The sitcom How I Met Your Mother created in 2005 by
Craig Thomas and Carter Bays, is going to start its’ 8th season on
CBS. The show is about the life of a 30 years old architect (Ted Mosby) and his
friends who all live in New York.
The “target”
of this TV show is the young active adult (between 20 and 25 years old). To satisfy
the viewers, the broadcasting system has to be as complex as the targets are. The
characteristic of the people aged between 20 and 25 years old, is that they are
big consumers of mass media. They also want and they can, due to the new
technologies (internet, smartphones…), watch their favorite TV show when and
where they want. That’s why the producers emphasize on the multichannel
broadcasting.
You can now
find the episodes of How I Met Your
Mother on CBS to maintain the power of the mass media which is TV. By
broadcasting the show on TV, you can maintain a kind of pressure on the mass by
creating “events” on the diffusion of an episode. By event I mean regrouping
people in the same place (in front of the TV) at the same time during a minimum
length. This media is perfect to present the show to a lot of people but it won’t
focus on your target.
That’s why
due to evolution of the internet and the creation of a “digital age”, you can
now find How I Met Your Mother on the
internet. This broadcasting system
permits the producer to answer the problem of the viewers concerning availability.
First you can watch your episode where and when you want. But the big interest
of broadcasting on the internet is the interactivity. Because the internet is a
huge exchange platform, you can create something more than just the simple
thing of watching an episode of a sitcom. People start to exchange about the
show, with a worldwide impact. And this community has permitted to maintain the
sitcom for two more seasons when CBS wanted to cut the show.
The
complexity and the interactivity that exist about the way to watch sitcoms for
young adults, create much more than just a “watching” community. Thanks to the
internet, people can now act on the show and it allows real exchanges between
the producers and the “consumers”. In that way the digital age impacted the way
we watch TV shows and the way people produce their shows.
