Thus far, I have given an overview of what transmedia storytelling is and why it is important. In this next chapter, I propose some strategies and techniques for crafting a transmedia narrative around a television show. There are, of course, many ways to tell a transmedia story, but as of now, there has been no proven creative model. Though no one knows exactly how to effectively construct and sustain a transmedia narrative, I hope to provide some prescriptive ideas for how a television show might use transmedia to deepen the experience for hard-core fans without alienating traditional television viewers.

Satisfying both hard-core and casual fans is a major dilemma in transmedia storytelling. As The Matrix franchise illustrates, if the components of a transmedia narrative rely too heavily on one another, they can be incomprehensible for the average consumer. Yet in franchises like Hellboy, if the components of a transmedia narrative are too loosely connected, with some purely functioning as conjectural narratives, devoted fans may lose interest.[1] Thus, transmedia creators face “the Goldilocks paradox”: too much interdependence and the core narrative is confusing, too little interdependence and the extensions are worthless.

To further complicate matters, many different types of consumers watch television. Jenkins introduces three broad categories: zappers, casuals, and loyals.[2] Zappers watch snippets of episodes rather than investing in a particular show whereas loyals are people who form a prolonged relationship with a television show. Casuals fall somewhere in between, watching a full episode when they have the time. These same categories can also be applied to the multiplatform environment. A Zapper might watch the Star Trek movie trailer briefly on their way to Facebook, but a loyal will scrutinize a site like Memory Alpha[3] for more information on the Trek universe. Thus, television producers must not only balance catering to loyals and casuals in the television show (shifting between episodic and serial tendencies) but they also must cater to different types of multiplatform users.

Alexander Austin, in his master’s thesis Expectations Across Entertainment Media, discusses the role of the implicit contract between audiences and media providers.[4] He breaks down the agreements of the contract in its simplest terms:

The Audience offers the Provider
Their time
Their attention
And sometimes (e.g. movies, cable TV) their money.

The Provider offers the Audience
Entertainment
And the delivery structure they expect.

Whenever an entertainment provider violates the implicit contract created by the audience’s expectations (through intrusive advertising or clumsy product placement, for example), they risk alienating their audience. [5]

The implicit contract is much more complicated, of course, and Austin develops the intricacies in his thesis. Hard-core fans might expect a deep, complex narrative world to explore, whereas a casual fan might want an understandable and familiar story line.[6] A hard-core fan may be satisfied with a small bit of learned information in a narrative extension, whereas a casual fan may expect to learn a great deal of information for having to migrate to other media.

I do not mean to suggest that all dedicated, hard-core fans will migrate across platforms and participate in the alternate reality game, play the videogame, or watch the webisodes. Nor will all casual fans be limited to watching the television show. But for purposes of this thesis, I’d like to focus on two distinct ends of the spectrum: hard-core fans and casual fans.

Hard-core fans are the equivalent to typical “cult” fans. They watch and re-watch every episode. They enthusiastically consume ancillary texts and join communities to actively discuss the show. Most often, hard-core fans are interested in the dense mythology of the show. In the era of Television 2.0, their implicit contract might looks like this:

The Hard-Core Fan offers the Provider
Their time
Their attention
Their commitment to all media texts
Their money
Their free labor (by implicitly marketing the show through blogs, social networks etc.)

The Provider offers the Hard-Core Fan
A compelling, coherent story
Multiplatform entertainment
“Insider” information (interaction with the cast and crew)
The opportunity for mastery

Casual fans, in the sense I’m using the term, only watch the television show.  Not to be confused with Jenkins’ ‘casuals,’ these fans most likely have seen every episode of a television show, but do not venture into the multiplatform environment. Instead, their knowledge is limited to the plot of the show, however extensive that may be. Casual fans may be intrigued by the mythology of a show, but they do not pursue narrative extensions to build on their understanding of it. Their implicit contract might look like this:

The Casual Fan offers the Provider
Their time
Their attention

The Provider offers the Casual Fan
A compelling, coherent story

By focusing on these two extremes, I will have a more appropriate vocabulary for discussing how a television show might uphold both sets of implicit contracts. Most fans fall in between these extremes, but by satisfying both sets of demands, television producers can be assured that viewers who are comfortable as casual or hard-core fans will be equally satisfied.

