the rise and fall and shift in trends in fandom media accessibility - VHS tapes to DVDs to digital

[selenak]

This is where I shake my stick and croak: "In my day, we got English language origin media (or, for that matter, any other language media) solely two or three years after the original US broadcast, and dubbed! And if we wanted to see the undubbed original versions, we either had to live in a big city with at least one cinema in English, and ditto a video store with an English section, or we had to have British relations/friends who recorded the stuff for us! Because if we had US friends, the tapes wouldn't even work in our region!"

Seriously, though: growing up in the 70s and 80s in a small German town, it would have been impossible for me to watch any of the movies or shows I was interested in in English. Save for the last two years at school because my English teacher there showed us the occasional movie in English in order to widen and train our vocabulary. I still remember being 14 and participating in an US student exchange programm, watching a series I was familiar with, though not fannish about - I think it was Dallas - on US tv and being bewildered by two things: a) all the advertising breaks. (We have those in Germany, too, by now, but back then we didn't, sigh of nostalgia.) and b) those utterly unfamiliar voices coming out of the mouths of the characters I associated with different voices altogether.

My love for Star Trek started during my childhood, but I didn't watch any ST (TOS, movies, TNG) in the original version until moving to Munich as an adult, and probably not so coincidentally, this was also when I went from being a passive fan to being an active one (going to conventions, finding other fans to debate the then current shows - TNG and DS9 - with). (Mind you, part of my childhood imprint has never left. I heretically prefer Spock's German voice to Leonard Nimoy's, and who is this Bones you speak of? He's nicknamed Pille!.) During the 90s, I also started to look out for English-language video tapes, either by buying them when visiting London (we were still a year or two behind US broadcast, so by the time London had TNG episodes from season 6 in the HMV or Virgin stores, these were still utterly new to me) or looking in desperation for some friendly, met-at-a-convention soul who was in possession of tapes.

And then came the internet. Seriously, I think that was the biggest shift, not least because suddenly you could communicate with fans all over the globe, and being years behind was ever so much MORE annoying when you didn't read spoilery reviews in a quaterly fanzine but in an online discussion forum. If you were in possession of British friends then, you really lucked out (I still have the video tapes kathyh recorded for me of Buffy's fourth and Angel's first season, respectively.) But it still took however long the mail took. Mind you, the "download illegally" option slowly but surely also raised its head, emphasis on "slowly", and also "expensively", because those things could take all night and flat rates were rare...

Anyway. The arrival of dvds made a difference mostly in weight (as in, less of same if you borrowed or bought them), because they were still regionally coded, which meant the fact the US had already seasons out on dvd which hadn't been broadcast in Germany yet was of zilch practical use unless you had a Region 1 dvd player. Also, of course, you could use your computer to play them, but then you still had to change the region, and you could only change it a limited number of times. Basically, being a German fan of most genre tv meant you had the eternal choice of either being spoiled by reading discussions about stuff that you wouldn't get to watch for a while or, conversely, being unable to read a considerable part of either meta or fanfiction. Which meant that by the time you did watch it, everyone was already talking about something else.

I think the arrival of streaming made the biggest difference since the arrival of the internet itself. Because now it's possible to watch at virtually the same time it's broadcast, or just one day after, and to do so lawfully. And even do so when travelling, instead of sweating over whether or not you programmed the damn video recorder/dvd recorder correctly. A further bonus for overseas fans is that we since some years even get some movie premieres before the Americans do, though why that is, I honestly don't know, I'm just glad it happens.

One thing, though: with this new accessability also comes a great many more offerings, which means in turn that, mega fandoms aside, I have the impression fandoms tend to be smaller. Fewer people for more shows/movies, because there's a limited amount of time each of us has at their leisurely disposal, and it's impossible to consume all that gets reccommended, let alone all there is which could be of interest.

The Other Days

Comments

[moon_custafer]

It occurs to me that I can recall the tail end of the era when there were many older movies that weren’t yet available on video at all, so unless you lived in a city with more than one revival cinema or had your own projector and access to a film library/rental place, you spent a lot of time looking through books that contained production stills and plot summaries.

[selenak]

:) I think most of the old movies I watched as a child I watched on tv reruns - they certainly weren't out on video yet -, with the exception of "Gone with the Wind", which was shown in the cinema every fourth year or thereabouts. But by the time I was a teenager, rental videos of new and some old movies were becoming a thing.

