Watching CSI: a study of British audiences watching Channel 5 and Five USA

Abstract

Despite consumption patterns gradually changing, the notion of flow (Williams, 1974)

remains a key concept drawn on by scholars (e.g. Kompare, 2006, Johnson, 2013, Kackman

et al., 2011) to understand television. As a concept ‘flow’ is connected to an understanding of

the difference of television from other media as far as the viewing experience is concerned:

rather than a single film, audiences encounter a number of small units that are combined in

the process of audiences’ sense making. In this understanding, ephemera become as

important as programmes as they interlink to create a meaningful whole. On the other hand,

John Ellis (1992/1982) argues that the more typical form for television is actually the

segment which contains a separate meaning within itself. Using an audience ethnography,

this article argues that in the experience of audiences, the concepts of flow and segmentation

are both in evidence. Rather than seeing them as opposing, therefore, they must be

understood as complementary in order to fully account for audiences’ experiences and sense

making of television.

Keywords: Flow, segment, ephemera, audience ethnography, watching television

Raymond Williams’s Television: Technology and Cultural Form (1974) is often understood

as foundational for television studies (Corner, 1999: 64). Undergraduate courses as well as

text books (see for example Bignell, 2013; Creeber, 2006) introduce students to his concept

of ‘flow’ which occupies the best part of one chapter of the book. The term is often evoked

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when scholars aim to define what makes television different from other media, and in

particular cinema. This is despite the fact that television as a cultural form and practice is

clearly changing, requiring some rethinking in regards to industrial practices (Kompare,

2006) and audience experiences (Kackman et al., 2011). However, as scholars such as

Catherine Johnson (2013: 24) have highlighted, ‘we need to be wary of suggesting that

broadcast television is dead’, a point driven home by several studies by Elizabeth Evans

(2011, 2015) who highlights that new media operate in conjunction with and complementary

to television, rather than replacing them. In Britain at least, this is also evidenced in the data

provided by the annual Ofcom Communications Market Report (2016a) which highlights a

trend away from devices and a slowing down of the decline of average minutes a day spent

watching broadcast television, bringing consumption back to the same average as in 2006 (at

216 minutes/day). Considering the enduring appeal of broadcast television, scholars continue

to argue that television remains different because unlike cinema and other media, audiences

encounter television programmes within the flow of other texts: be that other programmes or

ephemera such as trailers, idents and, for commercial television, adverts (Bignell, 2013: 19;

Creeber, 2006: 14-16; Corner, 1999: 60-69).

Although Williams himself was moved to define flow on the basis of his own encounter

of watching television in a different national context than he was used to, it is surprising that

the concept has so far hardly been investigated from an audience’s point of view. One notable

exception is Klaus Bruhn Jensen (1995) who uses the concept to measure audience flow.

Unfortunately, he focuses primarily on what they see and does not provide audiences the

space to articulate how they experience this flow in terms of their meaning making. In the

end, what he describes is a textual experience had by audiences, but not their understanding

of it. In addition, several other scholars (e.g. Ang, 1985; Gillespie, 1995) do introduce the

concept in order to discuss the experience of watching television. However, it is notable that

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most of them draw on the topic primarily in order to emphasise the primacy of the

programme text. Thus, Ang (1985: 22-23) discusses the concept of flow in order to indicate

how the television text has been theorised in the past, but then goes on to write that ‘[the

socio-cultural characteristics of television do] not mean that the programme does not occupy

a special place within those limits: the very fact that so much has been said and written about

it proves that Dallas plays a prominent role in the cultural consciousness of society’ (1985:

23; see also Gripsrud, 1998: 28). In other words, she (and others that follow her) make a case

for the academic necessity to look at audience perceptions of one specific programme. It is

partially as a result of these early justifications to study audiences’ reactions to specific

programme texts that flow as a concept to understand how audiences perceive television texts

has so far not attracted enough attention.

This article, as the title indicates, emphasises one programme, CSI (2000-2015), but

within the specific cultural context of watching it in Britain on a small free-to-air channel, in

other words within the context of its specific flow that combines adverts, trailers and idents.

Channel 5, the final terrestrial channel to be introduced to the British broadcast landscape in

1997, developed its brand in the early 2000s strongly around the CSI franchise which became

its break-out success in terms of audience figures (Knox, 2007). This continued as Channel 5,

like the other terrestrial television channels, broadened out into the digital landscape: its sister

channel, Five USA, is largely built around American crime drama, including CSI, but also the

Law & Order and NCIS franchises. As such, the channels’ brand identities have always

negotiated the relationship between US imports and its place in British television culture

(Knox, 2007; Weissmann, 2010). The relationship of CSI to Channel 5 and Five USA’s brand

identities and, hence, idents in particular, makes the series in its British context a useful case

study for the way that ephemera might ‘brush up’ (Kackman et al., 2011: 2) against

programme texts, and how they are experienced as part of a flow by audiences.

