By Lottie Merchant, second year English Literature
An investigative look into how watching television has evolved into a collective culture, where viewers online share similar gripes and affections for the people they watch on their screens.
Since home television was popularised in the 1960s, the shared viewing experience of a nation watching the same programmes has remained a persisting facet of popular culture. But with streaming services on the rise, and live programmed television on the decline, how has the collective culture of watching and discussing ‘TV’ shows together sustained its cultural dominance?
Popular culture is a powerful and overlooked apparatus within society. It’s what we consume in our free time, it fills our small talk and is an easy common ground that brings people together due to its accessibility and easy digestion. Television, whether it’s in the form of live programmes or streaming services, has dominated pop culture since its inception due to its power to unite us through the screen- however para-social that seems.
Whether you have watched the X-files (1993) or not, you are probably familiar with the concept of ‘shipping’. What you may not be familiar with is the fact that this concept of wanting two characters of a show to get together was created by the fans of this series. Through the platform of ‘Usenet’, fans of X-files discussed (pretty relentlessly) their desire for characters Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) to get together, despite the creators of the show being opposed to this notion. In effect, this first example of ‘shipping’ was not only a way to unite viewers through common opinion, but actually had the power to change the direction of the TV show itself. In fact, the concept of ‘shipping’ two characters within a TV show has remained a powerful means for bringing viewers together and creating space for debate and conversation ever since. We can see this in Friends (1994), with the iconic will-they-wont-they relationship of Ross and Rachel being a momentum that sustained viewers right up until the very last episode of the entire series.
We can also see the power of ‘shipping’ in Sex and the City (1998) with a lot of fans collectively disliking the ship of Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and (the evil) Mr Big (Chris Noth) - an ‘on and off’ relationship that almost sustained 6 seasons, two films and a reboot. ‘Shipping’ is an even more popular concept in the 2020s, with platforms such as TikTok and Instagram providing spaces for edits and discussion surrounding which characters they want to see together. Most recently, Jenny Hann’s The Summer I turned pretty (2022) benefitted greatly off of Shipping with the ‘Team Conrad’ or ‘Team Jeremiah’ debate that dominated discussion surrounding the show. However, the concept of shipping two characters together has a complex relationship with momentum and pacing of a show. A lot of TV shows on streaming services have to replicate live television by releasing shows either week by week or in small chunks in order to build anticipation or discussion around a series. This tension creates the space necessary for this ‘shipping’ culture to flourish on social media platforms as fans hope to see their favourite characters end up together in the next episode.
This concept of audiences rooting for certain characters (or in this case real people) is also a large feature of what has sustained certain programmes on live channels. Popular live television and reality shows such as, BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing, The Traitors, ITV’s Love Island, I’m a Celebrity Get me Out of Here and Channel 4s Bake Off, all benefit from this sense of anticipation. In the case of some shows, this is through the audience participation of voting, but more often, this tension is built through the competition created within the shows themselves. Strictly come dancing has remained a popular TV show on live television, it follows a structure where one couple of dancers gets voted off each week based on a public vote. Although this format helps build the competition and anticipation of each episode, viewership has steadily dropped over the last few years with a decline from an average 7.8 million in 2023 down to 6.6 million in 2024 viewers per episode. The Traitors is one of the only examples of a new live television programme that has gained a huge amount of popularity. Its popularity derives from fans rooting for certain people on the show and wanting them to succeed right to the end of the show, it also benefits from reality show style tropes such as betrayals, relatability and comedic relief. In comparison to other popular reality television shows such as Love Island, The Traitors benefits from its mass appeal to all demographics. Whereas romance centred reality TV tends to have a more female dominated viewership, The Traitors has a more ubiquitous appeal due to its suspense, innovative concept, and its focus on human relationships and dynamics.
Collective viewership in modern notions of TV (on streaming services) varies depending on how universal their appeal is. With social media algorithms fostering this culture of ‘For You’, where everything is perfectly tailored to your taste, the appeal of nationwide television has declined as young people won’t watch shows that don’t perfectly appeal to their palate anymore. This is a direct result of the concentration of content being produced and this option of choice we have on streaming services. Where, in the 80s there would be a few television channels playing a few shows each night, we now have this over saturation of content constantly being produced to choose from, explicit to our taste. A byproduct of this is devout but smaller fandoms of shows dependent on demographics and taste. You have shows marketed and catered explicitly towards different generations, different cultures, and genders. There are a variety of different reasons why Stranger Things has reached such widespread appeal: its highly suspenseful, well produced, spans multiple genres across all four seasons and has a huge cast of characters of all different ages which enables its cross generational appeal. Stranger Things’ cultural impact was facilitated through its action-packed scenes, enthralling mystery and its intersection between teenage drama and 80s nostalgia.
The people we see on screen unite us as we share and dispute on loves or gripes towards certain characters in our favourite shows. The collective culture fostered around television is not just apparent in our collective viewership of the same episodes (or our interpersonal conversations about the episodes) but also in our newfound obsession with watching people react to our favourite shows. Television takes on a level of reflexivity in the way that the show Gogglebox mirrors our personal or collective reactions. This almost post-modern sentiment of watching people watch television and have the same opinions as you -whether that’s through Gogglebox (or within younger generations, YouTube reaction channels)- mirrors the way television brings us together due to this new virtual shared culture or commonality.
Featured Image: Unsplash /TV and Remote, Glenn Carstens-Peters
