Although I am but young in years, I seem to remember an age where official magazines were all the rage when it came to certain forms of entertainment. For my brother and I, it was all about Nintendo Power, the official magazine about all things related to the video games we loved to play. It was where we went to figure out how to get through that tricky dungeon, or see a first look at an upcoming game.
And then the internet happened.
My experience as a fan of great television has taken place entirely within the internet age, and there is no question that in recent years such fandom has emerged in an extremely unique fashion. Message boards, blogs and social networking have fundamentally altered the level of interaction we have with our favourite shows. Within hours of them airing, we are online chatting with other fans, or even reading blogs or websites run by the show’s producers. It is perhaps unsurprising then, considering how engrossed I am in that community, that I was wholly ignorant to the fact that Titan Magazines has been creating TV-focused magazines for a number of years.
The latest two entrants into their lineup are Heroes and Supernatural. While Heroes is an addition to be expected, I want to focus upon Supernatural. In perusing my copy of the magazine, I think back to the time I’ve spent interacting with their fan community, which is certainly both extremely pleasant and extremely enthusiastic. Unlike Heroes, or other shows with magazines like Grey’s Anatomy or Lost, Supernatural is not one of the top shows on television. However, Warner Bros. Television has a lot of faith in the series, and its fans, and this magazine certainly reflects that.
[To Subscribe to the Supernatural Magazine, CLICK HERE]
There are a lot of reasons why this is an extremely positive step forward: not only for Supernatural’s fan community, but also for other fan communities for low-rated but highly-loved series like Jericho or Gossip Girl.
Over the past four weeks, my life has been dominated by labour action – on October 15th, the faculty at Acadia University (Which I attend) went on strike. This strike did not end until Wednesday, which meant three and a half weeks out of the classroom. In covering that strike, I maintained a neutral perspective: I felt the profs were striking for sound principles, but that the administration could never simply accept their demands thanks to shrinking enrollment. The landscape of the university was changing, and this crossroads was only inevitable. In the end, our second strike in 4 years was settled, this time with a resolution that should maintain the security of the institution for over a decade.
Cultural Learnings 