#PrettyLittleLiars: ABC Family in TV’s Post-Network Era

<p>This thesis explores the branding of ABC Family as a home for ‘Millennial’ viewers through its original TV drama programme, Pretty Little Liars. ABC Family emerged during what Amanda Lotz (2007) terms the ‘post-network’ era of American television, a period that has been characterised by fierce inter-network competition and the availability of TV programming on a larger array of platforms, including online platforms. These revolutionary changes have been coupled with the emergence of a commercially desirable demographic known as the ‘Millennials’, a group of young people who are considered to be ‘native’ to this ‘post-network’ environment and whose media use and preferences are challenging networks to revise their strategies and develop programmes that aim to solicit their attention and engagement. Pretty Little Liars has been specifically constructed to assert the brand identity of ABC Family as a channel “for and about Millennials” (Liesse A2). This programme has sought to distinguish itself within teen-oriented TV drama by incorporating cinematic aesthetics, serial storytelling, narrative complexity, and intertextuality – all of which have been characteristic of adult-oriented ‘high-end’ TV drama in the ‘post-network’ era. Pretty Little Liars has supplemented these efforts to distinguish itself by cultivating a thriving online presence. Important to this online presence are the use of ‘transmedia storytelling’ and social media. As this thesis demonstrates, transmedia storytelling and social media have the capacity to significantly extend the experience of a TV programme beyond what is aired on television. Importantly, their deployment in support of Pretty Little Liars has been successful in encouraging consistent viewing of new episodes as they are broadcast, a pattern that persists despite the post-network era’s capacity for delayed viewing on alternative platforms. This thesis undertakes an in-depth examination of ABC Family’s ‘post-network’ strategy in three chapters, each of which takes a different critical perspective. Chapter One examines the internal and external challenges that contributed to the emergence of ABC Family’s rebranding. Chapter Two analyses Pretty Little Liars as a ‘high end’ teen-oriented TV drama that functions to elevate the profile of ABC Family while simultaneously engaging ‘Millennial’ viewers. Finally, Chapter Three explores the transmedia extensions of Pretty Little Liars that function to supplement the television narrative in ways that encourage and reward consistent viewing patterns and long-term loyalty.</p>

#PrettyLittleLiars: ABC Family in TV’s Post-Network Era

<p>This thesis explores the branding of ABC Family as a home for ‘Millennial’ viewers through its original TV drama programme, Pretty Little Liars. ABC Family emerged during what Amanda Lotz (2007) terms the ‘post-network’ era of American television, a period that has been characterised by fierce inter-network competition and the availability of TV programming on a larger array of platforms, including online platforms. These revolutionary changes have been coupled with the emergence of a commercially desirable demographic known as the ‘Millennials’, a group of young people who are considered to be ‘native’ to this ‘post-network’ environment and whose media use and preferences are challenging networks to revise their strategies and develop programmes that aim to solicit their attention and engagement. Pretty Little Liars has been specifically constructed to assert the brand identity of ABC Family as a channel “for and about Millennials” (Liesse A2). This programme has sought to distinguish itself within teen-oriented TV drama by incorporating cinematic aesthetics, serial storytelling, narrative complexity, and intertextuality – all of which have been characteristic of adult-oriented ‘high-end’ TV drama in the ‘post-network’ era. Pretty Little Liars has supplemented these efforts to distinguish itself by cultivating a thriving online presence. Important to this online presence are the use of ‘transmedia storytelling’ and social media. As this thesis demonstrates, transmedia storytelling and social media have the capacity to significantly extend the experience of a TV programme beyond what is aired on television. Importantly, their deployment in support of Pretty Little Liars has been successful in encouraging consistent viewing of new episodes as they are broadcast, a pattern that persists despite the post-network era’s capacity for delayed viewing on alternative platforms. This thesis undertakes an in-depth examination of ABC Family’s ‘post-network’ strategy in three chapters, each of which takes a different critical perspective. Chapter One examines the internal and external challenges that contributed to the emergence of ABC Family’s rebranding. Chapter Two analyses Pretty Little Liars as a ‘high end’ teen-oriented TV drama that functions to elevate the profile of ABC Family while simultaneously engaging ‘Millennial’ viewers. Finally, Chapter Three explores the transmedia extensions of Pretty Little Liars that function to supplement the television narrative in ways that encourage and reward consistent viewing patterns and long-term loyalty.</p>

