption] It’s pointless.
Yes, yes, yes.
There will be reruns anyway, right.
[Interruption] Yes, yes, that’s um, yes, totally, I don’t get that.
This can be related to Eileen R. Meehan’s (2007: 168) description of the ordinariness of
television: ‘Little work is required to select a program, change channels, drop-in for a few
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moments, decide to purchase licensed merchandise, or leave the room. The mundane is
also targeted by the ratings system: a person’s set tuning and viewing status is measured;
casual enjoyment and focused engagement are irrelevant’. Furthermore, Matt Hills notes
that some programmes are particularly linked to this notion of the everyday, and will
therefore rarely be given a DVD release:
TV quiz and game shows; daytime chat shows; light entertainment series; a range of sitcoms; even
many soaps – shows which are frequently stripped in broadcasting schedules, and are heavily linked
to a sense of TV’s phenomenological ‘dailiness’ – these are the genres and shows which industry
wisdom and common sense says do not transfer well to DVD. (Hills, 2007: 50)
Some sitcoms, such as Friends and The Simpsons, have had successful DVD releases
despite being frequently scheduled on TV (Kompare, 2006: 351). However, my analysis
of Norwegian focus group discussions suggested a connection between this perceived
ordinariness and a lack of interest in TV comedy DVDs. This can be related to regulatory
changes within the Norwegian TV industry.
While the BBC’s broadcasting monopoly ended as the first ITV franchises started
broadcasting in 1955 (Rixon, 2006: 39), similar Norwegian changes did not start happening until 1988 (Ministry of Culture and Church Affairs, 2006–2007: 16). Henrik Bastiansen
and Trine Syvertsen (1996: 148) note that the previously dominant NRK first dropped
below a 50 per cent audience share in 1994, which made that ‘the first year when a
major part of the television viewing in Norway favoured other channels than NRK’. As
Espen Ytreberg (1996: 157) argues, NRK has traditionally been seen ‘to emphasize informational programming’ rather than entertainment, while the new commercial broadcasters dramatically increased the availability of US comedy and other entertainment
programming targeting younger viewers.
This suggests that, for some Norwegian participants, TV comedy viewing may have
changed quite extensively in the 12 years preceding my research. The development has
similarities with much earlier changes in Britain. As the sole broadcaster, the BBC had
shown little US fiction programming, but the new ITV companies imported a great
number of US series, including comedy shows. This programming proved very popular
with audiences, and the BBC responded by increasing their own import of US fiction
(Rixon, 2006: 40–1). However, because these changes in Norwegian broadcasting are
comparatively recent, I would suggest that the availability of US comedy might be experienced more strongly by Norwegian viewers, thereby reinforcing an association between
TV comedy and the everyday.
The central position of US sitcoms in Norwegian TV comedy viewing can be seen in
the following extract from the discussion in group 14, where participants had been asked
to describe their viewing habits. This discussion also demonstrates the ways in which
channel proliferation can increase the ‘chaotic element’ of TV viewing. As Jonathan Gray
(2006: 74) notes: ‘Where an evening’s viewing used to require either channel loyalty or
thoughtful perusal of the television listings, it is now just as possible (and, given the sheer
size of television listings, probably more likely) to rely on the remote control’s channel up
and down arrows as guides’:
Andre:
Mmm. It’s actually just a way to pass the time. It’s a bit [pause] yes. Sitting down in the
sofa and just watching it. And laugh a bit from time to time.
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Moderator: But is it something you plan, or do you just turn on the TV and come across it?
Andre:
I usually just turn it on. Comedy series aren’t something I tend to follow regularly,
generally.
Moderator: None of them?
Andre:
Well, that’s usually what’s on when I come home from work. But yes.
Lars:
[inaudible] I come home from work, eat my dinner, and at 6 o’clock there’s The Simpsons
on TV3 and a new episode at 7 on ZTV.
Kristoffer: I usually watch when I start at 1 or 2 in the morning. There’s not that much on the TV
then, but Simpsons and
Lars:
[interruption] Married With Children.
