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Super Stream Message
A research on the media complexity of VPRO’s psychological
experiment Super Stream Me
Name: Josse van Meegeren Student number: 10627057
Supervisor: Dhr. Dr. J. W. Kooijman Second reader: Dhr. Dr. J. A. Teurlings University: University of Amsterdam
Master: Television and Cross-Media Culture
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Abstract
In this thesis, VPRO’s privacy experiment Super Stream Me (2015) is discussed in terms of its media complexity. Super Stream Me consisted of two parts: a livestream via which the participants and also filmmakers Tim den Besten and Nicolaas Veul were monitored for sixteen days and a four-part documentary series that was based on the footage of the livestream. The programme makers presented Super Stream Me as a psychological experiment, but in this thesis I argue that the programme was also a media experiment with a clear-cut message that was being conveyed, namely that social media are
dangerous and threaten our privacy. The analysis has divided Super Stream Me into three different parts: the livestream, the documentary series and its relation with the viewers. The double role of Tim and Nicolaas as participants as well as makers, next to the double role of the viewer as active participant and as invader of privacy, both display how Super Stream Me can be interpreted as a media experiment.
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Acknowledgements
It is hard to believe how quickly this past year has gone by. When I started the professional track of Television and Cross-Media Culture, my goal was to deepen my knowledge regarding Media Studies and broaden my perspective on possible
professionals paths to take. I can honestly say that I have reached this goal: writing this thesis allowed me to challenge my academic skills, which I very much enjoyed, and my internship at NTR has helped me to concretise what I inspire to do after I graduate. However, this would not have been possible without the following people.
First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor Jaap Kooijman for his great insights and feedback throughout this thesis process. He kept pushing me to take my research to the next level and I found his way of supervising very pleasant. I also want to acknowledge Linda Duits, who agreed to meet with me to talk about Super Stream Me. Her enthusiasm and inside information really helped me writing the last chapter of my thesis. And lastly, I am very grateful to have such a great support system of family and friends. Thanks to Ingmar in particular, who has been my biggest support over the last couple of months and who managed to lift my spirits every time I felt discouraged (especially on Sundays).
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T
ABLE OFC
ONTENTSINTRODUCTION ... 6
CHAPTER ONE: FROM BIG BROTHER TO SUPER STREAM ME ... 9
Introduction ... 9
Reality TV and the “Real” in Reality ... 10
The Ordinary Celebrity Under Surveillance ... 13
Multiplatform Event Television ... 17
Conclusion ... 19
CHAPTER TWO: THE LIVESTREAM AS REALITY TELEVISION ... 20
Introduction ... 20
One Big Status Update ... 22
Surveillance... 22
Multiplatform Format ... 25
Highlights of Super Stream Me ... 27
Highlight 1: Tim Poops for the First Time ... 28
Highlight 2: Tim Does Something Very Stupid ... 29
Highlight 3: Tim Meets a Fan ... 31
Highlight 4: End of the Experiment ... 32
Conclusion ... 33
CHAPTER THREE: THE CONSTRUCTED NARRATIVE OF THE DOCUMENTARY SERIES ... 35 Introduction ... 35 Modes of Documentary ... 36 Construction of a Narrative ... 38 The Voice-Over ... 39 Commentary by Experts ... 41
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Twitter Feeds ... 44
Conclusion ... 46
CHAPTER FOUR: THE INVESTED VIEWER ... 48
Introduction ... 48
Two New Best Friends ... 49
The “Free Labour” of the Viewers ... 53
Conclusion ... 57
CONCLUSION: DOUBLE ROLES ... 59
Reference List ... 62
Media List ... 64
CHAPTER TWO ... 64
CHAPTER THREE ... 64
CHAPTER FOUR... 65
Attachment One: Daily Reports ... 66
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INTRODUCTION
Being observed every moment of the day and having an audience of strangers watch your every move: in the summer of 2015 this was the reality for Tim den Besten and Nicolaas Veul. Tim and Nicolaas were the participants as well as the filmmakers of VPRO’s psychological privacy experiment Super Stream Me, which consisted of two parts: a livestream that viewers could watch for a duration of sixteen days on the official
Super Stream Me website and a four-part documentary series that was broadcasted on
Dutch public television channel NPO 3 two months after the livestream. In today’s social media environment, in which people tend to share a great deal of their private lives in public, the main question the makers of Super Stream Me wanted to ask, was: what is the importance of privacy nowadays?
The title of Super Stream Me is a reference to the 2004 documentary Super Size
Me by filmmaker Morgan Spurlock. This film displays the thirty-day experiment during
which Spurlock solely ate fast food from McDonald’s. He wanted to investigate the mental, physical and emotional consequences of following a diet that only consisted of fast food. Super Stream Me encompasses a similar structure in which the filmmakers filmed every moment of their lives without any interruptions in order to create a better understanding of the significance of privacy nowadays and oversee the psychological consequences of being exposed to the public at all times. This set-up is in line with earlier work of Tim den Besten and Nicolaas Veul in which they fulfil the role of both filmmaker and participant. In, for example, Een man weet niet wat hij mist (VPRO, 2013), Tim and Nicolaas, who are both gay, explore the boundaries of their sexuality. The documentary film shows how Tim sleeps with a woman for the first time, making him a participant as well as filmmaker. This is also the case with Oudtopia (VPRO, 2014), a documentary series in which Tim and Nicolaas stayed and lived in a nursing home for one month amongst the elderly.
The double role of participant next to filmmaker is neither new nor unusual for Tim and Nicolaas. However, with respect to Super Stream Me, another party was included for them to relate to, namely the viewers. The programme started with a livestream experiment, which the viewers could interact with and react to mostly via Twitter. This means the viewers fulfilled a certain active role as well. This is what makes
7 participant and maker next to the participatory position of the viewers contribute to the notion of Super Stream Me as a media experiment, instead of merely a psychological experiment as it was presented by the VPRO. Therefore the main objective of this research is to analyse Super Stream Me in terms of its media complexity. The analysis will divide Super Stream Me into three different parts: the livestream, the documentary and its relation with the viewer. In this thesis, I will argue that Super Stream Me was on the one hand a self-proclaimed psychological experiment, but on the other, a media experiment that was set up as a television production and contained a message that was already set and was foregrounded throughout the series, namely that social media are dangerous and threaten our privacy. The double role of Tim and Nicolaas as participant and maker, together with the double role of the viewer as active participant and invader of privacy, both contribute to Super Stream Me as a media experiment with a clear-cut and fixed message. I will demonstrate this argument in four different chapters.
