The other day, I tuned into the Food Network and started watching one of their Thanksgiving specials. Thanksgiving is like the holiday of holidays for the Food Network, and they always have some fancy schmancy shows and specials happening the week leading up to the big day. This day, they were doing a Thanksgiving Live special, hosted by Food Network chef and host Alton Brown. He’s a popular personality on the Food Network – from hosting the Iron Chef, to cooking on his own show Good Eats – so it was no surprise that he was the host for this Thanksgiving special. He was busy chit chatting with fellow FN chef Bobby Flay about how to make the best Thanksgiving stuffing. There were at least 9 recognizable faces from popular Food Network shows scattered around the FN testing kitchen. They were all busy making a Thanksgiving feast. Alton weaved around all of them, stopping and catching up to show the viewers what was going on.
Alton had an iPad strapped to his hand, and there was a twitter feed rolling at the bottom of the TV screen. A few minutes into watching the special, Alton looked into the camera, and said “We have an incoming Tweet from a fan. It’s a question for Bobby Flay!” and he proceeded to talk to Flay about the best way to make a lump-free gravy out of turkey droppings. Throughout the show, Alton constantly brought up questions from Twitter users, Skyped with a few Food Network fans, and even polled the audience into which recipes they wanted to see the chefs make the most.
Now, I’ve seen Twitter and Skype used on TV plenty of times. Oprah used to hold interviews on her show with the use of Skype. News programs constantly have twitter feeds running along the bottom of the screen highlighting Tweets. But for some reason, this just seemed different altogether. Twitter, e-mail, Skype, and even phone calls, were all taken by Alton Brown throughout the course of the show. What was different about this though was that sometimes, the Tweets, or polls, would actually determine the direction of the show. In the middle of the program, Alton turned to the screen and asked the views “Would you rather see Giada make her famous mashed potatoes, or her equally delicious green bean dish?” A few minutes later, he announced that the polls were closed, turned to Giada, and said “The votes are in, and the viewers have chosen: mashed potatoes!”
Maybe I’m just out of the loop, or maybe I’m just easily impressed, but I was honestly amazed when I was watching Thanksgiving Live. It was like watching one of those “Choose Your Fate” books come to life – you could even compare it to the Little Brother novel we had to read for class. It was a show whose script was determined right then and there by the viewers themselves. They got to choose what they wanted to watch, who they wanted to hear from, and how the whole show came together in the end. It was TV in its most interactive form yet.
Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “The medium is the message.” He argued that throughout time, it wasn’t necessarily the content itself that influenced users, but the way in which the content was delivered. For books, the linearity of plots influenced the ways in which its readers thought about other things. For housewives in the 50’s, the heavy dialogue of soap operas allowed them to move around and do their chores, and still be able to keep up with the story lines. Now, with this new interactive experience between users and television, it’s almost empowering to see the amount of determination that is left to the users themselves. The internet promotes a sense of individuality among users – and we can see how this is beginning to trickle into other media outlets. The Internet is now determining the way in which other forms of media grow. Food Network has undoubtedly realized this, and has decided to give the users a greater voice during the programs they air. Who knows – maybe one day, all television will be run this way, with users determining the fates of their beloved television characters at the click of a button.
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