Kristoffer: Family Guy is on, so
Lars:
[interruption] Yes, that’s on all the time. [inaudible] If I’m bored, I’ll turn on the TV, and
there are always reruns of something you haven’t seen.
Andre:
[inaudible] reruns of most things I haven’t watched.
Stian:
I do notice that I do watch, even though I say that I uh, I don’t search for comedy series,
but if I’m flicking through the channels, I always stop if there’s a comedy series on. So
it’s kind of like you say, if you’re sitting there hung-over on a Sunday and flick through
and you find, you find a comedy series, you’ll generally stop. That’s what you’re looking
for. [laughs] At least on Sundays
Lars:
If you watch TVNorge, they’re always on as well.
Stian:
Yes.
Rune:
With me, if I’m flicking through and see a comedy series, I won’t stop, but keep looking,
but if I can’t find anything better, I’ll go back.
Kristoffer: [interruption] That’s what I do, too.
Rune:
And leave it on while I’m sitting there, sleeping or whatever.
This discussion suggested that Lars and Stian actually watched several episodes of US
sitcoms each day (or night), but they constructed these programmes as background TV,
and their engagement was presented as distracted. Along with Rune and Kristoffer, they
also emphasized the lack of importance they attached to this viewing, which highlights
that ‘television is watched with varying levels of involvement’ (Gray, 2006: 72). However,
there were moments in the focus group discussion where these participants did talk
enthusiastically about TV comedy, including Monty Python’s Flying Circus and sketch
shows by the British double act Hale and Pace. This highlights the heterogeneity of their
engagement with TV comedy.
The notion of TV comedy’s ordinariness was also brought up in the British group 11,
but these participants also highlighted that some comedy series are scheduled less
frequently:
Moderator:
Jim:
Rob:
Luke:
So, how do you guys normally watch TV comedy, or how do you prefer to watch it?
On DVD. All season, just sit there, get drunk, watch the entire season in one sitting.
I do think there’s something to be said for waiting until the next week’s episode.
It it it it it’s weird. Some shows have, like, I couldn’t imagine owning Friends on DVD,
but I’m quite happy to put it on and watch it when it’s on randomly, it’s the same as
The Simpsons.
Rob:
[interruption] Yeah.
Luke:
I never wanna own it, but I’ll gladly watch it, but by the same token, I’ve got seasons
of King of the Hill, Futurama, and things like that, and I’m quite happy to own them
and stick them on anytime. So, particular ones.
Moderator: So, what’s the difference between the two?
Luke:
Some things that are on constantly, you’re quite happy to think, you know, like there’ll
be an episode of one on every day, but
Rob:
[interruption] Yeah, like The Simpsons, you can’t get away from it.
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Luke:
The Simpsons is on every day, Friends is on every day on some channels, and you can
always quite happily know it’s gonna be on. Whereas King of the Hill is on sporadically,
so it’s more like ‘Oh! That was on’. And then you think ‘I wish that was on tomorrow’.
So it’s nicer to have it, and then you can sit there and think: ‘Right, I’m gonna sit down
and watch a season of King of the Hill or a season of Futurama, cos I’ve got nothing
else to do’.
While distinguishing between different degrees of availability, Luke suggested that
he perceived the frequent scheduling of some US sitcoms to make a DVD purchase
superfluous. In relation to the limited sales of TV series on VHS in the USA, Kompare
(2006: 342) also notes that ‘television programs have been seemingly ubiquitous on
television itself, in the form of reruns’. This has also affected the content of US sitcoms.
As Joan Morreale (2003: 87) notes, since the mid-1950s, the profitability of syndication
meant that ‘many shows, particularly sitcoms, were deliberately structured so that they
could be repeated endlessly without appearing dated; this also meant that they did not
address controversial subjects’. While the emphasis on syndication has been less evident
in Britain and Norway, repeats are certainly a part of TV schedules. Norway is a small
country with limited means for domestic production, and so it imports a great many TV
programmes. Research suggests that the majority of non-domestic fiction programming
on European TV consists of reruns, which reduces programming costs (Eurofiction, 2001),
and this might reinforce the association between Anglophone comedy and the everyday
for Norwegian viewers.