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In addition, I aim to understand CSI itself as a flow of segments (Ellis, 1992/1982)

which audiences need to actively combine in order to create a coherent story. Although often

discussed as relatively conservative in terms of its narrative structure as it follows an episodic

form of storytelling with only limited character development (Allen, 2007: 4), CSI is clearly

part of the televisual turn described by John T. Caldwell (1995): it prioritises audio-visual

spectacle, which often punctuates the narrative (Cohan, 2008), creating a ‘quality of the

surface’ (Goode, 2007), which requires significant activity by audiences to bring together as

coherent whole. Using a small-scale audience ethnography of viewers watching CSI on either

Channel 5 or Five USA, I will argue that rather than understand the two concepts of flow and

segment, as is usually done, in opposition, they need to be seen as complementary in relation

to audiences’ experiences: thus, for audiences, the text consists of segments which are largely

read quite separately, and yet recombined in order to make sense of what the programme is

about. The article will begin with a detailed analysis of Williams’s concept of flow and

theoretical responses to it, before moving into a discussion of the literature about how

audiences engage with ephemera as well as other aspects of flow. It will then explain why the

methodology of audience ethnography was chosen before analysing its results. Central to the

analysis will be a distinction between planned flow provided by broadcasters and experienced

flow that audiences make sense of.

Flow versus segment: The theoretical debate

Williams (1974: 78) defines his concept of flow as a dynamic counterpart to ‘distribution’.

Distribution, here, perhaps counter-intuitively, is understood in terms of what kind of

programmes can be found on different channels, so can be deduced from a statistical analysis

of types of programmes. As Williams highlights, although useful, such an analysis doesn’t

replicate what viewers actually experience. Instead they are offered a ‘programme’ which he

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indicates is more than a single text: derived from the use in theatre and music hall, a

programme is actually ‘a series of timed units’ (1974: 88). These units can be understood to

be separate, but, as he highlights ‘problems of mix and proportion became predominant in

[British] broadcasting policy’ (1974: 88). Indeed, broadcast policy in the UK, driven by the

wish to bring the nation together, was centrally concerned with the impact of what it meant to

combine different kinds of ‘items’. As a result, he argues, we need to understand that there

was a significant shift from ‘the concept of sequence as programming to the concept of

sequence as flow’ (1974: 89, italics in original).

The decisive change for television, Williams argues (1974: 89-90) came with the

disappearance of the interval and the introduction of adverts into these spaces on commercial

television. In other words, Williams sees the beginning of ‘flow’ precisely with the increased

visibility of ephemera. As Williams writes:

What is being offered is not, in older terms, a programme of discrete units with particular

insertions, but a planned flow, in which the true series is not the published sequence of

programme items, but this sequence is transformed by the inclusion of another kind of

sequence, so that the sequences together compose the real flow, the real ‘broadcasting’.

Increasingly, in both commercial and public-service television, a further sequence was

added: trailers of programmes to be shown at some later time or on some later day, or more

itemised programme news. This was intensified in conditions of competition, when it

became important to broadcasting planners to retain viewers – or as they put it, to ‘capture’

them – for a whole evening’s sequence. And with the eventual unification of these two or

three sequences, a new kind of communication phenomenon has to be recognised. (1974:

90-91)

This quote highlights his full understanding of flow: first of all, it is planned – people make a

decision about what kind of sequences to combine. Secondly, there is an impact of the

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combination of different sequences: the main sequence is transformed into something else,

into the ‘real broadcasting’. Importantly, and thirdly, this transformation is closely connected

to broadcasters’ understanding of audiences, and so the sequence becomes meaningful not

just in terms of what it represents, but also what kind of audiences it attracts or is aimed at. In

this respect, Ellis’s assertion that ‘Scheduling [was] the last creative act on television’ (2000)

can be understood as offering further insight: Ellis argues that schedulers are gaining

increasing control over what kind of programmes are commissioned for a channel, precisely

because they oversee the planned flow of audiences.

But even in terms of its content – what the sequence represents and how this is

experienced by audiences – is the ‘programme’ transformed. Thus, the planned flow of the

broadcaster has a direct impact on the experience of television flow by audiences. Williams

highlights this in terms of his confusion when he watched television in America where fewer

signals are given to highlight the transition from ‘programme’ to ephemera than in the UK.

