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At the end of the first week, two criteria have emerged for assessing whether the impeachment hearings are proving successful at using the medium of television to achieve their political ends. Are they attracting a massive audience? Are they producing compelling drama?
In fact they may not be two separate criteria at all. Instead they seem to be two sides of the same coin. They assume this argument: in order to attract eyeballs the hearings have to appeal as entertainment, they have to have "pizzazz." If they fail to attract a mass audience -- fail to attract the same universal attention that the televised Watergate hearings attracted almost half a century ago -- then that is evidence of their lack of appeal as entertainment: hence, no pizzazz.
At root these criteria arise from an anachronistic media worldview not a contemporary political worldview. They assume that a mass audience still exists, ready to be summoned to their television sets, to sit down simultaneously to share the same live media content. The objection of no pizzazz turns out not to be a complaint about the content of the hearings, but a complaint that we no longer live in the 1970s.
Nowadays, that old-fashioned mass-medium gavel-to-gavel television enters the contemporary media ecosystem differently, not all at once and universally. It is now video, not television…and video is both quicker and slower, shorter and longer.
The short form impact is when micro-exchanges circulate as soundbites in news reports and in virally-shared gifs on social media. These can be flamboyant, like Jim Jordan's jacketless histrionics on the first day of the hearings, or they could be crisp and concise diplomatic understatements from a diction-perfect bow-tied Foggy Bottomer; or they could be that tell-all soundbite on the second day of hearings from the confrontation between Mr Tweeting President and Madame Witness Ambassador: "…very intimidating."
That is one way the hearings continue to exist beyond their live daytime audience.
As far as the long form is concerned, the contemporary media ecosystem teaches us that it is not the literal size of a daily audience that is a marker of cultural impact. In the era of streaming video, close viewing of continual hours by a hardcore committed audience -- binge-watching -- turns out to have a multiplier effect that has a more durable impact than superficial viewing by larger numbers of casual observers. Binge-watchers will not only tolerate hours of seemingly pizzazzless intricacy, they thrive on arcane details, developing conspiracies, quirky characters, devious sub-plots.
The multiplier effect is produced when binge-watchers share their obsessions. If in the 1970s, broadcasters relied on a network of local television stations to pipe their signal into everyone's homes, modern video relies on the social network instead, whereby committed viewers share the import of its streamed signal with the population at large.
Thus the hearings can enter the public square quickly and slowly, in short form and in long form, as viral gifs and as long-form binges. They do not depend on a universal live audience. And they do not depend on pizzazz to attract a mass of eyeballs.
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