The future of television is here, happening all around us. Are we paying enough attention to notice, and if so, is there anything we can do? In his new book Post-TV: Piracy, Cord-Cutting and the Future of Television, Michael Strangelove, who teaches communication at the University of Ottawa, provides a powerful attempt to help us understand this new future.
For most of us, TV is still a video-based medium. But this assumption is becoming quickly outdated. Increasingly, the CBC, YouTube, Netflix and The Pirate Bay (an online directory, which, as its name suggests, facilitates peer-to-peer sharing of media content) are all television. Strangelove is interested in examining how TV is being transformed by the internet. One could argue that the transformative effect works in both directions: the internet is changing TV while TV is changing the internet. New technologies are pushing the boundaries of narrative forms, be it fiction, documentary or news, just...
Ramona Pringle is a professor in the RTA School of Media at Ryerson University and creative director of the Ryerson Transmedia Zone, an incubator for the future of media. She is an interactive producer, creating work for multiple platforms, and a frequent contributor to national media on issues of social media and digital culture.
Advertisement
Advertisement