Spreadability and The Uncertainty Principal

The first thing Chapter 5 in our book by Jenkins, Ford and Green is called the uncertainty principle, which is steps that one has to take in order to account for the uncertainty of an audience. Let's face it: when media companies are coming up with networks, tv shows or any product there is no surefire way to make sure that anything will 100% to succeed, rather it's all about execution; do you really think when Nickelodeon greenlit the production of SpongeBob they instantly thought it would be a success? This is where our first and most important concept for tonight's reading and that is the idea of overproduction. As quoted from Amanda D. Lotz, "...more than 80 percent of what they (the entertainment industry) develop and create will fail commercially. The key problem is that they don't know which 10 to 20 percent might succeed." So in a sense, in the entertainment industry, overproduction is the production of more media then necessary in order to compensate for the sporadic nature of audiences.

The 2nd uncertainty principal is that of 'accessibility', that is that audiences can have the content when THEY want it and not when a TV channel tells them they can have it, portability, easy reusability (appeals to more than one target audience), relevancy to multiple audiences and that this content is apart of a steady stream of content by that one company so audiences don't get burnt out. 3rd, this media requires attention to both circulation and patterns of how media is spread through various audience. Content has to have meaning for us or we won't share it.

Another thing to take into account is Fiske's idea of procedural texts, which encompass how mass culture turns into pop culture. In this model, messages are encoded in the content for the audience to decrypt and talk amongst themselves to solve; if messages are blatantly shown up front in the text, then it risks being seen as propaganda, which generally turns audiences away. It is through this 'encryption' of hidden messages that Fiske argues turns a product of mass culture is turned into the hands of its audience and becomes a piece of pop culture.

Another relevant idea:

Lewis Hyde's Shared Fantasy: This intertwines with the idea in commodity culture in that if a studio gives audiences something they like as a gift, the audiences will give something back in return (this is the birth of fan art)

Applying the Uncertainty Principal to Danny Phantom

Do any of you guys remember this guy from your childhood? Alongside Avatar: The Last Airbender when I was a kid in elementary school Danny Phantom was one of my favorite cartoons simply because it took a fun spin on the concept of a superhero by turning and ordinary teenager into a crime fighting ghastly superhero. The series was created by long time Nickelodeon veteran Butch Hartman, the creator of the network's second longest running show The Fairly Oddparents. Throughout its runtime Danny Phantom with fans today even actively making fan art of the show, but the show was abruptly cancelled. So why would a show with a decent fan following be cancelled when there is clearly an audience for the show?

There are a few reasons we can point at: For one according to various sources the show was supposedly somewhat costly to make, and allegedly series creator Butch Hartman would go overbudget in making the series. But I think that this goes back to the idea of overproduction that we went over earlier. Nickelodeon's to cash cows (SpongeBob SquarePants and The Fairly Oddparents) were steadily running while Danny Phantom taking a backseat for both of these series, while at the same time Nickelodeon's most critically acclaimed series of all time Avatar: The Last Airbender was running alongside these juggernauts (Hartman has gone on record on his YouTube channel stating Nickelodeon declined a toy deal for Danny Phantom to make room for Avatar toys instead). If I had to guess, I'd say that Danny Phantom wasn't pulling its own weight alongside the rest of Nickelodeon's properties, and because of this it got the axe.