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U n d e r s t a n d i n g T e l e v i s i o n a t t h e

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Early in every semester I survey my classes in search of a show we all share in common in order to draw examples from it throughout the term. This was a pretty easy feat in my first few years of teaching. Usu­ ally I found a show on my first (Friends) or second (ER) try. In recent se­ mesters I have all but given up on such unanimity. Instead I gather a sense of what different factions of students might be watching, as it has been a while since I taught a class in which we had all seen the same show at least once (yes, even American Idol). This development illustrates an impor­ tant consequence of the choice in viewing provided by the post-network era. The hundreds of channels offering programming by the end of the multi-channel transition has significantly fragmented the audience. By mid 2006, viewers could readily access hundreds of television shows from any era on DVD or online, and an amateur video clip could reach as large an audience as a network show. Although only early adopters may have been viewing television in these new ways by this time, these develop­ ments suggest additional coming fragmentation.

In early August 2006, "The Evolution of Dance," a humorous six- minute amateur performance of the progression of popular dance styles from the 1950s through the present, had been on YouTube.com for four months and had been played it least thirty million times.1 Site users re­ posted the video multiple times, and in at least three different languages, taking advantage of one of YouTube's technological strengths—the ease with which videos can be linked to other sites—but making it difficult to sum up how many times it had been viewed across these multiple post­ ings and on other sites. As a point of comparison, the most watched tele­ vision show of the preceding season—American Idol's Tuesday night per­ formance episodes—averaged 31.2 million viewers each week. FOX's blockbuster hit included judges paid roughly $30 million a year, and the network earned $700,000 for a thirty-second advertisement, in addition

27

28 I Understanding Television at the Beginning of the Post-Network Era

to the at least $25 million per season paid by each of the three series spon­ sors.2 In contrast, "The Evolution of Dance" featured the negligible pro­ duction values of a video camera set up in the audience of a comedy club and was originally posted by the video's creator and dancer, Judson Laip­ ply. Laipply did not profit directly from the millions of viewers, although stories about the video's popularity appeared on the Today Show, Good Morning America, and Inside Edition and drew attention to his work as a public speaker and "inspirational comedian." YouTube benefited from the high traffic to the site that may have clicked through some of the ban­ ner advertisements, and the video figured prominently in increasing cul­ tural awareness of the site. When I queried my classes later that fall about their familiarity with the video, some had seen it—although fewer than I had expected and by no means as many as had seen various television shows. When I asked co-workers (faculty and staff over the age of thirty), most responded by asking what YouTube was—until a few months later when Google's $1.65 billion purchase of the site drew much attention.

The changes in how we view, experience, and use television made evi­ dent by these anecdotes have massive implications for how we think about television and its role in culture. The increased fractionalization of the audience among shows, channels, and distribution devices has dimin­ ished the ability of an individual television network or television show to reinforce a certain set of beliefs to a broad audience in the manner we long believed to occur. Although television can still function as a mass medium, in most cases it does so by aggregating a collection of niche au­ diences. The narrowcasting that became common to television during the multi-channel transition has thus required adjustments in theories about the mass nature of the medium, while the exponential expansion in view­ ers' choice and control since the network era has necessitated an even more substantive reassessment of television. Taking up these issues, this chapter provides an overview of some of the central ideas that have gov­ erned the study of television and culture as well as some preliminary tools for making sense of television in the post-network era.

Defining Television

The industrial changes that developed during the multi-channel transition made the very object that we are exploring uncertain as new forms and ways of using television required us to reconsider "what is television?"

Understanding Television at the Beginning of the Post-Network Era I 29

The anecdote about my colleague's claim of viewing "videos" and not television at the beginning of the introduction illustrates the growirig am­ biguity about the boundaries of the medium, just as one might wonder whether or not "The Evolution of Dance" should be considered televi­ sion.. Although the term "television" has been broadly Used to refer to a singular technology—a box with a screen—the range of experiences has lbng made the object of study quite uncertain. We have commonly as­ sumed shared knowledge of "television," although few have deliberated extensively on this point.3

Television is more than just a technology—more than a composite of wires, metal, and glass. It possesses an essence that is bound up in its con­ text, in how the box is most commonly used, in where it is located, in what streams though it, and in how most use it, despite the possibility for. broad variation in all the factors. What is the distinction, then, between a television and a monitor, particularly in the context of contemporary technological convergence and the manufacturing of digital- "televisions" that have no tuning capability—i.e., the ability to receive signals over the air? Recent work by Lisa Gitelman argues for a definition of media as "socially realized structures of communication, where structures include both technological forms and their associated protocols."4 Protocols in­ clude "normative rules and default conditions" such as the greeting "Hello," monthly billing cycles, and a system of wires and cable for the U.S. phone service. Understanding that the protocols of television con­ tribute to distinguishing the medium helps us rectify some of the inade­ quacy of defining the medium only in terms of the piece of equipment and addresses how the technology becomes a television when it receives sig­ nals via broadcast, cable, or satellite transmission. A television is not just a machine, but also the set of behaviors and practices associated with its use. Consequently, it may not be a "television" when it functions merely as a conduit through which video games, Computer signals, or a DVD may pass, but its reception of networks and channels does make it a tele­ vision—even though both uses now require the connection of certain boxes to the set for it to fulfill these functions. New questions are also emerging. What if this "network" content we perceive as characteristic of television is displayed elsewhere, such as on a laptop or mobile phone screen? Does one still watch "television" in these contexts?