He indicates how trailers and adverts all started to impact on his understanding of the main

programme as he could no longer distinguish what was part of the film he was watching and

what wasn’t. This highlights that there is another level of impact of flow: as audiences make

sense of what they see, they do potentially combine programme and ephemeral texts to form

their understanding of the overall meaning. It was for this reason that Williams argued that

significant focus should be given to the analysis of schedules, but also how programmes are

intersected by ephemera. Some of this call has been heeded: Tony Wilson’s book (1993)

includes a consideration of schedules and how they are used to regulate time for both

broadcasters and audiences, while Annette Hill and Ian Calcutt (2001) indicate how

scheduling proved to be contentious for British viewers of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. In

addition, Catherine Johnson (2005) argues that meanings around particular scheduling slots

are established gradually over a period of time. What is missing, so far, is the focus on the

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micro-level that Williams describes in his own encounter with US broadcasting, particularly

from an audience’s perspective.

Williams’s concept, although widely picked up by researchers and teachers, has not

remained uncontroversial. Ellis, in his Visible Fictions (1992/1982), expresses the most

obvious opposition. In his eyes, rather than sequence and flow the segment is the defining

practice of broadcasting. He writes: ‘However, the vast quantity of broadcast TV’s output,

usually the critically neglected part, conforms to a different model. Its basic unit is the

segment, with segments following on from each other with no necessary connection between

them’ (1992: 116-117). Ellis charges Williams with prejudice towards a ‘cinema-style text’

(1992: 118), and argues that adverts are perhaps most typical as broadcast text. They are

separate, meaningful-in-themselves units which are clustered together. However, crucially:

they demand short bursts of attention, producing an understanding that rests at the level of

the particular segment involved and is not forced to go further, is not made to combine as a

montage fragment into a larger organisation of meaning. Thirty seconds by thirty seconds,

the “spot” advertisement expands but does not combine: it is the furthest development of

broadcast TV’s segmental commodity. (1992: 118-119)

Ellis, then, precisely opposes the idea that the segment is transformed by its place in the

schedule or the ‘flow’ of ephemera. Rather, he suggests that audiences understand these

segments by themselves and perhaps might only see thematic correlations. But it is the

segment, and thus the fragmented nature of the TV experience, that Ellis argues is defining

for producers as well as audiences.

The focus on the segment has become more pronounced in scholarship as television has

been impacted upon by the fragmentation of audiences and a multitude of technological

innovations that have made the industry increasingly nervous. As John T. Caldwell (1995)

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highlights, part of the US television industry’s response to the economic crisis in

broadcasting has been a focus on increased audio-visual spectacle that often only lasts for

short periods and require our attention for only short bursts. Similarly, discussing television

drama, Robin Nelson (1997: 24) indicates that we are now presented with a short ‘sound-and-

vision byte form’ which leads to an increased segmentation and fragmentation of narrative.

CSI has often been understood to fit into these schema of television as it includes highly

stylised segments which often create specific moments of audio-visual spectacle which can

‘punctuate’ the narrative (Cohan, 2008: 51; see also Lury, 2007; Goode, 2007; Weissmann

2010). As such, CSI presents an interesting case study in terms of looking at how audiences

make sense of a segmented narrative within the context of other segments which might or

might not impact on their understanding.

Audiences and flow

Considering that the concept of flow was developed to make sense of the specific experience

of broadcasting, and the fact that Williams wrote before even VHS (video home system)

became widely available, one might want to argue for the lack of relevance of such debates to

today’s broadcasting environment. However, most viewers still regularly encounter an

element of flow, even when watching television on alternative platforms. Kackman et al.

(2011) go so far as to suggest that rather than understanding flow as unique to the broadcast

experience, it represents an institutionalisation of culture which is specific in any nation and

also affects the forms that convergence takes (2011: 1-3). On the other hand, Derek Kompare

(2006) argues for a re-definition towards a greater emphasis on ‘publishing flow’ as

television shifts from broadcast to other platforms, in his case specifically to DVD box set

releases (though his arguments also stand in the light of streaming services such as Netflix).

Catherine Johnson (2013), examining the shift to digital television with a focus on moments

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of continuity, emphasises a need to recognise that flow operates no longer just on the level of

the linear broadcast experience, organised around time, but that there is an increasing

emphasis on space and spatial flow. Thus, viewers are reminded to make use of other

platforms to continue their engagement with television. At the same time, it is also

noticeable, that these other platforms include elements of linear, planned flow: on demand

and streaming services often embed adverts and trailers as part of what the viewer has to sit

through, and although ‘skipping’ can be an option, it is only an option after part of the advert

has been screened. When the viewer accesses content via the broadcasters’ websites, they

also encounter idents and (increasingly) trailers and adverts, which connect the programme

closely to the channel brand (Johnson, 2012, 2007).

