Liveblogging Across Borders

Now that the new fall season of television is rolling out the ads are all around us. On billboards, in newspapers, on the underground, but perhaps most noticeably on our timelines.

It's part of more and more actors, directors and writers' contracts these days, but also very much in their own interest, to advertise whatever their most relevant work at the moment is. Considering how hugely popular social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are it's no wonder they all flock their to gain their own direct link to their fans. The ones who are good at it use it more or less like any other person. Sharing their thoughts on news as they pass by, what they happen to be doing at the moment, things like that. Then we have the bad ones who treat it almost like a chore to be completed as abruptly as possible. You have a film out, you tweet about it once a day for a few days out in its release, and then you basically just abandon your profile. But one of the most annoying results of the use of social network as cheap advertising is live-blogging.

A long range of television actors, and some directors, have started using their live fanlines to directly discuss their latest work as it is airing. They are mostly nice enough to warn their unwanting fans of this beforehand, but few does anything more about it, leaving the fans who can't necessarily watch the shows as they air with few options. As a foreign viewer I never get to watch the big Americans shows live, even if I could theoretically stream them live somehow most of them air in the middle of the night for me. For some shows I'm lucky enough to get to watch them the next morning, so it's a matter of just staying off of social media for a few extra hours in the morning, but some others again take weeks and months to make their way to my territory. So what am I to do?

I like following the people I do, otherwise I wouldn't. But I'm not particularly fond of a "forced" hiatus from Twitter and/or Facebook every week at the whim of some actors. Because of this I find myself having to purge my various timelines every fall as to not get bombarded with spoilers and just overflowing timelines in general (following a few people from the same television show will do that). I don't want to do it, but if I want an enjoyable and streamlined timeline it's something that has to be done. The actors who are trying to connect more tightly with their audience are effectively alienating parts of it. I understand that foreign viewers rank pretty low on the list of reasons a show might be renewed at the end of a season, but it's still a matter of perception and likability. Not even within the US, the intended market for most of the shows that have live-blogging actors, are they safe. Some actors might liveblog in a timezone that's ahead of a good chunk of the country, meaning that even though they're in the targeted demographic they have to deal with their timelines being filled with spoilers and information that they might have best liked to receive at a later time.

I've never heard too much outrage at it, however. So maybe it's just me how really dislike liveblogging as a concept for anything that aren't live events (think sports, announcements, news, and similar). It doesn't add anything to the experience for me as a person who can't watch the shows live, and I fail to see how spending the entire episode reading your timeline can be any fun. It just takes up space and clutters my online experience.