International E-Journal of Advances in Social Sciences

Öz

In this
multi-screen reality we live in, marked by constant changes in television
consumption behaviors, the questions raised at the beginning of this century
about the end of television (Katz & Scannell, 2009) have once again become
a live issue and it is time for us to reflect on the position of this medium in
an age of both media and social fragmentation. We are immersed in a
post-television era in which audiovisual consumption is broadcast, not only on
traditional television screens, but also on other platforms made possible by
technological development and in which video streaming is a popular viewing
practice among Millennials. The Internet has become a major means of
communication for young people whose socialization and information processes
are highly influenced by what they watch on screens, especially on their
smartphones. This is an age in which viewing habits like binge-watching are
becoming increasingly common.

Interestingly,
we are evolving into meta-intelligence group-minds (Diamandis,
2013) within a technological culture that is finally achieving
what Mcluhan established in 1964 - a culture that shaped the tools that are
currently shaping us.  Simultaneously, we
are witnessing a culture based on technological devices that established the Age of EMEREC (Cloutier, 1975) or the
era of self-media. In fact, if we want to understand what is happening in
today’s world, we must go back to the 1960s and 1970s and to the studies
conducted by Mcluhan and Cloutier on media and communication. Mcluhan perceived
media as extensions of the human being and nowadays, as we reach the
communicational stage advocated by Cloutier, we enter definitively the fourth
episode. We embrace the self-media and realize it is an extension of mass
media. We have reached an age in which both the emitter and receiver become one
- the so-called "Em-rec".

Much has been said about the decline of the
centrality of linear television and about the model of activity upon which TV
will have to base its future. Never has the question of how to adapt TV into
the context of technological volubility been as relevant as it is today. What
are the prospects for continuity and disruption? These and other questions will
guide the revision of the state of the art about a topic that concerns both
Portuguese and foreign researchers. Thus, this paper highlights several
discursive formations covering the present and future of traditional television
and underlines the window of opportunity which may help re-create the medium:
it is not about accepting its imminent end, but about emphasizing the need for
reconversion instead.