Text Tube

It was in the middle of the morning and my friend got the most annoying experience of his life. His cellular phone was ringing like hell and about a hundred texts surprised him in a span of five minutes. Later on he found out from one of the callers that his contact numbers were posted on television? The hell?! How did they get his contact numbers? More so, how did it get advertised on the boob tube? Turns out that some enemy of his wanted to trip on him, since he had the freedom to post anything on TV, the rest was history.

It’s called text television. He asked me if I’ve seen any lately. Since I’m not a TV person, I was not sure what he was talking about. Turns out, it is a new trend. A very hot trend! Much to how Filipinos are such fanatics to trends, this one easily clicked with the public, in synch with the modern technologies surrounding the society. Oh goodie, something that I can have fun with.

Text TV is all about having a channel with text messages coming in from different people who favor that particular server of text chat. When you get to view one, you’ll see a lot of boxes. There are divisions for the text box itself, for the music video that is usually pop in terms of genre, advertisments, personal advertisments, and announcement. So it’s entertainment, information and commerce all at the same time flashing right before you.

There are a lot of channels available to the viewing public. There’s the Cable Café of Sky Cable, this leans more to being informative with important announcements and things for sale. Myx incorporates it to interact with their audience. The same thing goes for NU 107, it’s for the purpose of getting feedback from the audience. Link TV and The Lounge by Bidshot Services, Inc. are more concentrated on the text TV essence. Other channels are Net 25, Pinoy Central and Txtcite. So much competition for such a simple process for communication. A lot of people get hooked with it because of the perks that comes with it.

I had the chance to interview Atom Henares, President of NU 107, Ron Titular the Operations Head, Mike Pedero the Founder, and Apa Ongpin the producer, all from NU107 for enlightenment about text television. They said that the beauty about this is that “ It is live.” If before, the DJ or the operator would have to take a call one-by-one, it was a slow process. Unlike with texting, “fifty (50) texts comes on the screen… suddenly you know what everybody has to say,” all at the same time. “These are the people listening to you, this is what they think of you, what they think of your topic and they come up with really surprising things!” says Apa. Unlike before, they give out information or topics to think about but there isn’t much coming in for feedback. Talk about speed and information overload. Mike adds, “In other words, we say one thing and we get all the response.” Now this is something else indeed and of course, with something great, people would want to have a taste of it.

“It’s something you can’t deny.” True, it is already inclined to the culture of Filipinos to be hooked on texting. Society involves knowing what your plans are or sending data through SMS. This is a very personal thing, it comes from the person himself to share it to the community with what he has to say and everybody shares it. This is what it is all about. NU 107 want to see what people are going to do with this, they want the community to move by itself for it to continue to grow by its own means. This rock station believes that the audience wouldn’t want to be dictated upon. It is a matter of not wanting to be on the upper band of the mainstream criteria.

You can’t just blame glitches on the participants. It can be with the technology itself. Sometimes it can’t be that fast to receive information from texters. It’s either the cellular phone server’s fault or that of the main computer that receives all these texts. NU tried sending a thank you note to someone who participated. Instead of being thankful on the part of the participant, he became irritated because the main computer had complications and it started sending the user around hundreds of messages in a short span of time containing the same message saying, “thank you for texting in to NU.” But those glitches are already a given when it comes to a lot of phenomenon and things concerning technology.

This may seem like a big joke. Some may claim that it is a waste for air space and more meaningful shows could be produced. For the NU group, it is democratizing communication. It is all about the human experience to be involved. People are brought closer together and it gives them a chance to actually speak their minds. Sure there are other mediums to play with like print, film, and what have you, but lets face it, texting is the one that appeals to this viewing audience. This is what the viewers want so it is given to them. Texting is perfect because it easy, efficient, and very personal. Even greater if it is on television because voices can be heard. Antoine de Saint-Exupery once wrote, “Behind all seen things lies something vaster; everything is but a path, a portal, or a window opening on something other than itself.” So it’s not just trying to prank on someone. Text television is opportunity that can be seen and can be used as a possibility for something bigger than what we perceive. It is not just