Lessons From Tennessee Crossroads

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Lessons from Tennessee Crossroads American television is ruthlessly democratic. Every day, every hour, people are voting with their remotes, choosing to watch one program rather than another. While many factors influence their choices (demographics, dayparts, genres), successful series have program formats that many people choose to view. For our purpose here, we aren’t interested in wrestling or pro football, but rather, programs that do well on public TV or on specific cable and broadcast channels. We’ll start by looking at a lifestyle program that usually attracts a three plus rating on a Thursday night at 7PM CTZ in Nashville Tennessee. Its ratings are often the highest of any metered market program that night, frequently exceeding those of any program in the NPS prime time schedule all week. Here are the major findings we have extracted thus far as we looked at this format’s structure and appeals. The research is being supported by TRAC’s local programming initiative. While the findings in this paper are intended for general circulation, more detailed findings with specific and detailed suggestions will be distributed to the LPI group later on. It is not a radio program with pictures. Crossroads is a true television program—meaning that the production techniques utilize and exploit the visual medium in all facets: framing, editing, pacing and visual appeals. The key feature of the program is its effortless continuity editing. (See discussion below) No Narrative Slam Dunks All programs tell a story (or stories, as is often the case). Crossroads tells four stories in an average program. The narrative avoids slam dunks (i.e, stories that are straight linear expositions with obvious conclusions). On Tennessee Crossroads, almost all stories are classic in structure: exposition, obstacles, perseverance, accomplishment and self fulfillment. Most of the producers strive for nuance and development that deepens the narrative; almost all of the narratives contain irony and light humor (often puns and other variants). Casting the Protagonists While there is always a “subject” (jewelry making, running a restaurant, craving, or starting something) the key factor is the protagonist in the story. In most instances the person or “lead character” is appealing, relatively attractive and usually modest. He or she is neither elitist nor “upper class.”

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March 8, 2012

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In Tennessee Crossroads the Viewers Hear Their Own Voices The French have a name for it: terroir. For Americans, milieu would be a close concept. Successful local shows let the viewer see and hear their own “voices.” This is more than a drawl from the Deep South, the friendly cadence of the Midwest or the notorious accent of Brooklyn. It is tautological: local programs reflect back the localness of the community, the state and, sometimes, a region. Tennessee Crossroads epitomizes terroir. Focus on The Positives of Human Nature The Tennessee Crossroads producers and videographers effectively use the basic elemental building blocks of story appeals by focusing on human needs and motives. Humans need and love stories about things they are hard-wired to respond to. In this series, one leitmotif is food (and cooking and restaurants), and another is perfecting, through years of practice, a craft or an art. All this is pleasantly fulfilling, and the viewer experiences it week after week. At its best, Crossroads piques our primal curiosity. Curiosity is complex human motive that goes back to the dawn of time. We want to know, see, explore and, often, hold things. People want to experience the things going on around them—they want to know what their neighbors are doing. At its simplest, it’s mere voyeurism—getting to see inside people’s homes and lives (which is perhaps why bed and breakfast stories are so popular on Crossroads). Curiosity has elaborate infrastructures in our affective nervous systems. Curiosity is a “natural” motivator that story tellers have used forever. Tennessee Crossroads is so popular because its stories effectively trigger the viewers’ natural curiosity. The Sweet Spot: Stories Well Edited Let’s face it, television is not art. The most common stories are, at best, middle brow. TV telecasts an alarming amount of dross (mud wrestling, kitschy dramas and so on). Tennessee Crossroads, and programs like it, have a fair share of “have-to” stories about state attractions or events that are dutifully produced. We’ll ignore those latter stories for now. Here, we want to talk about the editing of stories. Since the beginning of the cinema, once videographers and directors had worked out how to frame and film the scene, the next challenge was to cobble the story together in a way that humans would find plausible and entertaining. The common term for this long, evolving set of production mores is “continuity editing,” which, to most viewers, means nothing.

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March 8, 2012

DRAFT FOR REVIEW AND COMMENTS

In Tennessee Crossroads, both the videographers and editors utilize continuity editing techniques. At its simplest, continuity editing frames shots so that they’re pleasant to the eye and puts them together in a manner so ingenious that viewers are not even aware that framing and editing has occurred. At its best, continuity editing controls and directs the viewer’s attention to what director wants the viewer to see and experience. And that’s the case for Tennessee Crossroads. When continuity editing is not working, it’s a problem. For example when there are too many cuts, it confuses the natural rhythms of the viewer’s neurological system, and the viewer subliminally senses that “something is off.” Conversely, when the number of edits is too few, viewer attention “wanders,” as with certain news and public affairs programs. Most people’s attention drifts if there are fewer than ten edits a minute. However, viewers are not consciously aware of the number of edits because continuity aesthetics strive to be “invisible” so viewers focus on the program and not on its techniques. Crossroads editing ratios hit the sweet spot of between 15-20 edits a minute. These production techniques are not unique and they are employed daily in many network television programs. But attention to such techniques requires a considerable amount of time and effort to perfect each program, so sometimes it just doesn’t happen. It usually does in Tennessee Crossroads stories where the story editing eschews the trite (slam dunk) by striving for density and complexity in its editing sequences. That is why Crossroads’ scenes elicit positive affective feelings from viewer. They hit the sweet spot. Each week, Crossroad’s ratings demonstrate high levels of viewer interest and involvement. The ratings reaffirm the strength and appeal of its format. This is because Crossroad’s meshes so well with human physiological, psychological and geographic motivations. The initial conclusions presented here are drawn from a detailed analysis of scenes and segments from a number of episodes and are available on-line at the TRAC web site. There, for those so inclined, the elements of Crossroad’s success can be studied to provide a model for other successful shows. Tennessee Crossroads can be replicated, in unique and locally appropriate formats, in other areas of the country, at other stations.

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March 8, 2012

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