Kevin's point about dorm TVs may be a tangent, but certainly related to the shifting media ecosystem. I don't think his experience is an anomaly - that's the policy at Middlebury as well, and I think it's true at a lot of residential colleges that cable feeds are limited to common areas or must be purchased as an add-on to a suite. It used to be a real factor limiting the way people consumed media, as in-room TVs were only for gaming or videotapes/DVDs, and common areas were the way that students watched current TV. But today, my students gather only for "appointment viewing" (weekly Office, Grey's Anatomy, 24, or Lost viewing seem to be most common), and watch everything else online via Hulu or BitTorrent (usually alone or with a friend). For me teaching television, it makes it easier to get them to watch a specific program, but harder to consume a channel's flow with ads and a schedule. -Jason
I worked for a year and a half at The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, a liberal arts college in the southeastern United States. Their residence halls are an anomaly, particularly among affluent institutions in the United States, in that they do (did?) not provide cable television to each individual room or suite. They only provide cable television to common rooms on each floor. It certainly seemed that some of these issues - negotiation, shared community, etc. - were actively considered and played a significant role in this setup.
--- Jason Mittell, Associate Professor of American Studies and Film & Media Culture Chair of Film & Media Culture Department Middlebury College 208 Axinn Center at Starr Library Middlebury, Vermont 05753 (802) 443-3435 / fax: (802) 443-2805 Homepage: http://go.middlebury.edu/mittell Blog: http://justtv.wordpress.com