As a media reporter, I find myself struggling with what to call TV and film today. In the 1990s, it was easy. Things on TV were TV shows. Things in the cinema were movies. Now, more people than ever are making what we continue to call “TV shows,” but no one is watching them on television screens.
In August, before the usual fall US TV season kick off, Facebook launched its own lineup of original video series rivaling those from traditional TV channels. Snapchat released a similar stock of shows earlier this year, including a handful of offshoots of existing TV series, but all of which are only available via its mobile app. Netflix and Hulu—that latter of which just snagged the first best-series Emmy for a streaming service—have proved they can make dramas and comedies as good as any TV network out there.
Meanwhile, movies in cinemas, like the Fast and Furious franchise, are being told over five, six, 10 installments—like stories are told in TV. Episodes of shows like Game of Thrones are regularly the length of feature films. Darren Aronofsky designs his films to look good on an iPhone.
Had Netflix’s Stranger Things, which returns for its second season this month, been made in another era, it probably would have been a movie. That’s how the Duffer brothers envisioned it. But “nobody wanted to hear movie ideas,” said Matt Duffer recently. ”They wanted to hear television ideas.” So, he and his brother, Ross, turned their homage to Eighties pop culture into a movie for the small screen—told in eight parts.
None of this is TV in the standard sense. It comes as TV sets are disappearing from American homes, and more media is being consumed (pdf) through a combination of other devices including smartphones, tablets, desktop computers, game consoles, and multimedia devices like Rokus, radio, and DVD and Blu-ray players. Almost everything can be watched through one glass screen or another.
But if it looks like TV and sounds like TV, why isn’t it? It’s a question I ask myself daily.
It’s my job to describe TV, streaming, and other programming to readers. If I don’t know what to call this stuff, does anybody?
This isn’t the first time this issue has come up. The language around video storytelling has always been steeped in format and distribution.
In the late 1800s, when we learned how to record and show still images so that the objects in the images appeared to be moving, we called the byproducts “motion pictures” or “moving pictures,” and later, “movies,” according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. The images were recorded on “film,” which became another moniker. And the films were shown in “cinemas,” stemming from the French word for ”motion-picture projector and camera.”
The word “television” was coined in the early 1900s in reference to a theory that moving pictures could be transmitted over distances, which is what the technology became known as when it was developed in the 1920s and 1930s—as did the medium. And the term “video” was first used in back the 1930s to mean “that which is displayed on a screen,” especially a TV screen.
It calls back to the Latin video, meaning “I see.”
Nearly 100 years later, we’re still using the same words. But what do we call TV and film when it’s no longer watched on TV sets or shot on film, respectively? How do we refer to a story that’s made like a movie, structured like a TV show, but released online? Do creators see a difference?
“TV, for the audience, is when you watch it on your TV [set],” said YouTube creator Andy Signore, who recently adapted his online series Man at Arms for the TV network El Rey. “A TV show is a larger-scale production distributed to a pre-existing audience,” said another YouTuber, Hannah Hart, when comparing her YouTube series to her The Food Network TV show I Hart Food.
Digital is “short-form stuff,” while TV is longer-form, said Bill Rouhana, CEO of Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, which produces programming for TV networks like A&E and CBS, as well as online outlets like its subsidiary, APlus.
com, founded by actor Ashton Kutcher.
When Hart, one the YouTubers, posted her first video on the platform back in 2011, strangers who watched wrote in the comments that it was their favorite new “show.” She had no idea there were shows on YouTube. Now, “I don’t know anyone of my peers who says, ‘I’m looking for new digital series to watch,'” said Signore, the other YouTuber. “The term is just show. It’s a show. It’s a movie.”
Some linguists believe that, with lack of better words, the terms “TV” and “film” will become relics that take on new meanings. We still refer to the moving pictures we record on our phones as “video,” for example, even though they are no longer shot on videotape.
“People are still referring to them in the same sort of monikers,” said David Zucker, head of TV at Ridley Scott’s production company Scott Free, which also makes movies like Alien: Covenant and Blade Runner 2049. ”But everyone seems to have different ideas about what they mean.
”
Netflix calls itself “internet TV.” YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki says YouTube “is not TV. And we never will be.” The Internet Movie Database doesn’t even have a classification for web series, so all those on the platform are listed as “TV series.”
“I’m terribly dissatisfied with the language that’s now associated with these changes,” said Rouhana. “‘Digital’ and ‘TV’ are sort of misnomers now.”
Dissatisfaction drives change. New words arise when “we’re using our language and bump into an idea that isn’t expressed well,” David Barnhart, a long-time dictionary editor who specializes in new words, told Quartz.