The intended ‘timeless’ quality of US sitcoms could also be related to a description
of viewing habits in the Norwegian group 23. I have previously noted that British participants such as Dave, Michael and Ellie in group 1 relied on DVD technology to get around
the limitations of the TV schedule, but Henning explained that he had bought a satellite
dish partly because he wanted increased access to channels broadcasting US sitcoms The
Simpsons and Seinfeld:
Henning:
Like we said earlier, so, so, like, when I got the Viasat Start package just to
Moderator: [interruption] Mmm.
Henning:
and when they asked if I didn’t want the Gold package I was like: ‘But they don’t have
Seinfeld or um Simpsons so I’m not interested in it!’ So I’m always checking Swedish
TV3 or Danish TV3 to see if Seinfeld is on, or on Swedish TV6 if they have Seinfeld, no
I mean [pause] Simpsons because that runs on all those channels, so I can watch it
several times a day because I love it, right.
Moderator: But do you enjoy watching episodes again that you’ve seen before as well?
Henning:
No, that disappoints me a bit.
Henning here suggested that his TV viewing primarily consisted of The Simpsons and
Seinfeld, but he here also explained that he was mostly interested in watching episodes
that he had not seen before. Because US TV series generally have far more episodes per
series than both British and Norwegian series, the long-running show Seinfeld ended up
with a total of 180 episodes. Similarly, The Simpsons is still in production after the broadcasting of 19 series, which means that it was possible for Henning to find several unseen
episodes of this programme each day, on different Scandinavian channels. However,
while this channel-hopping meant that Henning would often be watching these
episodes outside of their original sequence, he expressed no interest in buying the series
on DVD. Along with the extract from group 14, Henning’s account illustrates that some
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Norwegian participants associated US TV comedy with availability, and DVD technology
therefore had little significance in their engagement with such shows. This highlights the
importance of considering the complexities of specific national contexts when examining
audience responses to developments in media technologies. Having explored the ways in
which genre, imports and scheduling may contribute to national differences in attitudes
towards DVDs, I will now further explore the ways in which DVD users constructed their
viewing practices.
The Convenience of Timeshifting
The convenience of timeshifting was also brought up in Norwegian groups. In group 22,
for example, participants saw the use of DVDs as offering a way to watch shows that
were broadcast too late at night:
Merethe:
And some of those TV shows are on really late at night as well.
Moderator and Karianne: Yes.
Gunnar:
That’s really annoying if you have to get up in the morning for lectures
or work or something.
Karianne:
Mmm.
In group 16, 26-year-old Elin also described non-domestic use of DVDs, explaining that
she and her colleagues watched TV comedy while working night shifts at the hospital:
Elin:
And I watch a lot at work. On DVDs. When I have the night shift.
Moderator: So will you mainly watch whatever people bring in, or will you bring in stuff yourself?
Elin:
That’s [pause] both whatever people bring, and what I bring myself. But it’s, a lot of it
is actually a lot of British series.
As Hills (2007: 43) notes, DVD is not only seen to offer the possibility of timeshifting: ‘An
analogous concern surrounding the rise of DVD and digital culture is perhaps that of
“placeshifting”, with DVDs of “television” series being viewable on personal computers
as well as portable viewers, and capable of being downloaded as digitized files’.
The use of video files was discussed in one Norwegian group and three British groups.
In the Norwegian group 25, participants stated that they mostly watched TV comedy on
their personal computers, often using video files that were either downloaded from the
internet or created by ripping DVDs they had borrowed from friends. Peer-to-peer filesharing can be characterized as ‘a means of unauthorized content redistribution’ (Hilderbrand, 2007: 56), and the practices described by these participants were in breach of
copyright law. However, such strategies provided ways to avoid the expense of buying
DVDs, and to get hold of programmes that had not been released in their country. In the
British groups 11 and 5, participants also discussed file-sharing in relation to watching
US TV comedy that had not been released in Britain. For example, 27-year-old Russell
(group 11) watched video files of current affairs comedy show The Colbert Report, a spinoff from The Daily Show. This programme had not been broadcast or released on DVD
in Britain, and file-sharing was one of the few options Russell had if he wanted to
follow it.
