What’s inside my TV?

Television has played a key role in my early childhood, ever since I was young, I remember the regular routine of getting up at 7am for Saturday Disney and enjoying shows like: ‘Suite life of Zack and Cody’, ‘Hannah Montana’, ‘Kim impossible’, ‘That’s so Raven’ and ‘Looney tunes’ and unlike many of my fellow Generation Z I still to this day don’t consume an abundance of streamed tv like Netflix or Stan and in fact I quite prefer the flat screen tv in my room over my computer or phone as a viewing device. 

Even at quite a young age I was aware that majority of the shows I engaged in were global or US based, in a sense allowing me to travel to another ‘world’. It’s no secret that I’ve probably seen every crappy tv reality show out there from ‘Geordie Shore, Ex on the beach to Punk’d and KUWTK. Although I agree that part of my TV life is spent binging global tv programs on platforms like Netflix, I still have an unprecedent amount of love for an Australian based tv show on channel 7, that I started watching with my mum from the early age of around 9-10 called ‘Home and away’. It’s not the show’s repetitive content and overdramatised dialogue that keeps me entertained. It’s the monotonous schedule from back at home that allows me to easily engage with the show without paying too much attention to what’s actually going on. Even after 8 months of living out of home I still occasionally find myself clicking over the TV channel at 7pm.

Straubhaar argued in “World Television: From Global to Local” that:

‘Audiences tend to reject cultural products like television programs that are too distant from their own cultural realities’.

I found that, Globalisation has opened up cultural barriers between ethnic groups and made-way for various key issues and prejudices to be explored and understood like never before this is seen in ‘Go back to where you came from’ an Australian SBS series in which 6 Australians take part in a refugee social experiment, who are strongly opinionated on the issues of asylum seekers and refugees the purpose of the show is too educate people about the hardship associated with being a refugee or asylum seekers. It’s the distant from our own cultural realities within TV shows that’s fascinating and allows the audience to fully immerse themselves in the variances from their own culture, however I do know there still is a target market that are purely interested in ‘easy-watch’ telly (referring to programs that don’t require high levels of audience engagement or concentration)  sitcom shows like ‘Friends’, ‘Simpsons’ and ‘Modern family’ are examples of easily watchable and humorous shows that lightly tackle challenges present in everyday households.

In conclusion, my preferred type of television is cable TV however the channels aren’t just limited to national coverage, and for that reason the television overall, I consume is Global.

Reference list

(Straubhaar 2007, 91).  Straubhaar, J.D. World Television: From Global to Local, Los Angeles: Sage (2007)

https://youtu.be/k-k99Xe5-J0 ‘Go back to where you came from’ Trailer