I approach television with the presumption that our cultural under­ standing of this medium does indeed conceive of it as more than a moni­ tor, piece of hardware, or gateway to programming, and that television is

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less defined by how the content gets to us and what we view it on than by the set of experiences and practices we've long associated with the activ­ ity of viewing. All of these technical attributes unquestionably contribute to how a culture uses and understands television, yet inherited meanings, expectations, and habits also circumscribe it in particular ways. New technologies and industrial practices have introduced radical changes in technological aspects of television, its use, and its consequent cultural significance, but various aspects of socio-cultural experience still define television in our minds in specific and meaningful ways—particularly for those generations who knew television in the network era.

The transition of radio in the 1940s provides an illustrative parallel. As television first entered homes, radio had to fundamentally redefine it­ self—both its programming and in how and where listeners used it. Be­ fore television, radio was primarily a domestic-bound technology that played particular programs on a known schedule; after television usurped the captive home audience, radio became a portable medium and shifted to emphasize ongoing music or talk formats. Nonetheless, after televi­ sion, the technology remained commonly understood as "radio" despite the. substantial difference in the medium and adjustments to its role as a cultural institution. Likewise, in recent years, as the television experience has encompassed new capabilities and spread to additional screens, es­ tablished cultural understandings have shifted accordingly so that we still continued to comprehend different experiences as watching "television." Television may not be dying, but changes in its content and how and where we view have complicated how we think about and understand its role in the culture.

In introducing a collection of essays that considers various aspects of the wide-ranging transitions that occurred by the beginning of the twenty-first century, Lynn Spigel reflects on the title of the anthology— Television After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition. She notes that, "Indeed, if TV refers to the technologies, industrial formations, govern­ ment policies, and practices of looking that were associated with the medium in its classical public service and three-network age, it appears we are now entering a new phase of television—the phase that comes after ' T V ' " 5 Although the title of the collection is eye-catching and provocative, it suggests a far more absolute rupture than that which oc­ curred; it is also arbitrary in affording the norms of the network era such eminence as determinant of the medium. Still, attention to transition and uncertainty about the present status and likely future of television evident

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Understanding Television at the Beginning of the Post-Network Era I 31

in the anthology and its title were not uncommon by late in the multi­ channeLtransition. Another title of an important article queries, "What is the 'Television' of Television Studies?"—a question that similarly asserts concern about ambiguity regarding the fundamental attributes of televi­ sion.6 Those who write about television have never adequately addressed which of the "technologies, industrial formations, government policies, and practices of looking," to borrow from Spigel, might particularly es­ tablish the ontological boundaries of the medium—the things that make television "television." We err in allowing those norms established first to "determine" the medium; they are as arbitrary as any.subsequent forma­ tion.7

Thinking about Network-Era Television

Scholars in fields as diverse as literature, film studies, political science, so­ ciology, psychology, and communication developed different ways of thinking about television and its role in culture. Those in the area of "media studies" have attended most closely to the ways in which pro­ grams, audiences, industries, and socio-cultural contexts intertwine in the creation and circulation of television, and their ideas are most relevant here. Scholars of media studies-—and critical television studies in partic­ ular—have developed detailed theories and empirical studies that exam­ ine the multifaceted nature of cultural production common to television. But in the network era, there was no^need for esoteric discussions of "what is television" as it was assumed to be a simple technology whose variation spanned little more than screen size and color or black and white.8 Most television theory continues to presume network-era norms in explaining the cultural and institutional functions of television, and draws from distinctive national experiences with the medium. This book ^nd the conditions of the post-network era call many of these assump­ tions into question.

Foundational understandings of television view it as a—if not the— central communicative and cultural force within society. Its centrality de­ rived from its availability and ubiquity; as early as i 9 6 0 more than Sj percent of U.S. households had televisions, and the technology increas­ ingly was available in spaces outside of the home such as taverns and hos­ pitals.9 The accessibility of television was in many ways enabled by the low cost of acquiring its programming. Either as a result of advertising

32 I Understanding Television at the Beginning of the Post-Network Era

support in the United. States or public funding in most other countries, viewing television programs did not require the same type of per-use fee associated with most other entertainment and informational media such as films, newspapers, and magazines. To be sure, commercial media "cost" societies in ways obscured by simple presumptions that pro­ claimed that network-era television was "free"; nonetheless, it was rea­ sonable to assert that television's low barriers to access greatly con­ tributed to its cultural importance in the network era.