[1] Long notes that the Hellboy universe may have been a commercial success, but it also contained many inconsistencies and oddities that frustrated fans. Transmedia Storytelling: Business, Aesthetics, and Production at the Jim Henson Company.
[2] Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture.
[3] Fan wiki for all things Star Trek.
[4] Austin, Alexander. Expectations Across Entertainment Media. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Master’s Thesis, 2007
[5] Ibid., 7.
[6] Ibid.,17.
[7] Abbot, Stacey. “How Lost found its audience: The Making of a Cult Blockbuster.” Reading Lost: Perspectives on a Hit Television Show.  Ed. Roberta Pearson. London: IB Tauris, 2009.

One of Long’s key components to transmedia storytelling is that each extension should be designed as canonical from the outset.[1] That way, he argues, audiences have a better sense of how each component relates to one another and thus can create a more complete fictional encyclopedia in their head. However, a television show is always considered to be official, while secondary components are usually apocryphal at best. There are a few reasons why canonical transmedia texts are so infrequent in television.

First, one of the major sources of contention in the 2007-2008 Writer’s Strike was distinguishing between promotional and original content. Because they considered streaming video and ancillary content to be promotional, studios did not provide television writers adequate residual rates for online content. For example, NBC Universal asked the writers of the Battlestar Galactica to develop a webisodes series, but the network did not want to pay the writers for their work, claiming such content was ‘promotional.’ [2] This debate continues to hinder the possibility for a fully canonized transmedia story. Television writers are not willing to devote their time and energy to produce content that might be considered promotional and thus not worthy of compensation.

Most often, a third party team writes and develops transmedia extensions, leaving the possibility for damaging inconsistencies and contradictions. To guard against these “insincere mistakes”[3] producers either disregard an extension as non-canon, or pick out some canon elements from it. Most fans accept the showrunner’s decision about what is canon and what is not. Joss Whedon, for example, has publicly stated the Season 8 Buffy comic book series is canon.[4] Of course, because Buffy is no longer on the air, Whedon has the luxury of writing storylines without worrying about future inconsistencies in the show.

Secondary texts are also considered non-canonical so that traditional television viewers do not feel required to consume them in order to enjoy the show. However, by considering the television show the only official text, television producers risk stamping all additional media components as “optional cash-grabbing fluff.”[5] While this may indeed be the case, a lack of authenticity hurts a loyal fan’s opportunity to deepen their experience of the world and come away with a fuller understanding of it.  For this reason, in Chapter 4 I argue that balancing the demands of loyal and casual fans is not a function of the canonicity of the information, but rather the type of narrative information addressed.

[1] Transmedia Storytelling: Business, Aesthetics, and Production at the Jim Henson Company.
[2] Goldman, Eric. “Battlestar Galactica Producer Talks Strike.” Ign.com. 7 November 2007. <http://tv.ign.com/articles/833/833633p1.html>
[3] Paul Levitz, President of DC Comics, describes two types of “continuity mismatches.” He says there are sincere mistakes and insincere mistakes. Sincere mistakes are minor and easily forgivable. Insincere mistakes damage the brand, forcing the viewer to ask, “Didn’t the moron read anything that happened before?” In Ford, Sam. “Transmedia Properties.” Convergence Culture Consortium.
[4] Vineyard, Jennifer. “Joss Whedon Sends Buffy Back To The Future In New Season-Eight Comic.” VH1.com. 2 July 2008. <http://www.vh1.com/movies/news/articles/1590279/20080701/story.jhtml>
[5] Long, Geoffrey. Transmedia Storytelling: Business, Aesthetics, and Production at the Jim Henson Company, 40.

Henrik Örnebring, in his analysis of Alias’ alternate reality games, argues that transmedia narratives do not create a “master narrative” where each text carries equal weight within the story world.[1] Instead, he argues that transmedia storytelling almost always involves an identifiable central text and a series of satellite texts that provide marketing for it. If we understand Jenkins’ definition of transmedia storytelling as a photomosaic, Örnebring sees transmedia storytelling as a single photograph with an eye-grabbing frame around it. Örnebring does have a point – films and TV shows usually consider web content to be purely promotional no matter how distinctive and valuable the narrative information.