Important to note is that in this thesis all the English titles of the written reports (see attachment one), highlights (see attachment two), documentary episodes and blogs are my translation. This also accounts for headlines of newspaper articles, quotes from these articles and quotes from the written reports. Quotes from the voice-over and the experts in the documentary are my translation as well.
Chapter one functions as a theoretical and historical overview in which the differences and similarities between reality television hit Big Brother and Super Stream
Me will be discussed. This chapter covers the main themes and topics regarding reality
TV. Big Brother marks the point of departure for this overview since it can be seen as the start of reality television as it still exists today. The goal is to address some of the issues around Super Stream Me that have a history in reality television. I will show how the boundaries of reality programming seem to have been pushed.
Chapter two consists of the analysis of the highlights of the livestream that have been selected by the programme makers and are still available on the official website, as the livestream itself can no longer be accessed. In this chapter the livestream will be perceived as reality television in order to reveal more about Super Stream Me. Four different highlights of the livestream will be discussed in detail to create a better understanding of the experiment. I will argue that the livestream became a televisual event due to high media visibility and the multiplatform format of that livestream. This
8 chapter mainly focuses on Tim and Nicolaas as participants of Super Stream Me, next to their role as makers, for they participated in the livestream practices themselves.
Chapter three addresses the documentary series of Super Stream Me, which followed the livestream and is featured as a look back on the experiment. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the different modes of the documentary and how they form a constructed narrative by means of a voice-over, commentary by experts and the
inclusion of Twitter feeds from viewers. I will argue that the four-part series contains a highly dystopian message, namely that social media are dangerous, which is
foregrounded throughout the entire series. The analysis focuses on in what way Tim and Nicolaas also acted as makers, which is related to the participatory and performative mode of the documentary. Going in the field themselves made the documentary
participatory of nature, and the subjective and personal dimensions of the experiment led to the performative elements of the series, namely that the makers were trying to assert a message.
Chapter four discusses the role of the invested viewers of Super Stream Me in respect to the livestream on the one hand and the documentary series on the other. Their interaction amongst each other, with Tim and Nicolaas, and with the “invisible” producers of the programme will be discussed. In this chapter I will argue that the role of the invested viewers changed from a necessary contribution as active participants to a more negative role of “voyeurs” that formed one of the main reasons the livestream experiment ended early.
These four chapters combined will discuss the media complexity of Super Stream
Me. And by giving insight into Super Stream Me and interpreting it as a media
experiment, this thesis will allow for thoughts about complex relations that are relevant within Media Studies. Present research will create a better understanding of the relation between new media and more “traditional” media, between television and social media, between television and documentary and between programme makers and viewers.
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CHAPTER ONE: FROM BIG BROTHER TO SUPER STREAM ME
Introduction
Reality television hit Big Brother (Veronica, 1999 – 2006) and psychological experiment
Super Stream Me (VPRO, 2015) are both television programmes, both can be considered
as reality television and both form a social experiment, even though they were introduced sixteen years apart. However, they differ in their angle and approach for Big
Brother was mainly focused on shocking and entertaining its audience, whereas Super Stream Me was brought to the public as a psychological experiment containing a social
commentary. In John de Mol’s Big Brother, which was a hybrid of a “docusoap” and reality gameshow, a group of nine people lived in a house isolated from the outside world. They were under daily surveillance for over three months with 24 different cameras placed all through the house. Viewers could watch the daily activities of these ordinary people on television and online. In the summer of 2015, the livestream of Super
Stream Me went online. The two participants who were also filmmakers – Tim den
Besten and Nicolaas Veul – moved out of their homes and lived together in an apartment for the purpose of the experiment; they were under the same complete surveillance (although for a shorter period of time); and viewers could visit the Super Stream Me website and watch Tim and Nicolaas at every moment of the day. However, another important difference between the two programmes is that the Big Brother house was full of hidden cameras while Tim and Nicolaas carried around their own equipment. Therefore the camera became more visible in Super Stream Me in contrast to Big Brother and its Orwellian idea of “Big Brother is watching you”: one camera that is always in sight versus a lot of cameras that are never shown.
Even before its first broadcast, Big Brother caused a public debate. Questions of exhibitionism, voyeurism and exploitation of the participants dominated the discussion. However, within a month the new reality programme became one of the top-rated shows, turning Big Brother into a cultural phenomenon (Van Zoonen 2001: 669). Whereas Big Brother was subjected to outrage and controversy, the more recent experiment Super Stream Me hardly received any criticism before its livestream went online. This lack of protest raises questions about today’s understanding of surveillance, privacy and exposing the private life in public and if that understanding has changed over the last decade. Sceptics predicted irreparable psychological damage to participants of Big Brother whilst with respect to Super Stream Me these mental
10 consequences were discussed but did not form a paramount reason not to perform the experiment. In fact, they formed the predominant motivation of the experiment. While the introduction of Big Brother was viewed as a low point in Dutch television, with respect to Super Stream Me these objections did not even exist, even though the surveillance was taken to a greater extent by also including heartrate measurements and GPS tracking.
In order to understand this transition it is important to scrutinize the similarities and differences between the two programmes. This research will approach both programmes as reality television. In doing so it will help to compare the two programmes and it will be able to discuss some of the issues around Super Stream Me that have a history in reality TV. This first chapter will consist of three sections in which reality TV related themes will be discussed, which later will be used as tools for the analysis of Super Stream Me. The first step of this outline is to discuss reality television as a category or a genre in order to look at the ways Big Brother and Super Stream Me can be defined as reality TV. The next step is to analyse how ordinary people can become extraordinary or celebrities. The focus is not on how mundane people can become famous or “reality stars”, but on the ability of ordinary people to expose their private lives to the public and thereby giving away (a part of) their privacy. This second section will closely look at the individual who is put under surveillance and how this act of surveillance can be conducted. In the third and final section, both Big Brother and Super
Stream Me will be perceived as more than just television programmes. It will be argued
how both can be seen as a televisual or a media event due to the multiplatform formats and the audience’s engagement with the programmes. This chapter will therefore function as a historical, theoretical outline by discussing themes and topics regarding reality TV that were relevant in the late nineties/early zeros and are still relevant today with respect to Super Stream Me.
