Feuer's argument about liveness being the ideology of television struck a particular chord with me in light of the recent Olympics. Although the time difference between America and China made live coverage extremely impractical, American news corporations lobbied to have popular events (like swimming and gymnastics) take place in the morning in China, so that they would be live during primetime broadcast on the east coast of the U.S. I read about this in the paper while the Olympics were going on, and I was quite surprised to find that American news companies were actually able to pull that off.
But despite being aware of the impracticalities of live broadcast (and perhaps the undue attention to American TV in the scheduling of certain events), I found myself completely a victim to the allure of live broadcast. I remember staying up until ridiculous hours of the early morning to watch how events turned out (in live time), even though I knew I had to get up early in the morning and the events would likely be replayed or put on youtube.
Even more interestingly, my sister (who is very into swimming) made a big to-do about us recording all of the swimming events for her, because she was hiking in the widerness while the Olympics were going on. But when she got back, she barely watched any of the recorded footage. Something about it not being live made it much less interesting to her.
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