In addition, evidence suggests that live television viewing is anything but dead. In

Britain, for example, in 2015, people still watched 3 hours and 36 minutes of television per

day while they were online for 3 hours and 8 minutes per day (Ofcom 2016a). While the

number of minutes of consuming live television has declined steadily since 2012 (a summer

of British Olympics and a lot of rain which impacted on the high level of consumption in that

year), it has not declined as dramatically as is often assumed. Of those 3 hours and 36

minutes, only 29 minutes were time-shifted (an increase of 2 minute since 2014 and 12

minutes since 2010). Although time-shifting television remains a relatively new measure for

Ofcom, the practice has existed since the invention of VHS, indicating that, in the UK at

least, it remains less popular than live television. Alternative means of watching television –

e.g. via streaming sites – replicate behaviour of watching VHS and DVD box sets and are

therefore more likely to replace these forms of TV consumption than live television.

Nevertheless, live television consumption is seeing a decline, however not yet to the level

that would suggest that scholars should move away from the investigation of this form of

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television consumption. This indicates that ‘flow’ still remains an important concept for

audience scholars to investigate.

Despite the fact that in Britain at least, live broadcast remains the most-watched form of

television, audiences do avoid at least some of the ephemera that are given with the live

broadcast, namely adverts. However, advertising avoidance is widespread across all media

(Surgi Speck and Elliot, 1997; Kelly et al., 2010; Johnson, 2013b). Paul Surgi Speck and

Michael T. Elliott (1997), for example, describe several forms of advertising avoidance for

television: they highlight cognitive (such as ignoring adverts), behavioural (such as leaving

the room), and mechanical strategies (zapping/ switching channels). In addition, several

technologies also allow the fast-forwarding through adverts which Wilbur (2008) describes as

‘zipping’ because it presents a form of compressed viewing. He highlights that ‘zipping’

actually requires more viewer attention than other forms of avoidance strategies as viewers

need to pay close attention to ‘zip’ to the right point, i.e. where the programme starts back

again. Peter Danaher (1995) argues that avoidance is lower than is often assumed as ratings

do not go down by more than an average of 5%. However, his assessment is based on an

analysis of ratings, suggesting that his data could not capture the cognitive and behavioural

strategies described by Surgi Speck and Elliot.

The research conducted by Jensen (1995) also indicates that zapping is most prevalent

at the end points of programmes or in the middle – when commercial breaks would take

place. As Jensen indicates this nevertheless creates a sense of flow for audiences who might

see alternative programmes in the middle or indeed adverts on other channels. However, Rick

Altman (1986), in what is perhaps the most complex understanding of flow, suggests that

flow needs to be understood as a cultural practice of broadcasting that operates in conjunction

(and competition) with what he terms ‘household flow’. His argument is based around

observations of different levels of flow: the former communist countries are described as

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having the lowest levels of flow as they operated around restrictions of programming, public

service broadcasting as being marked by a relatively low level of flow due to its specific aims

and missions, and American commercial broadcasting as containing the highest level. He

argues that this is due to the fact that American commercial broadcasting’s main product is

the audience which is sold to advertisers, and hence these audiences need to be constantly re-

attracted to the screen. In this context, he cites evidence from different studies that emphasise

the distraction of audiences in regard to television viewing, and comes to the conclusion that

sound is actually more important to the broadcast flow than image as it gives distracted

audiences a clue as to when to return their gaze to the screen. This, of course, is also argued

by Ellis (1992/1982). In Altman’s understanding, then, the broadcast flow competes with the

household flow, and it is sound that allows for the bridging of the two. While his ideas have

come under some criticism by John Corner (1999) who rightly argues that Altman’s

definitions of flow, particularly through the inclusion of other, e.g. household flows, stretches

the term to such an extent to become useless, Altman’s understanding of nation-specific

flows, mirrored in the arguments of Kackman et al. (2011), is, as we shall see, also

recognised by audiences. In addition, his concept of household flow usefully indicates that

the broadcast text itself is not the only thing intersecting with audiences’ understandings of

television as the medium competes for viewer attention. It is for these reasons – the

recognition that audiences will experience specific forms of flow depending in how they

engage with television and where – that the methodology of interpretive ethnography was

chosen.