Reality TV and the “Real” in Reality
Reality television has emerged as a category to describe a wide range of entertainment programmes located in border territories between information and entertainment, documentary and drama. It is often associated with non-professional actors, unscripted dialogues in pre-planned but non-fictional settings, capturing events as they unfold in front of the camera (Hill 2005: 41). It is not precisely clear when reality television made
11 its way into television schedules since there is such a broad variety of programmes that can be grouped under the genre or format of reality TV. Annette Hill describes three kinds of waves that can be traced to the history of reality programming. The first wave was based upon the success of crime and emergency services reality television in the late 1980s to early 1990s. The reality programmes brought the camera straight to the scene where the action took place. The second wave contains “docusoaps” and lifestyle programming involving house and garden makeovers and gained popularity during the mid- to late nineties. The third wave emerged in the early 2000s and incorporates the reality gameshows. These gameshows were based upon social experiments of placing ordinary people in governed environments over an extended period of time. In contrast to the first wave of reality programming, the camera no longer went were the action took place but let the action unravel in front of the camera, thus the camera functioning as a “fly on the wall” (Hill 2005: 24).
In her book Reality TV (2015), June Deery seeks to provide an overview of where reality television stands today. Reality TV has become highly popular over the last decade, dominating television schedules all around the world, even though many will put the label of “trash television” on reality programming. She argues that to dismiss reality television as an object of study due to its often trivial content is to overlook its significance (Deery 2015: 2). Deery marks the international success of Big Brother and of similar reality gameshow programmes as the start of reality TV as it exists today. These programmes have several elements in common for example competition, complete surveillance, a short amount of time between editing and airing, cross-media links, and these reality formats are sold across the world (Deery 2015: 16). In this research the same starting point will be taken on. Therefore the overview begins with Big Brother instead of with the earlier reality programmes from the first and second wave.
In analysing the status of reality TV, June Deery points out the real elements of reality TV next to the staged ones. She starts out with the claim that “reality TV is a non-fictional presentation of actual events occurring in the empirical world as experienced by amateur participants who have not been hired to act someone other than themselves or to recite a program-length script” (Deery 2015: 31). In other words, participants of reality programmes have real experiences instead of fictionalized ones. These experiences would not be the same if the participants were playing a fictional role. Viewers are attracted to this “realness” of reality programming, to the emotions of
12 participants and unexpected outcomes. Yet Deery significantly spends more attention on the staged elements of reality shows. She notes that the planned elements differ from format to format, but she outlines several common practices such as the casting, filming, editing and scripting of a reality programme. It indicates that reality television represents the “real”, but in a dramatized way. The real life gets amplified, projected and performed (Deery 2015: 31). Reality programmes all contain some form of staging or framing. In Staging the Real: Factual TV Programming in the Age of Big Brother (2003), Richard Kilborn tries to trace the development of the various categories of reality television. He uses the term “reality formatting” to describe staging as a type of operation (Kilborn 2003: 156). It is the act of setting up events and manipulating situations for television’s wants and needs, namely for the purpose of television entertainment. This style of programming is frequently labelled as “created-for-TV” for it emphasizes the interference of the televisual scenarios (Kilborn 2003: 156). In the case of the reality gameshow format the aim of the set-up is to create television entertainment based on interaction between and performances from participants with a clear-cut voyeuristic appeal relying to a great extent on television assistance (Kilborn 2003: 163).
Big Brother for instance involved small-scale, everyday activities, focusing on the
emotions and tensions between contestants that were then magnified since there was not much else to focus on (Hill 2005: 31). The programme revolved around the dramatization of the everyday life. Hill argues that this notion of dramatization is crucial and paradoxical at the same time. She states that “the more entertaining a factual programme is, the less real it appears to viewers” (Hill 2005: 57). This means in reality programming real stories are used in an entertaining manner. However, precisely because these real stories serve as entertainment, viewers are doubtful of the authenticity of various reality television programmes (Hill 2005: 58). Today’s reality programming not only encompasses real-life stories but makes use of “scripted reality” as well. This form of reality television demonstrates the observation of people in their own environment, but with use of pre-planned dialogue and staged plotlines (Deery 2015: 51). Examples of these “slightly” scripted series are The Hills (MTV, 2006 – 2010) and Made in Chelsea (E4, 2011 – present) where the cast is informed about topics to discuss with appointed cast members without handing them specific lines to say. Therefore scenes in these scripted reality series are more roughly planned out rather
13 than written line by line. This recent trend of reality programming involves the active shaping and framing of the programme by the production team of the show (Deery 2015: 52).
The “real” or the “staged” do not only refer to the contestants or the events of a reality programme, but also to the setting. Big Brother was about the surveillance of the day-to-day life, which makes it rather contradictory that a natural setting had to be created in order to survey the everyday activities of the contestants. The house was designed to be familiar and convenient yet the presence of surveillance cameras undermined this recognizable, domestic setting (Kavka 2008: 83). In this way, Big
Brother alludes to the “intimate strangers” genre; the surveillance of the participants
makes them strange – viewers look at them as the “other” – and the cameras seek to capture their intimate, everyday relations. It is based on isolation where only the cameras provide access to the artificially enclosed environment, making the Big Brother habitat into a “human zoo” or laboratory (Kavka 2008: 83). Comparing this to Super
Stream Me it seems its setting can also be found “strange” for the apartment was not the
participants’ actual home. However, the aspect of group isolation did not form a key element of the experiment. This will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter.
The Ordinary Celebrity Under Surveillance
The dramatization of the real can also be associated with the participants or the “real” people on a reality show. Both Big Brother as well as Super Stream Me incorporated ordinary people and the surveillance of their day-to-day activities into the content of their programmes. This forms, as discussed in the former section, one of the attractions of reality TV: participants of reality programmes do not play a fictional role, but are on television for being themselves. In reality shows ordinary people are voluntarily letting their lives be filmed. They are under partial or complete surveillance and are thereby giving up some or all of their privacy. Participants do not necessarily have to be talented or skilled in order to appear on a reality programme: in these cases the fact that the contestants are just being themselves creates some form of intimacy (Deery 2015: 55). Ordinary people appearing on television is hardly new. However, Joshua Gamson argues that nowadays “new television programming strategies and new web technologies, have pushed the ordinary to the forefront” (2011: 1064). He explains reality television is characterized by the concept of “ordinary celebrity” which is twofold: ordinary, unexceptional people can become famous or have their “fifteen-minutes-of-fame” and
14 celebrities can be made ordinary (Gamson 2011: 1062). The former was the case with
Big Brother, whereas the latter applies to Super Stream Me for Tim den Besten and
Nicolaas Veul were not “ordinary” but already known in the television industry. They had a clear mission with the experiment, so they were not only participants but also fulfilled the role of filmmakers in Super Stream Me.