In a qualitative study of the media use of young Italians (aged 14–24), Giovanna
Mascheroni et al. (2008: 22) argue that the use of such video files is a more individual
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activity than watching TV or DVDs. They also found that some viewers would use
analogue TV viewing to identify which TV series they would be interested in downloading. A similar practice was described in the British group 5, where Jake, Steve and Max
all said that they would often catch parts of interesting comedy series on TV, and then
buy the DVDs. The difference in these two approaches might partly be related to age.
Mascheroni et al. (2008: 27) demonstrate that file-sharing is far more widespread
amongst people who have not yet reached working age. They point out that the daily
schedule of younger people can more easily accommodate file-sharing:
This includes a large amount of time spent indoors (typically study time) into which file-sharing fits
easily as a background practice while accomplishing other activities on the PC or consuming other
audiovisual contents (when it the [sic] not colonizing the night). In fact, the decrease in free time
that occurs when people reach working age leads to a progressive reduction in the frequency of filesharing, an increase in selectivity, and a change in the perception of file-sharing, now seen more as
an excessively time-consuming activity. (Mascheroni et al., 2008: 27)
While the file-sharing participants in group 25 were all students, Jake, Steve and Max
had full-time office jobs. This might mean that they had more money to spend on DVD
purchases, but they also had less time available for downloading TV series.
It is important to note that timeshifting can also have certain limitations. For example,
Gray (1992: 214) points out that timeshifting ‘means sacrificing the shared experience of
viewing at a regular time of day’. The difference between TV viewing and DVD viewing
was brought up in several British groups, and 16 participants said that they enjoyed
watching comedy on television. In group 10, 27-year-old Sarah emphasized the social
element of following a series simultaneously with other viewers:
You can talk about it. So that TV element is good, ‘cos you can talk about it with people and stuff,
‘cos they’ll be watching it at the same time. Yeah. It’s good. Like, it always has to be like, I dunno,
a social thing as well, isn’t it, like, it’s nice when someone else finds it funny as well.
In the same group, 25-year-old Cindy also said that she enjoyed looking forward to
watching the next episode each week. However, 27-year-old Russell (group 11) challenged this idea, suggesting that the anticipation of a new episode was more enjoyable
when he was following drama series:
See I think with the week to week thing, that’s not so important for comedies, it’s a bit like the com,
I think for, like, drama series [inaudible] it works really well, like, sort of, Battlestar Galactica week
to week is really good, ’cos it keeps building suspense, but a comedy series like The Simpsons, it
really doesn’t matter.
For Russell, then, the enjoyment of waiting for the next episode was tied to the anticipation of plot developments. The circular narrative of sitcoms like The Simpsons means
that plotlines will not be developed across episodes, and so such texts do not offer that
particular kind of anticipation.
DVDs and Close Reading Practices
As in the Norwegian group 16, where Elin described night-time DVD viewing at the
hospital, the British group 10 also brought up the practice of work-place DVD viewing.
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In this discussion, the participants brought up another perceived benefit of DVD use,
suggesting that the opportunity to re-watch episodes, or watch several in a row, might
allow for a more intense engagement with the text:
Sarah: I quite like DVDs though, like, ‘cos sometimes you can get
Rachel: [interruption] More obsessed. [laughs]
Sarah: more involved in it, yeah, first, like, that’s when we, at lunch time we just, like, watch it
Rachel: [interruption] Yeah.
Sarah: a series each lunch time.
