Is Transmedia the future of Television?

"[T]ransmedia storytelling or more broadly transmedia entertainment [...] [is] a system where each medium makes a distinct contribution to the media franchise, each is left to do what it does best, and the reader is able to expand on their experience of a favorite story by pulling together bits and pieces of information from various sources", says Henry Jenkins - MIT Scholar of Comparitive Media Studies.

A Classic example of this is the season finale of Criminal Minds(for those of you who watch it). The season ended with one member of the BAU getting nailed by a serial killer. But the end was left to the viewer's imagination. So instead of forgetting all about the series until the next season, the viewers were busy cracking the case. And they did so in many different ways...some working by themselves others getting online to solve the puzzle together.

Henry Jenkins cites the Matrix as an example of transmedia storytelling. Jenkins explains that, "key bits of information are conveyed through three live action films, a series of animated shorts, two collections of comic book stories, and several video games. There is no one single source or ur-text where one can turn to gain all of the information needed to comprehend the Matrix universe.

The aim of this consumer immersion is decentralized authorship, or transmedial play. There are two prominent factors driving the growth of transmedia storytelling.

• The first is the proliferation of new media forms like video games, the internet, and mobile platforms and the demand for content in each.
• The second is an economic incentive for media creators to lower production costs by sharing assets.

There are many example of various television series jumping onto the transmedia bandwagon. What remains to be seen is how pervasive this trend will be?!!

References:

http://www.bigshinything.com/henry-jenkins-on-convergence-culture

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmedia_storytelling