On the right Track

If there is one thing that teachers like me live for, it's witnessing the breakthroughs in thought and realization in our students. It is the feather in our caps, the huge pats on the back, that long-held breath you're finally able to exhale as you think, they got it!

And it happened today, in one of my classes, when A responded to my question about their biggest insight after discussions on the historical tradition of the media form. Quite casually and even with a hint of annoyance, she said, in the end the form is a construct and it exists as different things for different people at different times. "Wala lang siya. Parang Malaya kaming I-define kung ano siya (it's fluid. It's like we're free to define what the form is for us.)"

I wanted to weep tears of joy and sing alleluias to the heavens. They got it! All this research, the late nights reading, the worry that would settle as I hoped and prayed they did't fall asleep in class or decide it was useless -- all of it seemed to diminish in that one moment. It was then I felt, wow, I can actually teach!

This gave me a much needed boost, a high, if you will, and I had to share the good news with E and B. They were delighted to hear the story and were happy that the students were becoming critical.

We're on the right track. It may have taken this long, but the fact that we got to this point at all is, for me, a cause for celebration.

Next-generation TV metrics

After social networks, social content on the web, and social mobile apps, we entering the age of social TV. According to this article in Mashable.com, television show producers, sponsors, and even the actors themselves are aware of the new shift in content and connection offered by the social networking apps. There are also proposals for new ways of measuring tv viewing, largely through the posts, shares, links and chats that accompany a program's airing. This article, also in Mashable.com, discusses Bluefin Signals's groundbreaking metric and software, all conceptualized and developed in the MIT Media Lab (*sigh*).

This comes at a most opportune time. I would love for them to try out their software here and see how people, former audiences, can begin to make deep impacts on television's program content. Though only 30% of Pinoys are wired, I am confident that this number will double in a year's time and we will nearly have reached critical mass.

For the most part, television stations need to take social tv seriously, and not, as described in the article, feature social connectivity as a "bolted on" component. There is a purpose for connecting to one's audiences, and it is not simply to brag about numbers. I think most producers think that, if they connect to Facebook and their show is popular, they should get an approximate number of "likes" and posts as well. Clearly, it's a different situation. They cannot expect all their viewers to be posting opinions on FB. For one, not everyone is connected. Second, even if they are connected, they may not have the technological literacy to navigate a social app. Third, they may not have the literacy to comment, period. Fourth, they really don't give shit.

They will not get the numbers, but they will get opinions, reactions, suggestions, and these, in my opinion, are far more richer nuggets of data than hard numbers will ever provide. Based on their reactions, it will be possible to see what it is they connect to in terms of content. Viewers, especially the last three generations of media consumers who were born into a mediated society, know when they are being played with. Well, that's what I want to believe. It's not enough anymore that tv producers sit around and try to make money by churning out template stories and spectacles, thinking it's "what viewers want."

Newsflash: viewers want to be taken seriously. That's why they go online and talk, rant, praise, recommend. So tv networks better listen, and take the emerging social tv phenomenon seriously. That, or risk losing more audiences to torrent sites and cable.

Blog promise

I would love to be able to blog regularly again.

So many tedious details get in the way of doing the things you want to do, things that society deems important for one to be part of the structure. Naturally some things get sacrificed. It's funny because the irony of it is that, in order to do what it is you want, you have to give it up to do things that will carve out the path for you to be able to what it was you sacrificed doing in the first place. Wait, is that an irony, or a paradox?

Case in point: me. I have to accomplish so many peripheral things to be able to just blog! What's funny is that, if I wasn't sick and alone, I wouldn't even have these few minutes to put down these thoughts.

And here I am dreaming of becoming a new media scholar.

I am making it point then, from this moment on, to blog at least once a week -- for now -- and reestablish myself in the blogosphere. I promise to write down musings on the Internet, new media, youth, kids, convergence, television, new media literacy, and empowerment. And gender. And creativity.

I promise to stop making excuses and start sweeping away the tedious details that are giving me such a roundabout path to what I want. There are more important things to do thin obsess about the inconsequential minutiae.