Audience and Industry in Survivor

I chose this video as my media because I am an avid viewer of Survivor and have loved seeing how the show has evolved over the year with the advances of technology. In the season “Survivor Redemption Island” of 2014, the host Jeff Probst, started live tweeting with each week’s new episode. Survivor fans all across the country could tweet about the show to each other and directly to Jeff Probst to discuss the unexpected twists and turns of the show, their favorite players, and predictions for the coming tribal councils. This interaction among viewers can be referred to as the “zone of liveness” or the movement from a mass audience to a diffused audience. A mass audience is a large audience that is copresent in time but dispersed across space, like the enormous viewership of Survivor who are all watching the same program but in their respective homes across the country. A diffused audience is an audience that interacts before and after the premiere of media online, or through social media that can discuss different media texts. When watchers of Survivor tweet their opinions and experiences watching the show they become a diffused audience. The zone of liveness allows people with similar interests who are complete strangers to share feedback and interact.

I chose to include audio of a typing sound to simulate the viewers furiously tweeting while watching Survivor and some of Survivor’s signature sound tracks including their theme song. The images I chose were screenshots of tweets of Survivor fans and a picture of Jeff Probst watching the show and tweeting in to viewers, thus connecting fans and hosts. The video also shows clips of what was then the upcoming season and viewers reactions to it on screen. This can also relate to industry because the evolution of technology has changed the industry culture of viewership by connecting viewers from all over through their tweets about a TV program.