“Podcast,” for example, was coined in 2004 to describe audio shows that weren’t too different from radio broadcasts, but could be downloaded to devices through the internet. It’s “pod,” as in the Apple iPod, and “cast,” as in broadcast. Apple no longer really makes iPods but the term remains easy to grasp and widely used, two of the factors that linguist Alan Metcafe said make new words stick.
DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg is peddling the term “new TV”for his latest venture—creating short 6-10-minute series that are meant to be watched during down time on mobile devices. It’s similar to the way “new media” was used to described digital publishers. As of now, however, Katzenberg appears to be one of the only ones using “new TV,” which doesn’t bode well for the word’s longevity.
The term “TV” may very well stick around for awhile yet.
Grant Barrett, linguist, lexicographer, and host of the public radio show A Way with Words, thinks “TV” could become a skeuomorph, an architectural term borrowed into linguistics that refers to words and phrases that are rooted in fossilized meanings. “Dialing a phone” is one such phrase. It harkens back to rotary phones equipped with dials, or disks, that were used to make calls. Today, we simply tap the numbers or press the buttons on our phones, but the phrase is still popular.
“There is this natural conservative force to retain what’s already working that makes terms like ‘tape’ persist,” he says.
”It’s an artifact.”
Sometimes, an old word re-emerges and takes on a new meaning. Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, for example, likes “motion pictures.” “I still use that old-fashioned term, because it covers both movies and television nicely,” he said in a Reddit AMA. I asked Michael Green, the screenwriter for Blade Runner 2049 and Logan, for his thoughts and he gave another suggestion via Twitter:
That accords with what others think. “I don’t know anyone of my peers who says, ‘I’m looking for a new digital series,'” said Signore, one of the YouTubers. “The term is just ‘show.'”
Incidentally, using the word “shows” for entertainment programs stems from a term from the 1300s use of the word as “exhibiting to view.” And “series,” or a set of programs with the same characters or themes” was adapted in 1949 for radio and TV. These older terms are versatile enough to span content that is no longer bound by its platform. After all, no matter what the method of consumption, stories are just stories.
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The Nedelya newspaper took care of the problems of domestic TV and asked industry professionals questions.
Fragments of responses below. Highlights in red are mine:
Orkhan Fikretoglu, writer, TV presenter:
- Who do you think should be the face of the channel?
- Anyone but a showman. The chaos reigning on our TV is a consequence of the fact that we do not have a single national idea, an ideology that would guide and correct . And the show is an ideology of immorality. Of course, I do not deny that show programs are needed for recreation and entertainment. But you need to understand that the showman serves fashion, modern trends - and this is not forever. The face of the channel should be an intellectual, he has always been primary. An intellectual is the face of not only the channel, but the whole nation and people.
- Maybe state control is needed?
- No, not at all. TV should be free - it is an independent structure headed by a sane leader. He must have self-awareness, which will not allow the channel to lower the bar to the level of meaningless shows.
Zeynal Mammadli, TV critic:
Modern TV requires getting out of state and power control . There are reasons for this - there are more interactive tools, and communication options have changed. The government must have its own channels that will work for it and for it, inform about everything that happens inside it. If we talk about state control, then it should only apply to what is connected with elections, television debates on political topics, news and socio-political programs.
Elmir Akper, psychologist:
Today television is marking time. All channels show the same. By broadcasting base show programs, television contributes to the regression of the viewer's intellectual development...
Channels prepare programs for people with a low intellectual level of development. What are the show programs, which, except for the bazaar, and can not be called.I understand that in show business there must be noise, din, gossip, but you need to know when to stop. We go overboard in everything, and TV should reflect reality.
Gulu Maharramli, TV journalist, Deputy Chairman of the Press Council:
Our TV manipulates the population with the help of show programs. Previously, religion was called the opium of the people, but now TV has taken on this mission. And this gives a very bad effect. After all, in fact, television can and should lead society.
Elshad Guliyev, television critic:
We failed by creating a channel similar to which we have several . I mean the Khazar TV channel. It is no different from other channels - it shows the same films, the same news. I would very much like to see a specialized channel "Culture".
Mehriban Alekperzade, director, TV journalist:
I'm sorry that even those TV channels that are considered state-owned allow themselves to play these shows.Somewhere I can understand private channels, as they live on this, earn money. After all, it is this kind of program that is very popular with advertisers. The state should be interested in something completely different - in the education of the people, and not in its degradation.
