18th
Of Closed Captioning and Internet Marketing
Last night, I had a very bizarre clash between my television viewing and the internet.
I’m settled into the couch, watching the BBC America premiere of Skins. It’s a cool show from the UK, originally on E4, that is kind of a grittier, more realistic version of the angst of Dawson’s Creek combined with the intelligence of the movie Brick and the structure of Degrassi (I swear that all makes sense). Oh, add in some actually non-gratuitous profanity and nudity, plus the kid from About a Boy all growed up, and there you have it.
In the little pre-show disclaimer about the content (it always gets me when a genuine depiction of teen life has to get disclaimered for teens), they mention that some of the accents might be hard to understand, so BBC America is going to do us idiot Americans a favor and subtitle some dialogue. I hate this for a couple reasons:
1. Subtitles are distracting and make you focus away from the performances and action.
2. It’s ENGLISH. I know it might be hard for some people as it isn’t proper Queen’s English, and it is set in Bristol, but come on. Those that need the captioning should be able to set their own TV’s to show them.
So, as per my usual, I choose to rant about this annoyance via Twitter. And this is where the Internet Marketing comes into play. I get a Twitter direct message from the BBC America marketing team out of nowhere asking me what I think of the show. I guess they were running a search on Twitter posts all evening who mention the show and responding to them. It’s a bit creepy but kinda cool at the same time. I’m curious to see what their ratings were for the show, as well as if they think their internet marketing was a success.
