ABSTRACT
In 2008, the NEC Corporation took the occasion of an annual TV conference in Tokyo to introduce a commercial version of what George Orwell dubbed the telescreen – a TV that watches you while you watch. The device came complete with a set-top camera that captured the images of viewers, assessed their ages and genders, and modified advertisements accordingly. As one account put it: ‘If the device finds viewers are predominantly female in their 20s, it will show cute miscellaneous items sold by Fuji Television for young women or an NEC cellphone designed for the demographic’ (Times of India 2008). It is perhaps a misnomer to call NEC’s device a telescreen: its mission is not authoritarian discipline, but surveillance with a commercial face. This shinier, happier telescreen captures an emerging trend in the development of commercial TV: an attempt to harness the interactive capability of digital media to the ends of marketers. NEC’s TV doesn’t just respond automatically to viewers, it also exploits the participatory character of interactivity to provide more detailed information to them. The TV includes a device that downloads internet links, promotional coupons and other product information to the mobile phones of interested viewers. It then allows advertisers to ‘tell whether the promotion has been effective by checking whether viewers visited their stores or made purchases’ (Times of India 2008). Experiments like NEC’s announce television’s entrance into the digital
enclosure – that virtual space within which content of all kinds converges into the universal medium of the bit. As other media are demonstrating, the digital enclosure is a space that allows not only for convergence, flexibility and interactivity, but also for increasing customization and powerful forms of audience monitoring and targeting. As newspapers go online, for example, they are able to update their content throughout the course of the day with interactive features that combine audio, text and video. They are also able to devise new business models that package and sell groups of readers to advertisers based on reading preferences, demographics and geographic information. News outlets can also ‘monetize’ their archive, making past articles available with updated, digitally inserted advertising – and much the same thing is happening with online delivery of television content.
