“The key word in television these days is engagement.” - Norby Williamson, EVP of Programming, ESPN

Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

Wait until you hear what defines “engagement.”

You know those extremely annoying animated promotions that appear at the bottom of the screen during a show, usually advertising another show on the network? Well… they’re called ’snipes.’ And they make me want to throw things. And, according to this article in The NY Times, they are what the television industry sees as “engaging.”

Sure, we’ve gotten used to the multi-layered tickers running across the 24-hour news stations, but it’s a slightly lesser evil because they have framed their shows within them. The tickers don’t obstruct our view, they’re just part of the crowded picture. It’s not Kyra Sedgwick and her flashlight wandering through my movie, giving me no new information other than the fact that I dislike Kyra Sedgwick even more now.

TV muckety-muck types sight multi-tasking youngsters and video-game mentalities as key reasons for this increased (and ever-increasing) screen clutter. And, according to the article, they’re also perfectly fine with the backlash of angry viewers complaining that someone cartwheeling across the screen ruined the mood of this death scene or that denouement.

DVR has given us the opportunity to avoid commercials, so stations are making the decision to assault us during our shows, not allowing us to watch what we chose, but distracting us with whatever quirky graphic or information overload they have decided is the REAL must see TV.

Just another example of quantity over quality.  Give me something worth seeing and I’ll pay attention… maybe even interact.  Otherwise, these attempts to “engage” just end up competing for the honor of ‘thing I most want to hit with a hammer.’

And I’m pretty sure that’s not the engagement they were shooting for.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 25th, 2007 at 6:03 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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