This illustrates that DVD technology can allow viewers greater control over when they want
to watch a comedy series, and how they want to watch it. As Thompson (2007: xix)
suggests: ‘Producers now make shows with the knowledge that each episode might be
viewed and scrutinized over and over again’. For fans, this can for example facilitate the
practice of ‘poaching’, or the appropriation of specific textual elements (Jenkins, 1992:
22). Rachel demonstrated her use of poaching by singing a rather long song from British
cult sitcom The Mighty Boosh that the three participants had learnt by heart through
repeated viewing and the use of lyrics they had found on the internet. Along with elements
such as newspaper articles and reviews on Amazon, these lyrics can also be seen to
highlight the permeable boundaries of TV comedy as cultural artefacts (Hills, 2007: 44).
Closely associated with comedy duo Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding, The Mighty
Boosh can be linked with notions of authorship in cult fandom, as well as wider discourses
of quality. As Roberta Pearson (2007: 243) writes about the US market, the increasing
multiplication of channels and media platforms has ‘diluted the network brand’, and ‘the
brand of the author’ has become ‘an important marker of the quality now expected by
demographically desirable viewers’. Such notions of quality may be seen to invite the
‘closed reading’ practice described by the young, British women in group 10. This viewing
strategy was also brought up by British 27-year-old Rebecca (group 4): ‘[inaudible] and if
I am laughing, if I laugh, I like to rewind, because otherwise I miss bits. [laughs]’. Suggesting that her laughter might prevent her from ‘catching’ every element within the
dialogue, Rebecca indicated that she used facilities offered by DVDs or VHS to aid her
close reading of TV comedy.
Close reading practices can be linked to ideas of cultural value. As Hills notes:
If DVD culture works, partly, on television to re-position many of its texts as symbolically bounded
and isolatable ‘objects’ of value, then as a machinery of valorisation stressing the ‘total system’ of
TV serials and series, it works to popularise ‘close reading’ and the artistic re-contextualisation of
some TV content. (Hills, 2007: 49)
Meehan has also emphasized that US media companies ‘target viewers as fan consumers’
by providing facilities for fan activities on their own websites:
Television’s Big Five – Disney (ABC), General Electric (NBC), National Amusements (CBS and co-owner
CW), News Corporation (Fox and My Network), and Time Warner (co-owner CW) – routinely promote
programs on their Web sites via chat rooms, scheduled access to creative personnel, games, contests,
clips, episodes for download, and licensed merchandise offers. (Meehan, 2007: 167)
In contrast, because of the comparatively low use of TV series on DVD amongst my
Norwegian participants, my research suggests that these viewers were less likely to take
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advantage of either the convenience of timeshifting or the opportunities for close reading
offered by the DVD form.
Overall, however, I do not wish to exaggerate the evidence of such close reading
practices in either the Norwegian or the British focus group discussions. Gray (2006:
72) argues that the emphasis on close reading within audience research ‘has painted
for us a deceptively stable picture of television viewing’, underlining the widespread
practices of channel hopping and distracted viewing. In a study of the use of film DVDs,
Peter Dean (2007: 120) further proposes that, while ‘the high quality and additional
functionality associated with the DVD format’ may appeal to niche markets such as fans
and technophiles, research shows that consumers generally have little interest in DVD
features such as sound and image improvements or DVD extras. Similarly, Pat Brereton
and Barbara O’Connor’s (2007: 147) study of Irish teenagers found that several participants ‘also purchased cheaper bootlegged copies, which would not have been high
quality and may not have included some of the bonus features and not suitable for a
“collection”’.
In my study, then, several DVD users explained that, while they did purchase DVDs,
they tended not to watch them repeatedly. The following example is from the British
group 11:
Charlie: Um, I’ve got quite a few comedy DVDs but I don’t watch them very often. Um I’ve got
maybe one or two, like, I watch Spaced all the time, but a lot of other stuff that I’ve got,
I don’t know whether it’s been bought for you or something, but um, ‘oh, you’d like that’,
you just end up never thinking, ‘I know what I’ll do now, I’ll watch half a dozen episodes
of that in a row!’
James: [interruption] Yeah.
Charlie: So normally you just, sort of, you end up watching things that you’ve seen loads of times
before. ‘Cos they come around on TV again, and ‘ah, I’ll just sit in front of this’, that sort
of stuff.
