HDD-accompanied Converter Boxes

The second case study paraphrases a study that I conducted together with Anu Kankainen and draws from a trend taking place in various countries, this being conversion to digital television broadcasting. More specifically, the study explores the changes in television-watching due to a phenomenon seen in Finland of many converter boxes being accompanied with a hard disk drive that enables easy storage of transmitted broadcasts. The HDD converter box liberates individuals to view broadcast shows when most suitable by providing a relatively effortless means to record shows and to watch them afterwards, and it allows individuals to skip over or fast-forward through broadcast advertisements. In other words, it changes general communication patterns by increasing individuals’ freedom of choice and by reducing advertisers’ capability to promote via television.

Methodologically the case study follows the idea of data synthesis – that is, combining different data sources that unaccompanied provide incomplete findings but put together present a convincing whole (Matusov, 2007). In the study, this is done by combining an interview data set, collected by me, with public statistics and publications that rely on statistical data. The Finnish

statistics used are Statistics Finland's Consumer Survey and TV Audience Measurement conducted by Finnpanel, the company that measures the use of television and radio in Finland. The former set of statistics involves random samples of about 1,500 people (Statistics Finland's Consumer Survey, n.d.) while the sample size for the latter is 3,000 (Finnpanel, n.d.).

Both sets of statistics are collected four times a year.

The qualitative data was based on interviews with 30 people recruited by a commercial research company. The recruitment criteria aimed at heterogeneity in terms of age, family situation and geographical location in the Helsinki metropolitan area. The aim of the data collection was to explore social practices associated with any type of broadcasting and videos in different forms (including DVD, VHS, television broadcasting and Internet videos, plus other broadcasts and mobile video but not games and cinema visits) in general terms – i.e., the initial aim was not solely to study use of HDD converter boxes. The interviews were semi-structured as interviewees were encouraged to talk freely about the following issues, which were covered in all interviews: what kind of video or broadcasting content is viewed with various devices, watching television with others and alone, watching video content via the Internet together and alone, sharing video content with others via different devices and comparing different devices and Internet services.

The interviewees were consistently asked to describe why and how they used a certain device in a certain manner. The aim of the interviews was to discover and understand different types of practices and cases; i.e., the interview questions varied very much between study participants, depending on the topics introduced by those interviewed. One third of the interviews were transcribed in full, these were the interviews conducted first. The interview data analysis involved pinpointing different practices of use of household devices for watching videos and broadcastings and individuals’

explanations regarding these practices. This annotation was done by hand for the transcriptions and with ELAN, software for annotating video and sound materials (Language Archiving Technology, n.d.), directly on a presentation of the audio file. The interviews were conducted in autumn of 2009.

In the data provided by Statistics Finland (2010), almost half of the households had an HDD converter box in the middle of 2010, this number having considerably increased after the digital television conversion. In the interviews, as many as almost all programmes were described as viewed from the HDD, while in the statistics of Finnpanel (2009) 13% of all broadcasts were watched from an HDD converter among those households with this device. In other words, the statistics portray fewer changes in television-watching habits than the interviews do. Possibly the use of the HDD varies greatly between households and the qualitative interview sample might have included individuals who use the device very frequently. The methods used by Finnpanel, however, also hide the actual prevalence of HDD use somewhat. In the method of Finnpanel (n.d.), an individual is to report being

a television viewer when both in the same room as a television set that is turned on and able to watch the television. This is to say that even an individual not actually watching the television should be noted as a television viewer. This type of mere presence with a television set turned on without actually watching it should be less common where recorded programmes are concerned, since playing of recordings was preceded by the slight trouble of choosing the shows. This implies that the 13% of viewing that is time-shifted includes more active watching than the 87% non-time-shifted watching. The measurement of Finnpanel also does not include programmes viewed after seven days from their initial broadcast. Overall, although the actual percentage of time-shifted viewing is not known, the average figure is somewhere above 13% and can be quite high among some individuals, as in this depiction by a middle-aged woman (adapted from Article III):

Mostly nowadays, when we watch television, we watch recorded shows. Very seldom do we watch anymore when the show comes.