Methodology

The interpretative ethnography, made use of here, required the observation of a small number

(four) of households as they watched an episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation which

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was followed by short, semi-structured interviews. This methodology was chosen in order to

be able to observe media use in its most natural environment (Gillespie, 1995) and to

document the specific flow encountered by audiences. Inevitably, my presence did impact on

the behaviour of my participants; thus I believe that all of them watched CSI with a bit more

attention than they would normally do. However, all of them tried to reassure me that their

behaviour was quite representative of what they would normally do. Nevertheless, one

participant noticed that she was more self-aware because she was being watched. This

facilitated a very reflective discourse about her emotional reactions to particular scenes, but

also meant that she spent significantly more time exploring her reactions to those particular

scenes rather than allowing her emotions to be carried from scene to scene. Issues of power

(the researcher, who is understood as a public authority, entering an existing, but crucially

private environment) were negotiated in part by observing friends and friends of friends and

thus reducing the traditional distance between those who are being observed and those who

do the observing (Murphy 1999). At the same time, this meant that participants knew me as a

fan of CSI, and appealed to that part of my identity when speaking to me. I attempted to keep

a level of distance by returning to a number of prepared research questions and ideas that

directed the observation and interviews. This is in line with other research that also employs

this methodology (see for example Thornham, 2011). Helen Thornham (2011: 9-10)

highlights that such a methodology is not about the generation of scientific, objective

knowledge, but about the development of an interpretation of relations: in my case, my aim

was to understand how dedicated audiences of CSI experienced flow at a particular historic

time (when a large portion of television consumption was still live and when CSI had become

an everyday object, watched for many years by the participants who had largely seen the

specific episode we watched together before) and space (watched on two channels that

defined their brand image around the programme). The interpretive framework meant that the

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focus both in the research design and the analysis was on the interrelationship between

audience’s knowledge of the programme and their view of the ephemera that surrounded it.

Considering Altman’s (1986) findings on household flow, it is important to give some

background on each one observed. All involved some form of cohabiting: in three as life

partners, in one as friends. In two households, I could only observe one person, in one case

because the other member of the household did not want to watch the programme which

meant that the other person usually watched CSI by themselves. In the other household, the

other person did not feel they had the time to be observed. All but one household was child-

less. Household income ranged from very low (for the two women in their twenties who were

still studying) to above national average. Two viewers had transnational experiences of

watching CSI: originally from the USA, one woman had first encountered the series as an

education exhibit at a museum, before watching it with her grandparents in Florida at the age

of 10. She now watches the show with her flatmate who had also been to the US before and

had watched the series there. The difference between their British and American viewing

experience was discussed a lot in their interview and will be examined below. All of the

households regularly watched CSI on either Channel 5 or Five USA. During the period of

observation, Five USA had a dedicated slot called ‘CSI Sunday’ which many participants

watched on a regular basis.

Table 1. Overview of participant demographics

Age and Sex Occupation and Education Level

Level of Engagement

Participant A Early 20s, female Student, studying to BA (Hons) level

Dedicated fan, has been to events

Participant B Early 20s, female Student, studying to BA (Hons) level

Dedicated fan, has been to see the exhibition

Participant C Mid-30s, female Not currently in employment, educated to BA

Watches regularly, but relatively casually

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(Hons) levelParticipant D Early-40s, female Works in higher

education, educated to PhD level

Watches regularly, but no longer a fan

Participant E Early 40s, male Works in the arts sector, educated to Masters level

Watches regularly with partner

Participant F Mid-50s, female Works in higher education, educated to MA level

Fan, but has not been to events

Each participant displayed a different way of engaging with the programme: the

youngest ones (Participants A and B) were the most dedicated and watched intensely,

justifying their close engagement with the fact that they were fans of the show and often

spent their whole Sunday night watching the programme together. The one man (Participant

E) that was observed watched least intently, partially, as he suggested because he primarily

watches with his partner who wants to watch the programme. In part, however, the political

situation also impacted on his behaviour, as he was closely following events in the wake of

Brexit on Twitter. Considering the magnitude of the event, Brexit also popped up in another

conversation during the observation with another viewer (Participant C). Here, similarities

with the episode which dealt with the genocide in Rwanda were highlighted by the participant

who recognised similar tendencies of xenophobia and racism in the discourses surrounding

Brexit. Both cases indicate how the viewing context is strongly shaped by events that pre-

occupy a household, or what Altman (1986) called the household flow. As my observation

made evident, such pre-occupations impact on both how the viewer makes sense of what they

see, as well as the depth of their engagement with what is offered to them as the flow of

programme and ephemeral text.

In the following, these aspects of making sense and engaging with the television flow

are unpicked further. I have decided to discuss the findings by separating them into the two

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large themes of segment – Ellis’s concept (1992) based on his critique of flow – and flow. As

will become evident both aspects are at play and they highlight an interesting viewer

preference for a pleasurable confusion between ephemera and programme text and thus flow.

However, such a flow is hardly ever offered by television which means that viewers

experience television – particularly in Britain – as largely consisting of separate segments.