Ron:
I don’t know, you always watch things that you’ve seen loads of times before with your
friends [inaudible]
James: [interruption] Yeah.
Ron:
As well, uh
James: [interruption] Yeah, yeah, it’s weird, ‘cos you watch it and it’s funny, and then you watch
it a couple of times, and then if, if you’ve met people, you may have people coming round
to watch something you all know backwards, you know, like Blackadder or something like
that, and everybody knows where all the jokes is, and that’s like a different experience
again, ‘cos you all know what’s coming.
26-year-old James here suggested that his DVDs were often used as a starting point for
social interaction. This demonstrates a heterogeneous use of DVDs as cultural artefacts;
for James, it could facilitate a close reading, or it could have a more instrumental
function. In the latter case, he could be seen to suggest that his enjoyment came mostly
from the sense of communality created by displays of a shared familiarity with particular texts. As Mills (2005: 142) notes, the pleasures of sitcoms, for example, ‘don’t reside
purely within the text; the social nature of watching sitcoms as a family or a group –
as demonstrated by the massive audience ratings for Christmas specials of sitcoms in
Britain – shows that the pleasure of sitcom can also come from the context of consumption’. While this may previously have been associated primarily with broadcast television,
timeshifting can also enable viewers to choose when such communal viewing should
take place.
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TV Comedy and Paratexts
One of the ways in which DVDs have been seen to change the TV series, is through
add-ons:
As they have with film releases, these extras add filters of meaning to the original episodes and
function as significant texts on their own. Their inclusion further promotes the idea that a DVD set
is better than the broadcast version, that it offers a more intensive experience than is available
anywhere on television. (Kompare, 2006: 349)
However, Dean (2007: 124) notes that films available via P2P file-sharing protocol
BitTorrent will rarely include DVD add-ons, while Brereton and O’Connor found that none
of their adolescent participants appeared to buy DVDs for the add-ons themselves:
Their motivation for purchasing was that they had already enjoyed the film at the cinema and wanted
the experience replicated or archived in their own homes, or the film had been highly recommended
by friends and peers. Furthermore, we found a majority of sample audiences watched films from
start to finish – even those films they knew very well. (Brereton and O’Connor, 2007: 148)
My study also indicated that participants attributed little significance to DVD add-ons,
which were rarely talked about in focus group discussions. One exception was provided
by the discussion of British cult sitcom Spaced in the British group 11, where participants
referred to a subtitle track that states the sources of deliberate intertextual references:
Rob:
[interruption] That was like, Spaced relied on, entirely on the fact that its cross-references
[inaudible] pop culture, but it worked well because of that.
Jim:
[interruption] Yeah, but you could watch that and not know, ‘cos I know people who had
no clue what was going on.
Rob:
This is true, but I can’t watch it with people who didn’t know [inaudible] you explain ‘this
is from this’, and they’re like [squeals] ‘Oh! I see it now!’
Jim:
I think she had to put, ‘cos they got that
Russell: [interruption] Homage-o-meter.
Jim:
Homage-o-meter on it.
Rob:
[interruption] Yeah.
Jim:
When I was sitting there watching it with one of my uh sort of clique here, ‘don’t ask me
any more questions, just read what it tells you, it’ll tell you where every one of these jokes
comes from and why I’m laughing and you’re not’.
[laughter]
Jim was here constructing an expert fan identity by suggesting that he did not ‘need’ this
device because he already recognized and enjoyed the references, but that it could help
less knowledgeable viewers get the jokes.
DVD features such as the ‘homage-o-meter’ can be seen as ‘paratexts’, along with
material such as promotion, magazine features and letters from viewers. Gray (2006:
36–7) argues that paratexts aim to regulate intertextuality. For instance, producers can
use paratexts in an attempt to guide readers towards particular reading approaches, but
they ‘can also be used by others to attack a text, to subvert its preferred meanings and
to propose unofficial and unsanctioned readings’. Examples of the latter category can be
found in trailer remixes on Youtube, which Lucas Hilderbrand (2007: 52) argues ‘have
become one of the most popular forms of fan subversion in the age of digital video’ (for
a further discussion of fan texts, see for example Sandvoss, 2005). This can be related to
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John Fiske’s (1987: 117) distinction between secondary and tertiary texts, where he argues
that ‘secondary texts, such as criticism or publicity, work to promote the circulation of
selected meanings of the primary texts. The tertiary texts are the final, crucial stage of
this circulation, for they occur at the level of the viewer and his/her social relations.
