MTV's Fear:
Is this Interactive TV?
By Christa Starr
Last night, I settled in to watch the season premiere of MTV's reality
TV series Fear. I can almost hear the show's pitch meeting in my head.
"It's like The Blair Witch Project meets Survivor, but with a
heart!" Each week, six contestants are dispatched to a "real"
haunted location, where they must spend two nights completing a series
of dares to win the grand prize. They are allowed no contact with
the show's crew (or anyone in the outside world) except through the
computer terminal that assigns their missions. Members of the cast
not participating in the current dare must stay at home base, relaying
the dare's instructions to the active members via walkie-talkies.
Failure to complete a dare results in the contestant's disqualification
and the loss of his $5000 reward money.
One interesting feature that sets Fear apart from other reality TV
experiences is the moral support among the contestants. No doubt,
the cast are terrified, if not by the threat of ghosts and goblins
then by the apparently cruel and dangerous missions assigned by the
Fear production staff. For example, last night's scariest dare involved
climbing a 350-foot tower to a platform where a rope had been thrown
over a beam, one end tied in a noose, the other end tied to a pile
of cinderblocks. The contestant was to place the noose around his
neck and push the cinderblocks over the edge. Obviously, the crew
of the show would not be stupid enough to actually tie the rope in
a way that the contestant would be strangled to death. That just wouldn't
play well on TV. But the contestant could not bring himself to finish
the dare. And all the while, the others at home base were trying to
encourage him, to give him faith in himself, to assure him it would
be all right. Thus, the scary show with a heart.
However, there is more to the show than just the broadcast hour.
MTV has been quick to embrace web delivery to enhance their viewers'
experience of the series. In his article "iTV: the Promise of
the Two-Way Tube," Mark London Williams claims that "everyone's
still waiting for some piece of content beyond chop-sueyed gerbils
and 'whazzup?' knock-offs to grab everyone's attention." MTV,
it seems, has tried to do just that. A perfect example of "two
screen enhanced television," as Williams describes, MTV's setup
allows viewers to learn more about the broadcast show by simultaneously
accessing the Fear web site on their home computers. The site offers
an extensive map of the haunted location, with cues as to where each
dare is actually occurring, as well as additional video clips and
background information on the location and the supernatural experiences
of its visitors. This web site can be accessed at any time, from a
few days prior to the airing of the episode, to during the episode,
and indefinitely thereafter.
After the broadcast show, viewers are invited to log on to MTV's
chat rooms for a discussion with the cast of that week's episode.
This seems to be the greatest opportunity for iTV-style interactivity.
What could be more interactive than logging into a chat room to have
a talk with the stars of the show?
Sadly, it's not quite that simple. First, there are over 100 chat
rooms on MTV's site, all swarming with fans wanting to talk to the
stars. Each room holds 40 participants at a maximum. Last night all
were full, meaning at least 4000 viewers were clamoring to get their
questions answered. Second, the stars are not actually in any of the
fan-accessible rooms. They have their own secluded area, where a moderator
feeds them questions supposedly submitted by fans. In order to ask
a question, it had to be sent to the moderator via a special "Ask
a question" button. When the moderator had selected a question,
it was then broadcast to all chat rooms in blue text, the cast answers
following shortly after in purple, with all other chatter appearing
in black. Unfortunately, it seemed that most of the chatters were
oblivious to this, and futilely typed their questions (in all caps)
over and over again, often finishing with a plaintive, "WHY WON'T
THE CAST ANSWER ME???"
The promise of interactivity turned into an exercise in frustration
as newbies to the chat room repeatedly tried to shout out questions
to the cast, annoying participants trying to play the game by the
rules. Eventually, most chatters left in disgust, though some stayed
behind and compared notes on who would have done the noose dare or
not. And no officially-submitted questions from my chat room were
ever answered.
When the transcript of the 'interactive' session is posted on the
Fear web site it will contain only the text of the 'official' questions
and answers, none of the chatter from the individual chat rooms. Which
begs the question, was the chat room an interactive experience? Well,
yes and no. It was interactive, in that each chat room member could
interactive with the others in their room. But it was not interactive
in the way MTV claimed it would be. It was not a chance for fans to
interact with the cast. Their voices will make no lasting impact on
the show or the web site. And it remains to be seen if that will turn
viewers off to the interactive side of the Fear experience.