The Blair Witch Project was one of the first films to use a website as a storytelling tool. The film generated a devoted fan base a year before it was released, creating a convincing, highly detailed website about the Blair Witch. [2] The site had pseudo-documentaries, historical sightings, audiotapes, and information about a police investigation, all of which presented the events of the film as real occurrences. Once it hit the theaters in 1999, The Blair Witch Project became one of the most successful low budget films of all time.[3] Örnebring argues that multiplatform stories like The Blair Witch Project have a “hierarchy of meaning,” a dominant text surrounded by ancillary texts.[4]

Television shows are most often the dominant text, not just because they can garner more money than other media, but also because they usually involve the longest commitment for the consumer, spanning years in length and hundreds of hours in content. It is thus tremendously difficult for an alternate reality game, novel, or comic book to carry the same narrative weight as a television show, especially since television shows are one of the most accessible and accepted forms of entertainment.

Nevertheless, while it is still possible to identify a distinction between a central text and its secondary components, a text’s reception does not always reinforce this hierarchical structure. In 2001, the movie A.I.: Artificial Intelligence launched a massive alternate reality game to promote the film. The game was known quite simply as The Beast. An alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive narrative that involves difficult challenges across multiple media platforms and spaces of everyday life. They have few or no rules and they do not acknowledge themselves as games or as a mode of storytelling. Players use their skills to collaborate to solve puzzles and move the narrative forward. Set in the year 2142, fifty years after the events of A.I., players were able to directly interact with the world, communicating with characters and deciphering fictional websites. Askwith, in his white paper, “This is Not (Just) an Advertisement,” recounts the Beast’s success:

The public response to The Beast was remarkable: during the 120 days of the game, more than 7,000 active participants formed an online collective…Estimates for overall participation range from half a million to three million players overall — the range being a function of how one defines “participation” — and the press coverage was staggering, with the creators reporting more than 300 million impressions in both mainstream and niche media outlets.[5]

The Beast may have been designed as a marketing tool, but it was also renowned as a creative success. Eight years later, The Beast’s complex design and passionate community became much more memorable than A.I.’s short box office run. Instead of just marketing A.I., The Beast became a text all its own, setting the bar for future ARGs.

In television, the Canadian show ReGenesis also blurs the boundary between the primary and secondary text.[6]  ReGenesis follows a scientific organization that investigates mysterious problems often related to bio-terrorism. The organization has a fictional website where viewer-players can become field agents themselves, hacking into characters’ emails, participating in forums, and taking phone calls. Players could participate in the extended reality game (ERG) without watching the television show and vice versa. But people who watched the TV show had access to information relevant to the ERG; likewise, players of the ERG learned background information about the drama of the TV show.[7] This symbiotic relationship is the exception rather than rule in television. Nevertheless, while transmedia storytelling may be more hierarchical than Jenkins’ definition suggests, it can definitely be much more than pure marketing.

[1] Örnebring, Henrik. “Alternate reality gaming and convergence culture: The case of
Alias.” International Journal of Cultural Studies. 10.4 (2007): 445-462.
[2] Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture.
[3] According to BoxOfficeMojo.com, the film had a production budget of $60,000 and grossed a total of $140,539,099 domestically. <http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=blairwitchproject.htm>
[4] Ibid., 445.
[5] Askwith, Ivan.  “This Is Not (Just) An Advertisement: Understanding Alternate Reality Games.”
[6] Dena, Christy. “How the Internet is Holding the Centre of Conjured Universes.” Paper presented at Internet Research 7.0: Internet Convergences, Association of Internet Researchers. Brisbane, Queensland, 27-30 September 2006.
[7] Ibid.

Christy Dena argues that there are other ways to expand content across media platforms in addition to Jenkins’ definition of transmedia storytelling. She describes three types of multiplatform segmentation: series, serial, and hybrid.[1] In a multiplatform series, each transmedia text continues a storyline, but primarily stands alone as an individual experience. An example might be Season 8 of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, which was in the form of a comic book after Buffy had left television. Dena also cites 24: The Game, a video game that filled in narrative gaps between seasons two and three.

