9/11 Coverage and Flow

Raymond Williams talks about how important flow is in broadcasting. According to Williams, stations deliberately plan out their entire schedules, making sure that there is a continuous flow throughout their broadcast. Whether there is a commercial, promo, news, or a serial show on, the continuity remains. Rick Altman adds to the theory of flow, showing how the soundtrack of the broadcast lets the viewer know when to pay attention.

The coverage of 9/11 seemed to be an instance where the flow of the broadcast was interrupted. The reason for this seems to be that the events of 9/11 were so extreme that the stations did not plan for them and had no plan in place to deal with them. Normal news happens without the stations knowing what is coming, but in general they are prepared to respond to it. During the coverage of 9/11, the broadcasters were shocked and often seemed to be at a loss for words. This led to lots of time where there was no sound at all. According to Altman, this would lead to a loss of flow and the viewer would not be able to tell what was happening. Part of the problem ws that there was very little new information to report on, even though the stations clearly had to stay on the same topic. There seemed to be attempts to reinstate the flow by offering new information, but this led to times when they had to redact what was said, such as the car bomb going off in Washington. The stations also had a limited number of clips to show, and ended up playing the same clips over and over. This also contributed to the lack of flow and seemed to diminish the "liveness" of the broadcast, despite the fact that it was breaking news and basically was live.

One concept that the 9/11 coverage did reinforce was the one of intertextuality. Like any breaking news, all of the stations were focused on the same thing, even to the extent that some were showing the exact same shots. Watching any of the news stations would have provided the same information and news.