Segment

Common amongst all observations and discussed in all interviews was the tendency by all

participants to avoid adverts. The participants however displayed different forms of

advertising avoidance. Participant F left the room twice (behavioural avoidance), two muted

the audio, the man instantly returned to his Twitter feed whilst his partner similarly played

with her telephone (mechanical avoidance) and the two flatmates talked all the way through

the adverts (cognitive avoidance), in part using the adverts as triggers to discuss their

personal lives and therefore bond further. Two participants indicated during the observation

and during the interviews that when they were watching programmes on demand, they would

normally fast-forward through the adverts. All of the participants expressed their annoyance

with adverts, largely because they were perceived as irrelevant. Adverts were described as

‘junk’ (Participant E, male, early 40s) or ‘boring’ (Participant A, female, early 20s, and

Participant C, female, mid-30s). One viewer explained in some detail why she avoided the

adverts:

When I’m watching television what happens is I have the TV on, and I would have it so I

can hear it properly, and then the adverts come on and I feel that I’m being shouted at. So I

hit mute or go out of the room. It’s just too loud. If you advertise me stuff, I know what

you’re trying to do, you don’t need to shout at me like that. (Participant F, female, mid-50s)

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The response indicates quite a significant awareness in terms of what strategies are being

used by advertisers to attract greater attention to the screen, particularly as far as the use of

sound is concerned. As indicated by Altman (1986), sound here operates as a clue for the

audience – however, here to reduce their attention rather than bring the viewer’s attention

back to the screen. This media literacy was also evident in her and other responses in relation

to who the adverts and hence the programme was for. Indeed, three of the participants used

the expression ‘women of a certain/particular age’. Interestingly, although three of the

women were in the described age groups (between 30 and 60), none of them felt particularly

addressed by the adverts.

Importantly, rather than completely rejecting the adverts, all but one of the participants

indicated that they would be willing to put up with adverts or even engage more closely with

them if they were – in the case above – less blatant in their aims to attract attention or more

relevant to the viewers. Participant C (female, mid 30s) ended up watching one advert in

quite some detail because it featured a celebrity she was interested in and advertised a beauty

product which she said she usually wants to know about, even if she doesn’t then buy the

product. Nevertheless, it indicated that she was willing to focus on material she was

interested in. Similarly, the two young women (participants A and B, in their early 20s) were

indicating that most of the adverts felt not aimed at them (‘I don’t need nappies from Aldi’),

but engaged with them when they reminded them of personal matters. Thus, in the same

interview one advert was discussed for quite some time because the main character reminded

them of Participant A’s mother’s boyfriend. The emphasis on personal relevance highlights

yet again how central the pre-occupations of households with particular things in their lives

are to their willingness to engage with ephemera in particular. It suggests that ephemera only

have a chance to attract attention and hence become meaningful in some form to the viewers

when they are perceived as relevant. The exception to this rule is offered by the two young

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women who, as deeply engaged fans of the programme, watched the adverts no matter what.

As Participant A (female, early 20s) explained:

I tend to zone out of the adverts. But I’ll sit and watch them. Because I don’t dare go and

leave to make a cup of tea or use the bathroom. Or anything, in case I miss something. In

case I miss it coming back on. So I never dare leave.

Here, it is the dedication to the programme itself that allows the adverts to be registered, even

when attempts are being made to avoid them or reject them.

This behaviour in relation to advertising avoidance seems to indicate that audience do

not tend to experience the planned flow of ephemera and programme as unified text, but

rather as segments. Ellis’s description (1982/1992) of adverts as exemplary for how we

should understand television thus seems accurate: the evidence from the observation in

particular makes it clear that audiences engage with individual adverts as separate entities

that do not seem to feed into the larger meaning of the main programme text. However, the

situation is actually more complex: all viewers engaged at least to a little extent with the

adverts and they made sense of them in relation to specific target demographics that they

understood CSI to be aimed at. The series thus became meaningful in terms of its commercial

context. Therefore, because CSI appears on Channel 5 and Five USA in the context of the

planned flow of adverts and programme, audiences’ reading of the series is clearly impacted,

even if audiences attempt to separate adverts from the programme text.

The separation between adverts and programme text is experienced as heightened in

Britain as a result of the recurring ident card that sits between programme and advert break.

This particular ident card is relatively simple in design: on Channel 5 and Five USA they tend

to be of simple flat, colourful surfaces with either the number 5 or Five USA on them.

