Live Television: The Ordinary and The Extraordinary

As a technology, the television’s introduction was negotiated through a series of discourses bringing the family together as people gather collectively to watch a program, and quite often these shows are dramas about families like The Simpsons and Modern Family. Preceding World War II, there was a great distinction between the private and public spheres but television provided an intermediary between the two.

Television works to produce a shared experience of the ‘every day’ by providing a familiar structure through programming scheduling and recognizable features. Essentially, television helps to punctuates the day. The national news is an example that comes to mind. Depending on the network, six o’clock marks the daily live news bulletins that provide a sense of rhythm and punctuation to the day through regularity. Breakfast television programs like Sunrise work in the same way.

Breakfast television “… is obsessed with identifying itself with the daily world of the television viewer…[I]ts mode of address and presentation of content, its settings and props, the ways in which it tries to reconcile fragmentation and flow, and make use of ‘liveness’ and ‘time’, are functional for establishing a relationship with the morning audience, its moods, schedules and activities.”[1]

In an effort to provide a sense of ‘liveness,’ Sunrise is fast paced, stressing time constraints and acknowledges its studio setting. A breakfast atmosphere is crafted that tries to reflect what families are doing in the home at the time of the program, for example, mugs on table as if the hosts are sharing breakfast with us as the they interview guests on a lounge room like sofa. Television provides a virtual space where Sunrise can discuss issues in public life.

Evident in the clip below, breakfast television utilizes time as a key aspect to the programs organization. The clock on the bottom of the screen emphasizes the present, which is underlined further by the flashing “Live”, logo on the right of the screen.

Programs like Sunrise, must use timing to structure its varied sectors of news content and segments as the audience shifts throughout the 6am-9am program airing.

The mode of address in live breakfast television is characterized by direct to camera shots as the hosts strive to be relaxed and conversational with their viewers. For example, in the headline in the above clip colloquial and slang language is employed such as “Aussies” and “Dinky-di”. The hosts, Mel and Koshie, personify parental figures (the Daggy Dad and the Mum who sweeps in and puts the program back on track when things have gone awry) endorsed by the Sunrise website which acknowledges “the family.”

Live ‘extraordinary’ television events create a sense of spectacle bringing sizeable audiences together within the public sphere.

Rath, cited in Morley, asserts that the telecasting of live events “guarantees our being in time, or being up to date…live television thereby functions as an apparatus of synchronization.” What this means, is that live broadcasts like the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony, unite viewers and invite them to be a part of the “social fabric.”

Television coverage of the Olympic games produces meaning but not only offering entertainment but also it appeals to our sense of patriotism and cultural identity. We love watching our country represented as the Australian team walks the arena in the athlete’s precession. The extensive media coverage of events like the Olympics positions us within the happening, it breaks down the barrier between those watching the spectacle in the arena (private, one location) and those in their lounge rooms (public, international audience) who arguably have a better seat in terms of the variety and clarity of perspective television broadcast provides.

[1] J.Weinten & M. Pantti (2005), ‘Obsessed with the audience: breakfast television revisited.’ Media Culture and Society, 27(1):21-39