From the article of the columnist of "The Week":
It is enough just to look at the programs that are full of our TV channels to completely eliminate the desire to watch Azerbaijani television in general. Why be surprised? After all, there is not a single program on any TV channel that would serve the cause of enlightenment, education, would carry at least some positive, in the end. But quite often there are vulgar shows with third-rate "stars" and presenters, "shop" programs, corrupt contests, low-grade clips and money, small and big money. A couple of really talented people are the exception rather than the rule. "Toikhan" culture, an absolute lack of taste, and even more often of a voice, inability to speak, dress, behave, throaty "frills" of some singers alien to us, petty-bourgeois "drawing" and indefatigable ambitions - this is an incomplete list of the "do-sins" of those who today is an eyesore to us on television.0023
And what does the National Council for Television and Radio Broadcasting do?.. The trouble is that they recruited people who chose for their activities, to put it mildly, a philistine approach, supported by incredible dilettantism. Apparently, they enjoy all the above-named problems.
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August 2018 S M T W T F S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 , laurels, cymbals, orders, ribbons and certificates thunder like thunder and lightning in all parts of the universe of this visible and invisible world, i.
e. sublunar I passionately love astronomers, poets, metaphysicians, privatdozents, chemists and other priests of science, to which you classify yourself through your smart facts and branches of science, i.e. products and fruits. They say that you printed many books during mental sitting with pipes, thermometers and a bunch of foreign books with tempting drawings.
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"Putin and Rasputin": French media about Russian citizenship Depardieu
InoSMI materials contain only assessments of foreign media and do not reflect the position of the editors of InoSMI
The French press does not skimp on irony when commenting on the acquisition of Russian citizenship by actor Gerard Derapardier. The most interesting statements - in the report of the DW correspondent.
Information that Vladimir Putin granted Russian citizenship to Gerard Depardieu, as well as the statement of the French actor in this regard, caused caustic comments from journalists in his homeland.
The French authorities have not yet commented on the incident.
Irony and sarcasm
The communist L'Humanité ridicules this "theatrical show" by offering the French President Hollande, as a courtesy return, to grant the members of the Pussy Riot French citizenship. The centrist weekly Marianne notes that without good direction, the actor Depardieu turns into a universal laughing stock before our eyes.
The behavior of millionaires fleeing taxes abroad, the magazine evaluates as "selfish hysteria." With his capital and fame, the same Depardieu, Marianne points out, owes a lot to French taxpayers, but now the actor refuses them in return, choosing more generous friends and patrons in the East.
The editor of the conservative Le Figaro, Yves Trear, called the whole thing a "bad farce." In his opinion, “Putin’s embrace with Rasputin” (Depardieu played the role of this historical character in a recently filmed Franco-Russian television film) is a fact from the category of insignificant curiosities that does not add new touches either to the reputation of the actor himself or to the portrait of the owner of the Kremlin, whose tendency to provocations has also long been known to everyone.
Much sadder, from the point of view of the editor of Le Figaro, is the economic, political and now diplomatic fiasco that President Hollande turns around in his attempt to introduce a 75 percent tax on the income of millionaires. In this sense, Putin's decree granting citizenship to Depardieu is a clear humiliation for Paris.
However, as the newspaper notes, both the French left and right today prefer to refrain from commenting - the socialists absolutely do not need an extra controversy around their unsuccessful tax initiative, and the right-wing opposition is in no hurry to show solidarity with the voluntary exile because of a dubious political reputation the haven of their choice.
Tell me who your friend is. Newspapers also report on the actor’s musical duet with the daughter of the Uzbek president, Gulnara Karimova (whose cultural projects, according to human rights activists, are paid for by child labor in the cotton fields), and on his panegyrics to the Chechen president at a concert in Grozny on the birthday of the “tyrant”, as Ramzan calls Kadyrov's conservative Le Figaro.
At the same time, in Russia, journalists admit, Depardieu remains the most popular French actor since the days of Delon and Belmondo, shining on screens, on the jury of film festivals and in advertising for a wide variety of goods and services - from commercial banks to tomato sauce.
What about Belgium?
On the evening of December 3, Depardieu published an open letter in which he confirmed that he had sent a request for Russian citizenship, confessed his ardent love for Russian culture and personally Vladimir Putin, and also called Russia a great democracy. The actor said that Russia is “full of great feelings”, it is good to live in it, and that he will learn Russian. The actor’s address ends with the words “Glory to Russia!”
Depardieu's letter, according to the philosopher André Glucksmann, not only causes a sense of shame in the context of Russian domestic and foreign policy, but also places the Belgian authorities in an ambiguous position.