In Big Brother viewers were engaged in watching the contestants cooking, eating, sleeping, cleaning, arguing, or just feeling bored. The houseguests were not particularly talented, but watching the extreme ordinariness created an intimate relationship between contestant and viewer (Holmes 2004: 117). Annette Hill argues this intimate relationship is built upon the viewer’s search of “moments of truth” within a televised environment. Viewers tend to make a difference between the performed selves and the true selves of reality TV participants, judging the behaviour and degree of authenticity of ordinary people (Hill 2005: 68). The assessment of performance can often be based on the success of the contestant in the game, and also the level of staying “true” to oneself. However, with ordinary people it is hard to know whether one is performing his true self since the contestants are strangers to the viewers (Hill 2005: 69). This differs from celebrities who appear on reality programming with whom the viewer already got acquainted. Jonathan Bignell describes the relation between the viewer and the celebrity participant as one based on knowledge from outside the text of the reality programme. This outside information encourages audiences to believe they already know the personality they see. But instead of seeing the celebrity as an actor or presenter, the viewer will gain some insight into the real-life personality of someone who is already known from television (Bignell 2005: 93). In the case of Super Stream Me participants Tim den Besten and Nicolaas Veul were not completely “ordinary” since they already worked in the entertainment and documentary field before the experiment, as opposed to the contestants of Big Brother who were ordinary people who became famous by their television appearance. Viewers of the livestream were able to see how both Tim and Nicolaas acted in their daily lives outside of the film and television industry. The audience’s assessment of Tim and Nicolaas was then, according to Bignell’s argument, not solely based on the livestream of Super Stream Me, but also on their appearances on other television programmes or documentaries.
In today’s social media environment technologies also generate web-based ordinary celebrity where people operate from their homes and fame is being achieved
15 on YouTube, Facebook or Instagram. These do-it-yourself celebrities can create a following and attain much more agency over their own content than is the case with reality television participants who have less control over production (Grindstaff 2014: 235). Gamson discusses the democratizing of fame since the audience’s power to achieve celebrity status instead of only being able to consume celebrity has significantly increased through the Internet. However, he argues that web-celebrity should not be overestimated for its value and reach still comes nowhere near the television appearance (Gamson 2011: 1067). Gamson’s article was written in 2011 and therefore his argument should be questioned and re-evaluated given the growing use and impact of social media technologies the last couple of years. It has changed the relation between social and “traditional” media, although the latter still remains important. In the analysis on one of the Super Stream Me highlights in the next chapter, this importance will be further discussed.
Today’s society is increasingly under surveillance, either offline or online. Therefore reality television is appropriate for our society since surveillance can be considered as its basic mode of operation (Bignell 2005: 135). Bignell is one of several authors who argue that reality television has helped viewers to conform to intimate and extensive forms of surveillance in order to benefit governmental as well as commercial and economic interests (also Andrejevic 2004; Couldry 2004). He claims that due to reality television’s images of surveillance the audience gets accustomed to the fact that they are being seen and can potentially be broadcasted or put on the Internet (Bignell 2005: 136). Bignell continues his argument by stating surveillance leads to reflective self-monitoring and thus affects a person’s behaviour. This mainly applies to criminal activity since footage of suspicious behaviour often appears in a crime related television programme serving as supporting evidence (Bignell 2005: 136). The first wave of reality television (as described earlier, formulated by Annette Hill) consisted of crime reality television programmes such as Crimewatch UK (BBC1, 1984 – present), America’s Most
Wanted (FOX, 1988 – 2012) and Cops (FOX, 1989 – present). It can be argued that these
are the kind of programmes that made the public accustomed to images of surveillance and the idea of being watched.
Crime reality television programmes are examples of reality programming where participants are not aware of the fact that they are being filmed and even if they do, it happens involuntarily. Other programmes where this is the point of departure, but is in
16 turn used for comical purposes are Candid Camera (ABC, 1948 – 2014), the Dutch version Bananasplit (AVROTROS, 1980 – 2004; 2009 – 2014) or more recent formats like MTV’s Punk’d (MTV, 2003 – 2012). In these formats ordinary people along with celebrities are deliberately put in strange situations or odd events are happening around them and their reaction is recorded without their knowledge. Viewers know the participants are unaware of the present cameras, which contributes to the humorous character of the programmes. However, generally in reality television both viewers and participants know the participants are being watched although this is hardly ever shown. Cameras and crewmembers are kept off screen, which means the act of surveillance is known but yet stays hidden (Deery 2015: 156).
In gameshows participants voluntarily go under surveillance and the act of surveillance is undisguised even though not physically shown. Big Brother evolved around a nearly absolute surveillance as a thematised aspect of the programme; only the toilets were free of hidden cameras (Kavka 2008: 87). Besides Big Brother John de Mol co-created and produced similar formats in which complete surveillance was the key element such as De Gouden Kooi (Tien, 2006 – 2008). In this programme ten participants lived in an enclosed luxurious villa and the last one remaining would win the villa and over a million euros. The manner of eliminating contestants was highly controversial since houseguests were expected to tease and pick on one another until someone decided to leave. More comparable to Big Brother is De Mol’s recently developed social experiment Utopia (SBS6, 2013 – present) in which participants go “back to basics” only in an extremer matter than with Big Brother: their goal is to build an entire existence starting with only the foremost necessities of life. Noteworthy is how Utopia is presented as a “social experiment” instead of a reality gameshow. It indicates a different angle of the programme, as is the case with Super Stream Me. The long runs of these reality programmes regarding the surveillance of ordinary people and their daily activities in somewhat extraordinary circumstances show the attraction surveillance-based programming has. This is also enhanced by their multiplatform formats for viewers are able to watch the participants online as well, by way of a livestream (Holmes 2004: 117). The multiplatform format will be discussed in the next section as a final topic of this chapter.