Importantly, unlike everything surrounding them, they do not contain any sound and they

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therefore offer an audible marker of difference. This is highly appreciated by the viewers who

use them as a means to return their attention to the programme text. Where they do watch the

programme recorded or on demand, they use the ident as a marker to start and stop

forwarding or ‘zipping’ through the adverts. Where they use behavioural strategies to avoid

the adverts, they use the lack of sound as an indicator that the programme is about to start

back and return to their seats. Their usefulness was particularly highlighted by Participant A

and B (female, early 20s) who had experienced American television where such a marker

wasn’t available. Both highlighted how they experienced adverts as even more annoying as a

result. Participant C (female, mid-30s) described the ident cards as ‘a nice little buffer’,

suggesting an element of effort by the viewer to change their level of engagement with what

they see on screen: from concentrated on the programme to distracted when the adverts are

on. Thus, rather than participating in the flow of content as suggested by Williams, these

ident cards partake in the creation of clear boundaries and hence segments for audiences that

they perceive as largely unrelated to each other. In this respect, Altman’s understanding of

different levels of flow becomes meaningful again: in Britain, the relatively clear delineation

of adverts and programme through the ident card which audiences recognise is stipulated in a

broadcast policy (Ofcom 2016b) that continues to see the terrestrial channels as being under

some (though decreasing) public service obligation.

Overall, the findings in relation to the ephemera of adverts seem to suggest that

audiences do not experience the planned flow of the broadcast as something that could be

understood as an experienced flow. Apart from the relationship between ephemera and target

audiences, which was clearly recognised, the participants indicated a preference for a clear

delineation of programme from ephemera and a focus on specific adverts when they did

engage with the adverts rather than avoid them. However, as will become evident below,

overall the picture is more complex, and in particular as far as the experience of the

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segmentation of the text itself is concerned, what actually emerges is an understanding of the

television text as a flow of segments.

Flow

Although the above suggests that the segment is central to the television experience for

audiences, it is noticeable that so far I have only addressed the relationship between adverts

and programmes and the role of ident cards to separate them. More importantly, there is

evidence that the adverts are nevertheless understood as meaningful for the programme text

insofar as they are read in relation to who the programme is aimed at, in line with previous

findings (Mikos, 1994). In other words, although the experience of the segment clearly plays

a role, there is evidence of something else that seems closer to the experience of flow that

Williams (1974) describes.

All interviews raised the question of narrative as a combination of fragments. What was

interesting to see, was that every individual viewer recombined these fragments differently in

order to come to an understanding of what the narrative was about. Key to their interpretation

was a specific focus that, like a leading thread, allowed them to knit the narrative together.

For the male participant (early 40s), this thread was offered by the dialogue as he commented

on how his whole media consumption is very ‘text-led’, meaning both written text (including

on television, but also Twitter) and dialogue. He disliked moments of visual narrative where

perhaps one piece of evidence was explained because it forced him to engage differently,

namely visually, with the programme. For the women in their early twenties, the focus was

on character, and they recombined their extensive knowledge of the series as a whole in order

to come to an understanding of how the particular episode was meaningful in terms of

character development. In contrast, the other women very much read the narrative in relation

to its specific episode. Two of them, one in her 40s, one mid-50s, focused on theme to make

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sense of the episode and both of them highlighted that they understood the two narrative

strands as interrelated with each other. Participant C (female, early 30s) on the other hand

combined a mix of focus on character and theme in order to make sense of how individual

characters needed to be judged.

Although this suggests that meaning is created in the flow of narrative, it is important to

stress that the sense of segmentation was just as strong as the sense of linkage or

continuation. Participant C made this particularly clear:

Interviewer: … that moment when you get the science explain what happens

Participant C: Yes, the science explains what happens. The educational bits.

Interviewer: Yes, but you said it’s like an insert, I think you used the word insert, so it’s

quite fragmented when you think about it.

Participant C: Yes, I think, but I don’t really notice it because the insert explains the main

content, so it’s linked.

Although Participant C opted for a word that suggested that the piece was additional and not

needed, an insertion into the narrative, she did not go as far as to describe the narrative as a

whole as fragmented. Thus, although segments of the episode are clearly recognised as

unique and separate, within the larger narrative, they are understood to exist within the

narrative whole. This suggests that rather than opposing concepts, segment and flow might

need to be understood as complementary: while viewers recognise difference in unique parts,

they also see across them to make sense of the larger (con)text.

In relation to the planned flow of ephemera and programmes that Williams described,

audiences indicate a level of appreciation when they feel that this flow connects to the

programme itself. In one instance, the planned flow included a segment of interviews with

cast members before the ident and the programme which was highly praised in the interview

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after the observation (Participants A and B, female, early 20s). During the observation itself,

it became clear that it took the two participants a few seconds before they realised what they

saw was not as yet the programme, but just a series of interviews, indicating an element of

confusion not dissimilar to Williams’s original experience. In addition, idents and trailers that

attracted attention and praise were usually the ones that related in some way to the series:

I would say my favourite [ident] is the Channel 5 one, and it was the one they did, like in a

big warehouse and they had like a screen which presented the 5 logo, I think they still use

it. And they would have something in the front that would be relevant to the type of show

that was on, so with CSI it would always be a car chase and it would go through the screen.