The outcome of HDD-based television-watching is that advertisements are watched less than before, since they may be skipped over or fast-forwarded through. For example, one interviewee said that he had learned to estimate the length of advertisement breaks, which allowed directly jumping over them with the HDD system’s user interface. To exemplify the scope of the change for some persons, one may refer to another interviewee, a high-school teacher who regretted that she did not know what kinds of advertisements are being broadcast anymore, since in her profession being knowledgeable of them would be part of useful all-around knowledge.

It is notable that, in a sense, the HDD converter boxes have changed quite little in terms of technology: the very prevalent VHS system enables saving of shows as the digital systems do. Despite the seeming superficiality in the technological evolution, the digital transition has induced changes in television-watching – even to the extent that an interviewee (who was accustomed to use of VHS) depicted the change by uttering that the

‘recording converter box liberates from the chains of the broadcasting company’. The case of HDD converter boxes thus exemplifies the effect of effortlessness and better usability in bringing forth distinctive changes in media use habits because for these issues HDDs outsmart VHS. They allow easier recording of television programmes than the less usable VHS devices do in many respects: Only broadcasts of very limited length may be recorded to a VHS cassette, whereas the HDD may contain many hours of programming; HDD converter boxes are accompanied with more sophisticated user interfaces – lists of upcoming programmes are presented on the television screen, and with a click or two they may be chosen to be recorded to the HDD; and VHS cassettes have to be bought while using the HDD is free of charge once the device has been acquired.

This change in television-watching habits varied, depending on television programme genres. In the interviews, sports, song contests, popular reality television shows and national celebrations were mentioned as programmes that it was not ideal to watch afterward from the HDD. The Finnpanel statistics are, by and large, in line with these statements, with fiction and films being the programme types most commonly watched from the HDD while sports, current affairs and news were very seldom recorded (Sandell &

Lamberg, 2010). It may be postulated that any type of event that has collective cultural significance might be preferably watched live. These events may be long-established traditions (e.g., major sports events) or fairly new program-types hyped in the media (e.g., popular reality shows). Some explanations were provided by the interviewees. First, when it comes to sporting events, the excitement of the event was lost if the results were known beforehand. Second, watching an important event simultaneously with others, even when the others weren’t necessarily physically present, produced an experience that could be interpreted as a feeling of togetherness of a certain type. An interviewee, a middle-aged man, explained this in the following way (adapted from Article III):

It happens right now and you are taking part in it. […] Well, in that atmosphere, now moment, you are taking part in it and you know that millions of others are also, so it is somehow a nice feeling.

In line with this, some interviewees noted that live viewing of sports is preferred even if the result of the match is unknown. Ways in which social identity is connected with emotions might explain this. It has been found that emotional responses to losses and wins when an individual is viewing sports events depends on the viewer’s level of identification with the ingroup – i.e., with the supported team in question (Crisp, Heuston, Farr, & Turner, 2007).

When one is watching, say, a match afterwards, the other members of the ingroup have already experienced a loss or a win and the feelings associated with it. Thus, in watching of an event from the HDD, the implications of the viewed events are less significant for the ingroup, since past emotions and experiences are likely to have less importance than current ones do. This implies that the events are less important also for the one identifying with the ingroup. In other words, watching a match later inhibits experiencing emotions that otherwise would have been associated with the event. Not watching a match or national celebration live would also be inconsistent with the behaviour of other ingroup members; in other words, watching the event live is encouraged by group norms.

In sum, the case of HDD converter boxes is a case of change in underlying structure determining who is able to communicate what to whom because of better usability and easy avoidance of commercial messages. The case of HDD converter boxes additionally exemplifies that the way in which new technologies influence this structure may depend on the existing cultural

determinants: events with collective cultural significance were preferred to be watched live, not from the HDD. Further, the case exemplifies that the technological evolution may elicit unexpected changes in the communication context. Hellman (2010) has considered that the digitalisation of television was a means of liberating and marketising the broadcasting industry in Finland: the digitalisation allowed commercial broadcasters to establish several new channels. It is unlikely that commercial broadcasters anticipated a diminution in their communication power, and they were most likely involved and consulted with when digitalising television was decided upon by the Finnish government.