Studying them gives us access to the meanings that are in circulation at any one time’.
Other examples of tertiary texts include viewer letters and audience talk (Fiske, 1987:
108). In my audience study, then, the impact of secondary texts could be identified in
talk about Norwegian reality show parody Nissene På Låven, as several Norwegian
participants implied that they were familiar with aspects of its production process. This
knowledge might have been gained from newspaper or magazine articles, but 22year-old Tor (group 20) explained that he had watched a documentary about the
production process on TV:
Tor:
The best thing about Nissene på Låven was afterwards, when they showed a retrospective
behind the scenes thing.
Moderator: I never watched that.
Tor:
Mmm. It was great, because they had just been reacting spontaneously, they were
several days behind schedule, and were just recording and messing around.
Tor here suggested that this documentary had a significant impact on his engagement
with the comedy series. Seeing evidence of improvisational comedy, in particular,
appeared to increase his enjoyment of the humour within the programme.
Conclusion
This article has focused on the ways in which Norwegian and British TV comedy viewers
constructed their own use of media technology, including broadcast television, DVDs and
video files. As a comparative study, it contributes to debates around the post-television
era by offering insights into how audiences in two different national contexts make use
of available media technologies. As Graeme Turner notes:
It is important to recognize that what we are witnessing in this era of plenty is a diversification of
the media diet, not the simple substitution of one form of consumption by another. As I have argued,
how that plays out varies significantly from market to market; these are highly contingent rather
than simply over-determined market responses. (Turner, 2009: 62)
Underlining the value of considering both text/audience and product/consumer relationships (Wood, 2007: 492), my analysis argued that TV comedy on DVD tended to have
far more significance for my British participants than for my Norwegian participants.
Drawing on statistical data, I underlined the popularity of DVD technology in Norway, but
argued that it was primarily associated with film viewing.
My discussion examined two factors that might contribute to this national difference
in relation to TV comedy viewing: Firstly, I highlighted a lack of Norwegian sitcoms, and
argued that ‘best of’ DVD collections from variety shows might be seen to undermine
the purpose of collecting a TV series on DVD. Secondly, I noted that the Norwegian broadcasting industry was deregulated at a much later date than the British industry, suggesting that its comparatively recent influx of US sitcoms may have reinforced a notion of TV
comedy’s ordinariness and availability, while reducing the appeal of DVD box sets.
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Moving on to discuss the ways in which DVD usage may have affected audience
engagement, I have noted accounts of close reading and the use of extra features.
However, most of my British participants primarily associated this technology with the
convenience of timeshifting. Along with VHS and video files, DVDs were seen to offer
viewers greater control over when and how they wanted to engage with TV comedy. As
Jimmie L. Reeves et al. (2007: 96) argue: ‘We live in the era of television de-scheduling.
The technological Cerberus of file sharing, DVRs and DVD sales are creating an environment where viewers control the flow of television, making it more difficult to quantify
and commodify the audience’. In contrast, such changes were far less evident in
Norwegian focus group discussions around TV comedy, which demonstrates the importance of considering the specificities of both texts and national contexts in debates around
the post-television era.
Acknowledgement
This study is based on my PhD research, which was supervised by Dr Matt Hills, and funded by the Overseas
Research Students Award Scheme and the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural studies.
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Inger-Lise Kalviknes Bore (PhD, Cardiff University) is Lecturer in Media and Cultural
Theory at Birmingham City University. Her research interests include popular culture,
audiences, and media debates around environmental issues.
Address Birmingham School of Media, Birmingham City University, City North
Campus, Perry Barr, Birmingham B42 2SU, UK. [email: [email protected]]
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