Blog #3

The newly developed television technologies, such as streaming services and 4K television sets, are nothing without a proper audience. For television media, the consumer is also the product, as selling a program to a consumer can have much longer success then selling a single product. While the US audience is a well-tapped market, there have been recent developments with networks like HBO to to utilize these new technologies to reach a new audience; namely China.

"For their part, TV producers want to make audiences, not simply attract viewers"(Miller p. 111). By this Miller means that we must use the developing technologies in order to provide and create content the audience wants. We should make content for the audience, not make content then sell it to the consumer. To this end, one of the bigger audiences left untapped is the China population. Television programs have been heavily censored by the Chinese government, with popular shows such as "The Big Bang Theory," "NCIS," and "The Good Wife" were taken off the air on authorities orders earlier this year.

However, the Chinese Internet firm Tencent Holdings recently announced a partnership with HBO to stream their TV shows, like "Game of Thrones" and "True Detective" to Chinese audiences in 2015. This shows would still be subject to government approval.

"This partnership enables us to distribute some of the most ground-breaking programming in he world through our robust technology platform," said Martin Lau, president of Tencent. This partnership is one of many from US television producers, who have been pumping more than $1 billion into foreign content in order to make a larger foreign audience.

Still, while the content now will be able to be shown to a new audience, the fact that it still will face the harsh regulations of the Chinese government (which prohibits content with obscene or pornographic material, something HBO shows are infamous for) leads into the idea of Television Studies 2.0. The usage of these programs could "allot the people's machine its due as a populist apparatus that subverts patriarchy, capitalism, and other forms of oppression," (Miller p. 124).

While the original intent might have been an attempt to reach reach new audiences thanks to new technologies in television studies,  the programming could have the potential to reach and interact audiences on a new level, so long as government regulation can still be controlled.

Source:
"China's Tencent Partners with HBO for TV Show Streaming." Reuters. Ed. Muralikumar Anantharaman. Thomson Reuters, 25 Nov. 2014. Web. 25 Nov. 2014.

 Miller, Toby. Television Studies: The Basics. London: Routledge, 2010. P. 110-140. Print.