[shadowkat]

With Star Trek Discovery -- there's the added problem that in the US, you only get access if you subscribe to, or try a free trial of CBS All Access on Streaming. Which is fine, except CBS All Access -- asks for phone number, address, and email for accessibility.

Now, you can do the illegal downloads via the internet -- but they aren't easy on all formats.

No DVDs are available and it's not available on any other device in the US.
Meanwhile, it is available on Netflix in other areas.

So in a way -- accessibility is still an issue, just in an off-beat sort of way.

[lilacsigil]

OTOH, it's the very first time I've been able to watch a Star Trek legally, in real time along with the rest of the world - for once, it's people in the US with a problem, not me!

[selenak]

Same here!

[shadowkat]

Considering it's a US television series, that's highly ironic.

[zahrawithaz.livejournal.com]

I really like your point about the shrinking of fandoms. I think you're right that that's connected to the increase in accessibility, but I wouldn't have put it together like that.

[ratcreature]

Heh, I still remember buying a more expensive multi-region VHS player so I could watch US copied Sentinel tapes... (ETA: or I guess with tape it was called multi-format? it could play both PAL and NTSC anyway.)

[selenak]

I remember those! I never had one, but my cousin did, and I was v.v. envious.

[hannah]

A good friend of mine told me about how she got a membership at a bulk discount store for the tapes, so she could record full seasons at home. I'm so glad streaming's around - and you're right that the fandoms have gotten smaller, but it's gotten easier to find them, too.

[selenak]

Quite. And oh, the many, many tapes we needed to record whole seasons!

[lilacsigil]

Apart from the dubs, this is very much how I experienced media up to about 2004! It was amazing to suddenly be able to watch and discuss things along with everyone else in the world, rather than hiding my eyes and only reading X-Files fics that were more than a year old! I was a Star Trek TOS fan without ever having seen an episode of the show, because the novels were available and the TV show wasn't.

[selenak]

I think that's why I read a lot of the ST novels in my younger years, too - they got translated faster and in larger quantity than the shows were broadcast over here!

[bimo]

I'll probably have already told you this little anecdote at one point or the other, but back in the 1980s, at a time when TNG had just started to run its course, my dad (bless him!) somehow managed to get his hands on VHS tapes of the show which were converted to the European system.

Of course the quality was ghastly. More often than not you could only determine by the sound of the respective actor's voice which character you were dealing with (otherwise especially Geordi and Worf would have been virtually indistinguishable yellow dots on the screen), but yours truly watched and loved nonetheless. ;)

As for the trend towards smaller fandoms: I noticed this as well, but oddly enough feel far more happy and comfortable with this than I probably should.

[selenak]

Must have been a relief when Worf got promoted and started to wear red. :)

For me, the show I got to know on cheap third or fourth copy generation tapes was Blake's 7, btw. When I later bought the dvds, the difference was quite marked, quality-wise.

[conuly]

Fewer people for more shows/movies, because there's a limited amount of time each of us has at their leisurely disposal, and it's impossible to consume all that gets reccommended, let alone all there is which could be of interest.

But that can be better in some ways. The difference between a small town and a big city.

[ffutures]

The fandom that's still doing this a bit is anime - most of the official translations were horribly edited and translated, so fans are still getting Japanese tapes, DVDs and laserdiscs (the old 12" optical discs!) and translating them to add more accurate closed captions.

[astrogirl]

Kids today will never know the struggles we went through! Well, OK, at least I didn't need to get English-language media in dubbed form. And, being an American, I had all kinds of other advantages, too. But I certainly remember the long, unreliable waits for British stuff here. And I made a lot of videotapes for people who were overseas, or had missed things when they aired. I'd almost forgotten how much of a thing that was.

One thing, though: with this new accessability also comes a great many more offerings, which means in turn that, mega fandoms aside, I have the impression fandoms tend to be smaller.

I also think that, almost paradoxically, it means lots of people are behind again. Because there is so much out there that there's no way to keep up with it all as it airs, or to know what might or might not be worth your time when it starts. But everything is at least potentially available forever, for you to start watching whenever you're ready.

Which is why I often seem to be watching things that are a decade old, or more, long after everyone else has stopped talking about them and moved on with their lives...