The hidden act of surveillance is no longer the general mode of reality television. Many reality programmes take on a self-conscious aesthetics where the cameras and the
17 crew are made visible on camera like Catfish: The TV Show (MTV, 2012 – present) and
Teen Mom: Original Girls (MTV, 2015 – present) (Deery 2015: 73). Super Stream Me also
does not hide the act of surveillance; in fact the act of surveillance is the entire experiment. Participants Tim and Nicolaas are filming themselves since there is no camera crew to follow them around. The cameras are shown, viewers can no longer ignore the mediation of real life since it appears right in the image of their screen. It displays a transition or development in reality TV when comparing Big Brother and
Super Stream Me: with the former the act of surveillance stayed latent and with the latter
the act of surveillance is foregrounded. Also the absoluteness of surveillance differs in both programmes. While Big Brother drew the line with the toilet, in Super Stream Me everything is streamed including the toilet visits, which can be considered as the last existing “taboo” on television that now has been broken. Taking these differences into account, it seems the boundaries of reality television have been pushed over the last years.
Multiplatform Event Television
One of the key elements in Big Brother’s international achievements was the way the programme was heavily discussed by press. It gained significant media coverage, which supported the public talk and gossip about the contestants, the controversy and the outcome of the competition (Bignell 2005: 53). This notion of “event TV” will be discussed below and it will be argued that Super Stream Me, just like Big Brother, can be viewed as a media event.
The media landscape has changed drastically with the introduction of technological developments. Jane Roscoe has argued that reality programming seemed to go hand in hand with this changing environment for it has taken on the multiplatform format. This format allows for viewers to interact and participate with the programme (Roscoe 2004: 368). Misha Kavka affirms this by claiming reality TV is bound to and defined by the age of convergence, but extends Roscoe’s argument by not only looking at the platform but also at the industry and economy level. She argues that Big Brother can be considered as a milestone moment in the platform convergence of television with its additional Internet and telephone services. She explains how Big Brother introduced audience voting and the running of live video and audio footage from the Big Brother house through an official website, at first for free and later at a small membership cost (Kavka 2011: 78). Also, by distributing 24 hour live feeds from the Big Brother
18 compound the programme pushed the definition of reality TV beyond the former reality formats according to Marc Andrejevic. Whereas previous similar programmes such as
The Real World (MTV, 1992 – present) and Road Rules (MTV, 1995 – 2007) were also
unscripted, undirected and unacted, the live footage made Big Brother also unedited, at least online. This was a promise that none of the other reality programmes were able to make so far (Andrejevic 2004: 121).
The intertextuality and intertwining of broadcast and Internet use in reality programming makes the multiplatform format attractive for reality television since it maximises viewers’ engagement. It makes the audience both extended and dislocated: viewers are not confined to the television programme only nor do they have to be present at a specific time and location (Tincknell and Raghuram 2004: 260). This means the audience is able to tune in any time they like in order to read more about the contestants, watch the latest updates or chat with fellow fans in discussion rooms or on fan forums. Therefore multiplatform programming socialises viewers by creating a certain kind of community. This community establishes a sense of intimacy amongst viewers and between viewers and participants (Kavka 2008: 19). Big Brother marked the beginning of this kind of programming and it was also the case with Super Stream
Me. Throughout the sixteen-day experiment viewers were encouraged to react and
interact on Twitter using the hashtag #ssm15. The audience could talk collectively about the livestream or even have an influence on it. Not by means of voting as with Big
Brother, but by means of “talking” to Tim and Nicolaas for the audience could tweet
(with) the participants. The viewers formed a Super Stream Me community. Chapter four will regard the relation between the participants and the viewers of Super Stream Me in greater detail.
However, when a programme rests on more than just broadcast and provides interactive services, it becomes more difficult to distinguish the “original” platform or the “central” text. In the case of Big Brother it meant its status changed from a television programme to a television event (Tincknell and Raghuram 2004: 261). Event TV can be defined as a form of television “aiming at a critical mass of viewers through high visibility and multi-media choice” (Biressi and Nunn 2005: 11). Big Brother was supported by and could be accessed through numerous media: television, Internet, mobile devices, books, tabloids, radio. Event TV therefore aims at attracting a vast amount of people and becoming a part of the popular discourse in a way the content and
19 action of the programme prompts conversation amongst viewers (Biressi and Nunn 2005: 11). This is best displayed in the Super Stream Me “pooping moment”, when Tim had to go to the toilet for the first time in the livestream. The hashtag #ssm15 became trending topic on Twitter and this moment was widely discussed in popular media.
Super Stream Me therefore moved across several platforms and became part of the
popular discourse, turning it into an event rather than a programme. This will be elaborated further in the coming analysis when Super Stream Me is not analysed as a psychological experiment, but considered as a media experiment.
Conclusion
This chapter has discussed some of the main themes and topics of reality TV in order to compare programmes Big Brother and Super Stream Me and therefore explaining some of the issues around Super Stream Me. Big Brother marked the point of departure for this overview since the programme can be seen as the start of reality television as we know it today by introducing the multiplatform format with its interactive services, by subjecting ordinary participants to complete surveillance, and by creating intimacy amongst viewers and between viewers and participants. Reality TV has pushed the boundaries in terms of the content of the programmes causing commotion and public debate. But as stated in the introduction, Super Stream Me hardly suffered any criticism and the purpose of this chapter was to create a greater understanding of this notion. It could be argued that because reality television grew in a time of transparency, where people reveal more of their private lives in public, but also in a time of surveillance and monitoring either offline or online, the audience has grown with reality TV. Therefore it is possible people are able to tolerate more when it comes to reality programming since they are more acquainted with and conscious of reality practices. This will be used throughout the analysis for it could help in defining what Super Stream Me as reality programming, as a media experiment or as an intimate relationship actually is.
20
CHAPTER TWO: THE LIVESTREAM AS REALITY TELEVISION
Introduction
“What happens to Tim and Nicolaas and their environment if you ‘share’ everything from your entire life and you no longer control who knows ‘what’ about you and everything you do is available to the public?” (VPRO website). This quote comes from the official Super Stream Me website and represents the main question Tim den Besten and Nicolaas Veul asked themselves during the experiment, as participants as well as programme makers. Their goal was to learn about the importance of privacy nowadays. What is the value or significance of keeping personal information to oneself, particularly in today’s social media environment where sharing the private life in public happens on a wide scale? In order to create a greater understanding of its importance, the two men decided to relinquish their own privacy completely by means of livestreaming their entire lives. Viewers were able to visit the Super Stream Me website every hour of the day and watch Tim and Nicolaas eating, working, sleeping and living their lives in Amsterdam. The experiment was supposed to last for eighteen days, but ended early on the sixteenth day due to high levels of stress caused by of the total lack of privacy.
