How will history describe the television age that began in 2018 with the streaming media explosion? We’re used to hearing about the European Renaissance in art and science that occurred between the 15th and 17th centuries, and about the “golden age of U.S. television” that ended in 1960, but what about the current TV era?
I had envisioned streaming in my 1999 book, TV via Internet, but I’m now at a loss as to how to describe this era that caused a cataclysm in the entertainment business, in the media landscape, in technological developments, and with Wall Street investments.
Naturally, people who lived through the “Renaissance” (a French word that originated from the Italian “rinascita,” which in turn came from the Latin “resurrectio,” meaning rebirth) didn’t call it that. It wasn’t until the 19th century that that period was referred to as such.
And people in New York City and Hollywood in the 1950s surely didn’t know that they were in a “golden age” when they were creating great television at the time.
Movements in the film business developed with the dawn of “Neorealism,” an Italian artistic movement that took place between 1943 and 1952. By 1943, the term was already in use. And the French “Cinéma Vérité” movement, which started in 1953, was thus called in 1960.
A designation for the streaming era will most likely be an English word since it is the lingua franca of the modern era, and because streaming originated in the U.S.
In his book The World at First Light, German author Bernd Roeck explained that every renaissance is Janus-faced, meaning that it looks backward and forward at the same time. In effect, in order to understand the future, one has to understand the past.
According to Roeck, the paradox of the European Renaissance is that it succeeded by uncovering its own past and altering what it means to look to the future.
The streaming age, combined with AI’s role in production, will certainly generate an all-encompassing designation since there are always at least two components that create an era, like the romantic and religious impulses that characterized the Renaissance.
But we most likely won’t have to wait 250 years before someone comes up with a term to categorize the current TV phase. The Art Deco design movement, which developed around 1920, was defined as such in the 1960s. Indeed, it only took 30 years to classify the 1950s as the “golden age” of television, so it is reasonable to expect such a designation 10 years from now. This means that the defined age of streaming will coincide more or less with current views.
Commenting on my quest for a label for this modern streaming era, Roeck clarified that he’s an historian, not a philosopher. “[We] are actually only prophets when we have to predict the past,” he said. “I could imagine that our time will one day be called the ‘Era of the Third Media Revolution.’ It is already clear that the streaming age is bringing about a complete change in what ‘public sphere’ means.”
(By Dom Serafini)
Audio Version (a DV Works service)
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