Multiplatform serials are the most rare. They refer to texts of a transmedia story that are highly dependent on one another. One example in television might be the CSI: NY/ Second Life crossover in October 2007. In the CSI episode, the investigation team pursues a killer by entering Second Life, a massive virtual world. There is a cliffhanger however, and viewers are told that they won’t be able to see the identity of the killer until the following February. That is, unless they log into Second Life, follow the clues, interview suspects, and solve the murder featured in the CSI: NY episode themselves.[2] This isn’t the purest form of a multiplatform serial, since Second Life players could solve the murder without watching the show, but nevertheless, the core narrative carried over from the television show into Second Life.

Lastly, Dena defines multiplatform hybrids as combining serial and series tendencies. She draws on the television theorist Robin Nelson who introduced the term “flexi-narrative” to describe television shows consisting of self-contained episodes and unresolved narrative threads.[3] This narrative structure is evident in the relationship between Homicide Life On the Streets and the accompanying web series The Second Shift. The web series was generally self-contained, featuring a unique cast of detectives solving crimes after the television detectives went home. But Dena describes a special crossover episode:

[U.S.] viewers of the NBC television show Homicide: Life on the Street, were treated to a special “crossover episode”. It was not a crossover of worlds or brands, instead, it was an intraworld, cross-platform traversal.  On the 3rd and 4th of February, detectives started investigating a webcast killing. These detectives were not those seen on air though, they were the second shift detectives who existed only on the Net. The Second Shift detectives deemed the case closed, but then the detectives on the television  show reopened the case in their television episode called “Homicide.com,” which was broadcast on Feb 5th. The Net detectives then concluded the case the following week on the 12th and 19th online.[4]

Dena’s definition of multiplatform hybrids is most in line with Jenkins’ use of “transmedia storytelling.” In Jenkins’s model, each text is self-contained but also continues the narrative in some way. In the case of Homicide, it would not be unreasonable to either watch the web series or the television show, but viewing both improves the overall experience. As Thomas Hjelm, the executive producer of Second Shift explains, “The episode on Friday is self-contained and makes sense by itself…But if you go online for the [continuing] ‘Second Shift‘ chapters, it just makes more sense.”[5] Thus, the content from the web series would only be an enhancement, not a requirement. Of course, producing optional yet valuable narrative enhancements is an incredibly difficult task, an issue I explore in Chapter 3.

Geoffrey Long classifies transmedia stories based on how they were first conceived from the outset.[6] He outlines hard, soft, and chewy transmedia narratives. Hard transmedia narratives are designed and coordinated from the very beginning. Long cites Orson Scott Card’s Empire franchise and Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerebus as examples. But in television, the most interesting case study is Push, Nevada. Produced by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, Push, Nevada combined a television show with an alternate reality game[7] and a million dollar prize. The show could be enjoyed as a traditional television drama or as a scavenger hunt, as many viewers scrutinized episodes for clues ranging from web addresses to hidden codes in order to unravel a mystery.[8] The alternate reality game component was planned from the beginning to accompany the show. Unfortunately, this real-time contest, however innovative, was a commercial failure, lasting 7 episodes before it was cancelled. [9]

Soft transmedia narratives are those that are expanded across media only after a core property proves to be successful. For example, after Buffy the Vampire Slayer grew in popularity, a whole ‘Buffyverse’ began to emerge, complete with books, comics, and video games. Shows like Doctor Who and Star Trek are the extremes of such soft transmedia narratives. They involve many authors, many characters, many plot lines that span decades, and they often adapt to different audiences along the way. These “unfolding texts,” as Lance Parkin calls them, include so many stories in a variety of media that the franchise as a whole has completely overshadowed the original television series.[10]

Long’s last category, “chewy,” is somewhere in between hard and soft. A chewy transmedia narrative becomes hard only after the core property’s initial success. The Matrix may be the best example, as there are very few chewy transmedia narratives in television. Lost may be the closest to ‘chewiness’, after it set a definite end date at six seasons, allowing the producers to plan out all future transmedia extensions.