In this chapter the livestream of Super Stream Me will be perceived as a reality television programme. The stream will be discussed in terms of how ideas of surveillance are used and in what way the livestream relates to other media and platforms. It is important to note that the original livestream is no longer available to analyse, and thus the footage cannot be accessed by viewers any more. Instead, the official website of Super Stream Me now contains 22 different highlights of the stream, which are the most interesting or noticeable moments selected by the programme makers and by the VPRO from the entire content. Next to these highlights, the website also provides written daily reports of the livestream. Each report summarizes the main events of the described day. The highlights along with the written daily reports will function as tools to discuss the livestream. Attachment one and two provide overviews of all the existing reports and highlights including the title, date and (if applicable) a short introduction. By analysing the highlights and reports this chapter will not reconstruct the livestream as it occurred, but will examine in what way the livestream is presented on the website and what that says about surveillance and its relation to other media platforms. In this sense the object of study will not be the stream, but the representation of the stream, which will be analysed in two separate sections.
21 The first section of the analysis will focus on the livestream as a whole. Super
Stream Me consisted of not one but two separate livestreams: one of Tim and one of
Nicolaas. They both carried around their own camera that could be attached and detached on a backpack. On VPRO’s Super Stream Me website, both streams were placed next to each other in two different frames. Viewers were able to mute one of the streams in order watch and listen to the other one or mute both of them in order to only look at the images. In this research the two livestreams will be considered as one, because the highlights of the livestream and the written daily reports also do not take the separate streams in consideration but approach them as a whole. Since the participants were monitored every moment of the day no matter where they went, it is important to examine the livestream with respect to ideas of surveillance. This will regard the aesthetic of the livestream, but also the self-reflective behaviour and agency of the participants. Furthermore, the livestream will be viewed in relation to other platforms and the social and “traditional” media that it engaged with.
After providing a general overview of these matters, it will be possible to do close readings of several highlights of the livestream. In this second part of the analysis, four different highlights have been selected to be discussed in detail in terms of their media complexity. They will exemplify the way Super Stream Me was not just a psychological experiment, but also a media experiment, which is the main argument of this thesis. Each of the four chosen highlights can tell us more about Super Stream Me as a reality programme. The highlights refer to the topics that have been discussed in the previous chapter on reality television. These topics are event television, the multiplatform format, notions of staging or framing and audience participation. The goal of the four close readings is to examine how each of these notions work in the highlight and what it can tell about Super Stream Me as an event, as a multiplatform programme, as a “scripted reality” show and as an interactive and participative programme. This leads to the main objective of this chapter: the question to be asked is not whether or not Super Stream Me can be regarded as television, but what can be revealed about Super Stream Me when perceived as reality television. This chapter will provide a textual analysis of the Super
Stream Me livestream in order to comprehend the experiment as reality television
22
One Big Status Update
Super Stream Me is referred to as “the most ground-breaking privacy experiment” by the
VPRO (VPRO website). The experiment was inspired by Dave Eggers’ 2013 novel The
Circle: the novel’s main character lives in a dystopian world in which privacy is
considered as theft and she therefore decides to go “transparent” by streaming her entire life. Tim and Nicolaas took this by making their own lives “transparent”: “one big status update” as Nicolaas describes it in his column for Het Parool a week before the experiment started (Veul, 21-08-2015).
Surveillance
The total transparency, the complete relinquishment of privacy and the absolute surveillance seem to be the main attraction of the experiment; the notion that their every move will be visible to the public, even the more intimate or shameful moments that one normally keeps to oneself. This extreme monitoring explains how the act of surveillance is also foregrounded in various ways in the livestream of Super Stream Me. The camera and other forms of equipment such as tripods are frequently visible in the image of the stream. This means the presence of the camera does not stay hidden, but is emphasized. As argued before, the self-conscious aesthetic is not new to television. Cameras and cameramen may appear on screen when following around participants (Deery 2015: 73). However, in Super Stream Me this self-consciousness works in a different way since there is no crew to film the participants, but the participants are recording themselves. Therefore the participants stand in a closer relation to the camera, also as filmmakers, since they have to carry around and operate the camera without help from others.
In the written report of the first day (26 August 2015) it states that Tim had a hard time getting used to the technical aspect of the livestream: “He was constantly aware that he had to create the right shots for the viewers at home” (VPRO). This means Tim was less occupied with what he was doing, but more with how it looked on screen: an aspect participants of reality shows normally do not have to think of. Attachment one shows how the titles of the reports can be fairly straightforward with respect of the content of the main events that day. For example “Hairdresser, dentist, expert and pooping!”, “An interview with Bits of Freedom” and “Tim and Nicolaas meet super fan Matijn” give away most of what the report will be about. The same accounts for the written report of the first day: “We are live!”. This title immediately says something
23 about the presence of cameras and the act of surveillance that is being heightened. Also, the multiplatform format is being mentioned in its introduction by explaining how “reactions of viewers are starting to come in” (see attachment one, “Day 1: We are live!”) referring to Twitter and other social media platforms. The intertwining with different media platforms will be discussed later on in this section of the analysis.
A different manner the surveillance was foregrounded was in terms of behaviour. In the same report it is mentioned how Nicolaas “constantly had the idea he had to perform or present himself” (VPRO). This notion of performing meant Nicolaas talked directly into the camera to his viewers, telling them what he was doing even though they could see it for themselves. These narrations function as updates and it seems the camera encourages to share emotions and thoughts. Ana María Munar explains this as digital exhibitionism or web exhibitionism. She argues technological platforms that provide tools to broadcast or publish daily life experiences enhance exhibitionist tendencies (Munar 2010: 409). The sharing of emotions and thoughts in daily life experiences becomes clear in the titles of the written reports as well: “A confrontation between Tim and Nicolaas”, “Nicolaas is feeling sad”, “An emotional day”; these are the titles of respectively the third, sixth and seventh day of the experiment. They revolve around the feelings and state of mind of the participants, which Tim and Nicolaas are constantly sharing with their viewers. In her article, Munar mainly focuses on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter where users are invited to share personal information in the form of textual microblogging, but she also examines the use of videoblogging. She explains how users are able to turn their lives into their own version of Big Brother, creating a personal reality TV programme (Munar 2010: 411). The livestream of Super Stream Me was previously referred to as “one big status update” and in this way Super Stream Me can be considered as an extreme form of web exhibitionism since it restrains from any kind of interruption due to the constant presence of the camera. The sharing of experiences and emotions is continuous. The written daily reports can then be viewed as the narrations of the livestream, in which the experiences of Tim and Nicolaas are being shared and updated. The participants turned their lives into reality shows comparable to the Big Brother series. This is underlined by an article in De Volkskrant: “It could have been one of John de Mol’s ideas” (Geelen, 26-08-2015). In other words, the livestream of Super Stream Me can be seen as the personal reality programme of Tim den Besten and Nicolaas Veul.