From many one: Novel approaches to translation quality in a social network era

For decades, the fuzzy notion of translation quality has evolved parallel to the theorizations of translation and localization. This paper focuses on a novel approach to quality evaluation in the localization industry: how Facebook crowdsourced quality evaluation to an active community of users that votes on proposed translations. This approach, unthinkable a decade ago, seems to combine and distill some of the best aspects of several previous Translation Studies evaluation proposals, such as user-based approaches (Nida, 1964), functionalist approaches (Nord, 1997; Reiss and Vermeer, 1984) or corpus-assisted approaches (Bowker, 2001). These models were largely criticized at the time because they did not explicitly indicate how they could be professionally implemented. The current paper critically reviews the emerging crowdsourcing model in light of these approaches to quality evaluation and describes how mechanisms suggested in these earlier theoretical proposals are actually implemented in the Facebook model.

Optimization of Data Processing System for Exercise and Fitness Process Based on Internet of Things

In the digital network era, people have higher requirements for physical fitness. In the future, physical fitness requires not only good fitness equipment and fitness environment but also more convenient and intelligent health management, service guidance, social entertainment, and other refined fitness services. The innovation of sports and fitness equipment for the digital network era will definitely depend on the development of information technology and network technology. Based on the cutting-edge Internet of Things technology, this thesis focuses on the development and application of a new generation of digital fitness equipment adapted to future development, advocating the new concept of seamless integration of fitness exercise and information services through human-oriented systematic design thinking and providing implementable solutions to realize the science, convenience, and life of public fitness. This thesis uses modern science and technology, especially the Internet of Things (IoT) technology, to fully meet the diversified fitness needs of the fitness crowd as the guide; IoT digital fitness equipment design and application research was newly generated, using a variety of research methods to explore the functional design and application of IoT fitness equipment; the goal is to create a more intelligent and three-dimensional IoT fitness service model in the future. Through the application research of intelligent devices in IoT fitness equipment, the realization of the functions of identity identification, environment perception, and data transmission of IoT fitness equipment is made faster. Intelligent devices can become the interaction channel between fitness service personnel, fitness equipment, and fitness users and also reduce the development cost of IoT fitness equipment. The construction of an IoT fitness cloud service platform and data management system integrates the application of IoT, cloud computing, mobile communication, and other technologies to make IoT fitness service supply remote, real-time, and diversified. While providing convenient and value-added fitness services for fitness people, it also brings sustainable development space for the health service industry.

Advertising and the Apparatus : Cinema, Television, and Out-of-Home Screens

In this chapter, the notion of the dispositif serves as a conceptual framework to both theorize and analyse the programming of moving image advertising on three types of screens: cinema, network-era television, and digital out-of-home displays. The chapter shows how screen ads stitch together different forms of intermittent movements – of bodies, images, and objects – and thus help create flows. In bringing the programme in conversation with the dispositif, the chapter also draws attention to the programme, which in cinema studies, if not to the same extent also in media studies, is an extremely under-researched category despite its importance for production as well as for reception. Any study interested in the pragmatics of screen advertising as well as screen media cannot do without the programme.

Innovation and development of ideological and political education in colleges and universities in the network era

The advent of the Internet era has brought tremendous changes to people's way of life and work, and its convenience and efficiency have promoted the rapid development of the society. However, the openness and dissemination of the Internet also have some negative effects, especially for ideological and political education in colleges and universities, its negative effects are quite significant. Through ideological and political education, students can correct learning attitude, cultivate good ideological and moral character, guide students to establish the correct values, outlook on life, moral values. How to carry out effective innovation of ideological and political education in colleges and universities in the network era and realize the advancement of ideological and political education has become a major problem facing colleges and universities at present. This paper makes a special study on the innovative strategies of ideological and political education methods in colleges and universities in the network era.