Long’s classification system is difficult to apply to television, since in general, television shows only support soft transmedia narratives. That is, they are either expanded across media after they have proven to resonate with audiences (Star Trek, Alias, 24) or after they have left television (Sex and the City, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly). One reason for this is that most television producers do not have the luxury of planning out a transmedia campaign as the Wachowski brothers did after the first Matrix film.

In the United States, most new series do not last much more than a season.[11] Designing transmedia extensions from the outset is obviously pointless if the show is cancelled after three episodes. In addition, because television writers do not know what will happen in every episode of every season, planning out hard or even chewy transmedia narratives becomes problematic. Television shows constantly adapt and change their storylines based off fan feedback, actor availability, and network pressure. As Carleton Cuse, executive producer of Lost, points out:

Television shows aren’t made in a vacuum. They’re made in the real world, and the real world is complicated by the fact that you are coordinating your creative plans with hundreds of other people… You can sort of dictate to a certain degree what you want the show to be, but you have to listen just as hard to what the show is telling you it wants to be. [12]

Indeed, as I will discuss with Lost in Chapter 4, actors may leave television shows, budget cuts may limit certain scenes, and some plot lines may no longer be relevant. With all these variables, it is incredibly difficult to plan out transmedia extensions early in the development phase. Especially when dealing with seriality, a common characteristic of cult TV shows, many writers struggle to maintain a consistent and coherent narrative in the television show alone. Yet as Maureen Ryan, a writer from The Chicago Tribune, explains, television producers are discovering that their job description is changing:

They’re [writers and producers] doing all sorts of extra stuff — they’re expected to be multimedia producers as well…I think they’re being asked to wear a lot of hats right now. Because the stakes are so high, because viewers are expecting and demanding such high quality, the season doesn’t end. You reply to fans’ questions, write a blog, record a podcast, record a DVD commentary, and oh! Come up with a show that can compete in this incredibly difficult environment.[13]

This endless television season may be a headache for writers and producers, but because television shows rarely have an end-date in the United States, it is a necessity to compete in the content market. Today, when television shows do have transmedia aspirations, they are most often produced by a network’s marketing division. Heroes may be one of the few exceptions, with a writer/producer overseeing and orchestrating transmedia development. Yet the question remains: can transmedia storytelling be an art form or is it merely a marketing gimmick?

[1] Dena, Christy. “Techniques for Segmenting Content Across Media.” Christydena.com. 4 September 2008.
[2] Jenkins, Henry. “Producing the CSI:NY/Second Life Crossover: An Interview with Electric Sheep’s Taylor and Krueger (1 of 2).” Henryjenkins.org. 24 October 2007.
[3] Dena, Christy. “Techniques for Segmenting Content.” Christydena.com.
[4] Dena, Christy.  “Patterns in Cross-Media Interaction Design: It’s Much More than a
URL… (Part 1)” UniverseCreation101.com. March 10, 2007.
http://www.universecreation101.com/category/arg/page/6/
[5] Wolk, Josh. “’Homicide’ welcomes its website cast to the show — a first step in NBC’s plans to nab TV defectors.” Entertainment Weekly. 5 February 1999.
[6] Long, Geoffrey. Transmedia Storytelling: Business, Aesthetics, and Production at the Jim Henson Company. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Master’s Thesis, 2007.
[7] I explain alternate reality games in 2.3,  3.3.3,  and  4.3.3.
[8] Askwith, Ivan.  This Is Not (Just) An Advertisement: Understanding Alternate Reality Games.  White Paper for MIT Convergence Culture Consortium. October 2006.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Parkin, Lance. “Truths Universally AcknowledgEd. How the Rules of Doctor Who Affect the Writing.” Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives. Eds. Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009. 13-25.
[11] Wyatt, Edward. “New Serials: Now You See Them, Now You Don’t.” The New York Times. 10 January 2007.
[12] In Murray, Noel. “Lost’s Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse.” The A.V. Club. 22 April 2008.
[13] Ross, Sharon Marie. Beyond the Box, 228.