24 Although the participants of Super Stream Me were under complete surveillance in an artificial setting, it could be argued that the experiment is not entirely comparable to a laboratory or a “human zoo”, which was the case with Big Brother. As stated before, the fact that the participants of Super Stream Me did not live in their natural environment, makes the setting of the livestream staged and “strange” (Kavka 2008: 83). So on the one hand, this forms one of the reasons Super Stream Me can be seen as a “laboratory”: Tim and Nicolaas lived together in an apartment in Amsterdam solely for the duration of the experiment, which was not their own apartment. It functioned as the “laboratory” of the experiment where their every move would be visible. However, on the other, this setting was not enclosed and the participants were able to leave the environment or welcome others into their Super Stream Me habitat. Therefore the setting was not characterized by isolation, which is one of the essential traits of the “human zoo”. Next to the ability to leave the apartment, the participants retained another form of agency or control. Tim den Besten en Nicolaas Veul both carried around a camera, which formed the only access into the lives of the two filmmakers. The emphasis was on those two cameras, even though it might be possible the apartment contained more cameras. Some of the images and shots of the documentary series suggest the presence of other cameras that provided overview shots, but the focus lies with the mobile cameras of the participants. And since Tim and Nicolaas had to operate the camera themselves, they also had the ability to turn the camera away to show their viewers what they were seeing. Images of Tim and Nicolaas were therefore alternated with point of view shots, which gave them a sense of agency regarding the content.
However, the two men were not allowed to put the camera away or turn the equipment off. The agreement was that the surveillance would be continuous for the duration of the experiment, although Tim breaks this rule on two different occasions during the experiment: on the fifth night, Tim stays at a hotel in Rotterdam with Winfried Baijens (currently the news presenter of NOS Journaal) and when he is installing the equipment, the image turns black which contrasts with the rule of full disclosure. It evoked discussion whether Tim did this on purpose or it was a technical error, which was Tim’s explanation. And also, near the end of the livestream, Tim breaks with the agreement by leaving the apartment without taking the camera with him (see attachment one, “Day 15: End of the experiment”). Turning the equipment off or walking away from the camera was not tolerated but still possible. The surveillance in Super
25 Stream Me thus rested more on mutual understanding between the producers of the
experiment and the participants, than on the power or control of the production. Moreover, Tim den Besten and Nicolaas Veul fulfilled a double role as both programme makers and participants. So the relation between the production team and Tim and Nicolaas as programme makers is of a more equal nature, but they form the only visible makers next to the “invisible” producers of Super Stream Me. The role of Tim and Nicolaas as filmmakers and the role of the production team will be further discussed in chapter four.
Multiplatform Format
Viewers were only able to watch the livestream on the official Super Stream Me website. Nevertheless, this does not mean the livestream existed solely on one platform. Super
Stream Me stood in relation with other media and platforms as well. The most obvious
indicator is the banner that existed within the frame of the livestream at the bottom of the image. This banner showed real-time Twitter feeds from viewers who used the hashtag #ssm15 commenting on the livestream, the experiment and the participants. Tim and Nicolaas would often read these tweets out loud and answer questions of viewers, which gave a sense of interactivity to the livestream. In addition to the incorporation of other platforms within the livestream, the experiment was also covered by different “traditional” media. On the first day of the experiment a press conference was organized in the VPRO building with respect to the launch of the livestream. In the written report on this day it says: “After the presentation at the VPRO Tim and Nicolaas receive a lot of attention by the press: interviews, photoshoots, conversations with television critics, everybody is curious how the boys are feeling now that everything they do can be viewed live on the Internet” (VPRO). The intertwining of different platforms – the livestream and Twitter – and the attention of numerous media indicate that Super Stream Me was treated as a televisual event rather than a psychological experiment as it was presented. Through high media visibility and the encouragement to use the #ssm15 hashtag the aim of Super Stream Me was to enter popular discourse. The media created a hype around Super Stream Me with respect to the livestream, the complete surveillance and the monitoring of two people’s lives: therefore the livestream was not merely an experiment, it was an event. This will be discussed in detail when analysing the first highlight “Tim poops for the first time”.
26 Media visibility did not only relate to coverage of the experiment, but included television appearances of Tim and Nicolaas as well. For instance, they were guests of talk shows RTL Late Night (RTL, 4 September 2015) and Zapplive (KRO-NCRV, 5 September 2015), respectively day ten and day eleven of the livestream. These appearances exemplify the interrelations between television and new media. On the
Super Stream Me livestream viewers could watch the participants being filmed by their
own cameras as well as by the cameras of the television studio. And on television the cameras Tim and Nicolaas carried around were clearly visible and the livestream was shown on a screen in the back of the studio. This creates a notion of hypermediacy, a term formulated by Bolter and Grusin in 1999, which means the medium is emphasized and mediation is made visible as opposed to immediacy where the viewer is being distracted of the presence of a medium (Lister et al. 2009: 29). By incorporating the livestream within both RTL Late Night and Zapplive through showing the livestreaming equipment and placing the livestream on a different screen in the background, multiple acts of representation are being acknowledged. Furthermore, it puts emphasis on the engagement of Super Stream Me with other platforms. Highlighting all the different screens, cameras and representations shows how the different media are connected and emphasize each other. It forms a double logic in which viewers can watch Tim and Nicolaas on the Internet, on television, and the same images viewers are able to watch on the Internet can also be seen on television. This way of representation is then pushing for hypermedia.
However, the engagement of the livestream with different platforms is most noticeable when the stream itself was broadcasted on television. On 5 September 2015, the night between day eleven and day twelve of the experiment, viewers were able to watch the livestream on the public network channel NPO 3 alongside the Super Stream
Me website. Again, this indicates the aim of marketing Super Stream Me as an event
instead of a programme by combining television and new media in order to attract a vast audience and increase visibility. The broadcasting of the stream on television only occurred once. Super Stream Me would have been a completely different programme if the livestream had been broadcasted every night, for the reason the airing would not have been as exceptional. By only airing it once, also on the night the participants went to music festival Valtifest and not a night they went to bed early, the television broadcast became something “special”: a happening, an event. But more importantly, the airing of
27 the livestream on television prompts questions about the relation between television and new media: could the livestream be regarded as television even if it only existed on the Internet or does it need television broadcasting to be considered that way? The broadcasting of Super Stream Me on NPO 3 illustrates the media complexity that the experiment discloses. This will be further scrutinized in the close reading on the highlight “Tim does something very stupid” in the coming section of this chapter.