(Participant A)

Like other viewers, Participant A is able to recollect a lot of detail about the particular ident.

In addition, she describes it as ‘favourite’, thus indicating a preference for ephemera that

speak directly to the programme text. A similar preference is indicated by Participant F

(female, mid-50s) who suggests that a sponsorship advert in which a car is driven in front of a

series of words in order to hide or reveal a sentence, connected in some way to ‘murder

mystery’ and was ‘clever’ also because it fitted the context of CSI. The playful engagement

with the programme itself was clearly read in a positive way, suggesting that the flow of

ephemera and programme can be an enjoyable experience precisely when linkages are

directly possible. Here, the experience of being addressed as someone who likes the genre or

even the specific programme seems to be central to the participants’ pleasure. In light of the

fact that the participants did not feel addressed by other adverts despite the fact that they

largely fell into the implied age and gender category, this poses some interesting questions

about the disjuncture between the imagined identity construction developed by advertisers

and broadcasters and that of actual audiences. To answer these questions would require

21

further investigation; however, it is useful to note here that the construction of their identity

around interests clearly impacts on the audience’s experience of flow.

Importantly, these ephemera also contributed to the understanding of the programme

text as the observations in particular made evident. Participant F, who had discussed the

sponsorship advert that had revealed a sentence with the words ‘murder mystery’ and its

relation to CSI, kept referring to CSI as a murder mystery during the observation, whilst

Participants A and B discussed CSI at some length in relation to strong female characters

which was the theme raised by the cast interviews shown before the programme:

Participant B: Cause… even in the interview, the girl, Georgia Fox was saying how there’s more

shows now with a lot of strong female characters, and that’s what this is… lots of strong

female characters 

Participant A: It has got a lot of strong female characters. I mean the fact that I got hooked on it

very quickly, as a female, I can relate to that, I like those strong characters, like

Catherine and Sara. I like Calleigh in the Miami one. I like her. I don’t like Miami much

because I can’t stand Horatio. But the characters that I do like are mostly the women. I

mean I quite like Ryan Wolf because he’s quite an interesting character, but then I quite

like Calleigh because she’s quite strong and independent, and it’s the same with New

York, and I quite like that. But it’s mostly men in New York. There’s more… in the male-

to-female ratio, there’s more male characters. 

Here, the theme set by the interviews is explored in relation to the participants’ own

enjoyment of the series, suggesting that ephemera such as short behind the scenes videos can

impact on how audiences understand their own relationship with and pleasure in the

programme. Although this experience didn’t quite go so far that the viewers didn’t recognise

the difference between the ephemera and the programme, their reactions nevertheless indicate

that the planned flow of television does provide context that impacts at least latently on sense

22

making processes and at least in some cases leads to a similar (initial) confusion that

Williams describes which is, however, experienced as pleasurable.

Conclusion

The article set out to examine how viewers experience the planned flow of ephemera and

programmes by providing an audience ethnography focused on CSI: Crime Scene

Investigation. As such, it made the distinction between the planned flow provided by

broadcasters and the experienced flow of audiences. As indicated, the findings highlight that

rather than competing concepts, flow and segmentation need to be understood as

complementary in relation to how audiences experience live television.

The audiences’ advertising avoidance suggests that the experience is one of

segmentation at least in some respects: their level of engagement changes and they see the

ident card at the beginning or end of each advert break as ‘nice little buffer’ that facilitates

the transition of engagement. As indicated, this must be understood within the specific

planned flow of British broadcasting which even today provides perhaps a greater focus on

segmentation than American TV (Altman, 1986). Adverts are read individually, when read at

all, in relation to the relevance of the advert to their own lives. At the same time, there are

linkages made between the adverts and the programme in relation to understanding who the

programme is aimed at. There is greater evidence of audiences reading across segments in the

way they make sense of the fragmented narrative which, according to one viewer, includes

‘inserts’ that nevertheless connect to the larger narrative. How this narrative is threaded

together seems to be entirely dependent on the individual: in the cases observed here, nearly

as many differences were observed as there were participants. In addition, key events, such as

the Brexit vote, impacted also on how much attention the flow of narrative and ephemera is

23

given. In this regard, Altman’s (1986) assertion that there are a number of flows impacting on

understanding, including household flows and others, seems prescient.

In relation to the issue of planned flow and the potential for impact on how the

programme might be read, it became clear that this is primarily achieved when segments such

as cast interviews, idents or sponsorship adverts directly relate to the programme and/or play

with themes of the programme. In these cases, the planned flow can lead to a pleasurable

confusion that impacts on the specific reading of the episode that is shown. However, as long

as such playfulness of ephemera with programme themes remains limited, particularly as far

as adverts are concerned, the experienced flow described by audiences remains one of

disruption and segmentation.

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