Highlights of Super Stream Me
The website of Super Stream Me contains 22 different highlights that were selected by the programme makers from the entire footage of the livestream. These highlights form the remarkable or noteworthy events from the experiment and vary from private moments of the participants such as an argument or a moment of sadness to public events such as the television appearances and their visit to music festival Valtifest. Attachment two displays the 22 different highlights and as with the written reports, the titles are fairly straightforward. Regarding Super Stream Me as a reality programme, the titles show the focus on the emotional state of Tim and Nicolaas: “Nicolaas is getting in over his head”, “How do Tim and Nicolaas feel about the experiment now?”, “Tim is done”. Emotion and interpersonal conflict are central to the programme: just as with Big
Brother, the highlights of Super Stream Me revolve around small-scale, everyday
activities which are magnified and dramatized, emblematic for the reality gameshow (Hill 2005: 31).
What is important to note is that in contrast to the uninterrupted livestream, the highlights are edited clips of the content. This means the two separate streams of the participants are put together and the footage of both cameras is edited into one stream. Also, due to the editing a highlight can encompass several places over different times in order to tell a small story, although this is not the case in every highlight clip. Whereas the livestream was not subjected to any form of interference, the highlights are indeed “staged”; not in terms of content but in terms of editing. The highlights thus function as small narrations in the form of videoblogging and altogether the clips tell the story of sixteen days of streaming: that is, the story the programme makers and the VPRO want to tell. Every highlight starts with a short leader of ten seconds and ends with an eleven seconds outro. For this analysis I have selected four different highlights to be subjected to a close reading. In the context of approaching Super Stream Me as reality television,
28 these four clips all encompass some of the themes and topics discussed in the previous chapter. By analysing these four highlights, I will be able to show how Super Stream Me was also event TV and existed in a multiplatform format. The analysis also clarifies how questions of staging and framing remained around the livestream and how audience participation was what made the experiment a success. By looking at specific moments in detail, it will be possible to say something about Super Stream Me as a whole.
Highlight 1: Tim Poops for the First Time
It is 26 August 2015, the first day of the experiment. The title of the clip gives away what the viewer is about to witness: the first toilet visit of Tim den Besten since the beginning of the livestream. The clip has a duration of 3.05 minutes and starts out with Tim asking Nicolaas directions to the bathroom. They are in the VPRO building for the Super Stream
Me press conference. This means everyone present is focused on the stream and has
something to say about it, which makes the moment a highly loaded topic. The image shows the camera footage of Tim for only he is in the image and Nicolaas’ voice is heard off screen. When Nicolaas understands what Tim is about to do he suggests to come along for “backup” or for “good shots”, which underlines the close relation the participants have with the camera, operating it themselves as filmmakers, as discussed earlier. 27 seconds into the clip the image cuts to Tim being on the toilet. He has detached his camera from his backpack and placed it in front of him: the image is no longer shaky as a handheld camera but is now stable. For the next two and a half minutes the viewer can observe Tim den Besten “doing his business” from beginning to end. He narrates his every move: “Okay, toilet paper in the bowl to mask splashing sounds”, “I’m just going to make noise” and he starts singing and shouting, and “The worst is over, I’m glad I did it” when the actual pooping is finished. The enclosed environment of the toilet booth and the narrations give the suggestion of a confession booth generic to reality television, which is also emphasized by the now stable image. The confessional monologue can be considered as one of reality television’s main features and the key attraction of the confession is the revelation of “true” emotions: a moment of self-disclosure (Aslama and Pantti 2006: 168). The subjective, emotional power of the televised confession lies often within painful experiences since they can lead to intimacy and authenticity (Aslama and Pantti 2006: 178). The programme makers made a deliberate choice by showing the “pooping moment” in its totality, even though the viewer would also understand Tim’s embarrassment if the clip showed only
29 a part of the action. In other words, showing the entire moment made the experience more uncomfortable and at the same time more interesting to watch since it revealed Tim’s “true” emotions and a true moment of self-disclosure.
Next to the content, the reception of this highlight is what makes it an important sequence to discuss. “Tim poops for the first time” went viral on the first day of Super
Stream Me. It made the hashtag #ssm15 trending topic on Twitter. Tim’s toilet visit was
uploaded on YouTube, shared on social media and covered by the press. It seemed this highlight formed the main topic of popular conversation at that time. In the US this is referred to as “water cooler TV” for it becomes part of the daily popular discourse. The highlight illustrates how the action in the livestream gets contextualized and intensified by excessive media visibility (Biressi and Nunn 2005: 11). Press took this experience and made it exemplary for the livestream as a project. The “pooping moment” was referred to as a “revolutionary moment of television” (Smits, 28-08-2015). The following titles are headlines of online newspaper articles regarding Super Stream Me: “Watching how Tim den Besten poops” (Het Parool, 28-08-2015), “Super Stream Me: showering and pooping in front of the camera” (AD, 27-08-2015), “Relaxing, pooping, sleeping. What happens when your life can be followed 24/7” (NRC, 27-08-2015). Each of these titles include the word “poop”. The whole experiment was suddenly explained by and reduced to this “pooping moment”. On the one hand, the pooping sensationalizes the livestream and on the other the toilet visit shows how intimate the livestream actually is. It is what the experiment promised to do: making the private public, showing what an outsider normally would not get to see. The “pooping moment” relates to the authenticity, the shame and the sensation Super Stream Me was expected to display. The action of Tim on the toilet was therefore intensified by excessive media visibility and this media coverage created Super Stream Me into an event.
Highlight 2: Tim Does Something Very Stupid
The second highlight that will be discussed displays the way the livestream existed on more than one platform and underlines the relation between television and new media. The highlight helps to explain Super Stream Me as a multiplatform programme. The events of the highlight occurred during the broadcasting of the livestream on public network television on 5 September 2015. On the night between the tenth and the eleventh day of streaming the livestream was aired on NPO 3 from 11.50 pm till 06.20 am. This was also the night the participants of Super Stream Me went to the music