During that time, the medium gained its status as a primary cultural institution precisely because "network-era programming could and did reach such vast audiences. Television derived its significance from its ca­ pacity to broadly share information and ideas and facilitate an "elec­ tronic public sphere" of sorts.10 Its stories and ideas reached a mass au­ dience that some have argued enabled television programs to negotiate contradictory and contested social ideas, while others have proposed that this reach allowed television to enforce a dominant way of thinking.11

Significantly, both perspectives ascribed importance to television because of its pervasiveness.12. Viewers' lack of control over the medium and the limited choice at this time aided its ability to function as both forum and ideological enforcer. Network-era norms imposed the synchronicity of linear viewing, and television earned its status as an instigator of "water­ cooler conversation" by providing shared content for discussion. Co­ workers and neighbors chose from the same limited range of programs each night, and thus were likely to have viewed the same program.

Assessments of television that consider how it contributes to the shar­ ing and negotiation of ideas understand it to operate as a "cultural insti­ tution"—that is, as a social conduit that participates in communicating values and ideas within a culture by telling stories and conveying infor­ mation that reflects, challenges, and responds to shared debates and con­ cerns. Educational systems, clubs and societal orders, and religious orga­ nizations are also cultural institutions, although we may more readily identify and accept the influence of these sites on how we know and un­ derstand the world around us.13 At the same time television functions as a cultural institution, however, it is also a "cultural industry." That is, in a context such as the United States, the television industry operates as a commercial enterprise that primarily seeks to maximize profits, while nonetheless producing programs that are important creative and cul­ tural forms that communicate social values and beliefs. Industry work­ ers may primarily make decisions based on what types of programming

Understanding Television at the Beginning of the Post-Network Era I 3 3

they perceive to be most profitable, yet these decisions still have impor­ tant cultural implications for what stories are told, by whom, and how society comes to understand the worlds that television presents. Remem­ bering, the commercial mandate of television—again, particularly in the United States—is imperative: in the cultural industry of television, busi­ ness and culture operate concurrently and are inextricable in every aspect.

Studies that explain the economic and industrial norms of television in the network era are particularly relevant to the focus here upon television as a cultural industry. Until recently, few attempted to bridge the chasm between* humanities-inflected theories about the operation of media in culture and political economy research that emphasizes economics and industrial operations.14 This history of avoidance, and at times hostility, between approaches is increasingly being corrected by theories and meth­ ods that deliberately merge aspects of culture and economics or explore quotidian industrial processes to better understand the agents, organiza­ tions, and processes involved in cultural production—as I attempt here.15

As is the case of dominant cultural theories about television, most po­ litical economy work assumes television to be a mass medium and attrib­ utes much of its importance to this characteristic. The notion of mass media and the scale of such businesses are important to political economy approaches examining the assemblage and distribution of labor and cap­ ital, while the mass audience was crucial to cultural approaches because of the necessity for programs to be widely shared within the culture. In both cases, the breadth of the audience reached by network-era pro­ gramming allowed television to circulate ideas in a way that asserted and reinforced existing power structures and dominant ways of thinking within a society.

In many cases, the changed industrial context has not negated the value of theoretical tools provided by these perspectives, but some require reconsideration and adjustment. For example, Horace Newcomb and Paul Hirsch's argument that television programs provide a cultural forum to-negotiate ideas within society makes sense insofar as television contin­ ued to facilitate this cultural role after the network era on certain occa­ sions; however, broad and heterogeneous audiences now rarely share in­ dividual programs in the manner they assumed. Television might con­ tinue to provide a cultural forum for those who tune in to a particular show,* but it has become increasingly unlikely that television functions as a space for the negotiation of contested beliefs among diverse groups sim­ ply'because audiences are now more narrow and specialized.16

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Other theories, such as Raymond Williams' network-era theory of "flow," require more significant revision.17 Williams used the idea of flow to comment on the nature of the steady stream of programming through the set and the manner in which narrative, advertisements, and promo­ tions all intermixed. The continuous infiltration of control devices into television use has greatly disrupted flow as a fundamental characteristic of the medium—at least in terms of television flow being determined by someone other than the individual viewer.

Television's transition from its network-era norm as a mass medium toward its post-network-era function as an aggregator of a broad range of niche and on-demand viewing audiences has required significant ad­ justments to industrial assumptions about the medium. For example, in his 1989 book, The Capitalization of Cultural Production, Bernard Miege located television among media industries that operate under a "flow" model (this use of the term differs substantially from that of Williams) and rely on "home and family listening," "an undifferentiated, indirect mass market," the "instant" obsolescence of content, and the use of a programming grid that creates daily interaction and cultivates viewer loyalty, all of which eroded during the multi-channel transition. By the mid-20oos, the market characteristics of U.S. television have come in­ stead to resemble those of his "publishing" model, which features a "seg­ mented mass market" and the "dialectic of the 'hit and catalogue,'" along with the purchase of individualized objects—in this case, particu­ lar episodes of television shows.18

Noting that " 'television' now functions as a bookstore, a news stand, or a library," Newcomb has recently departed from the "cultural forum" concept of organization he and Hirsch offered in 1983 and produced a construction of the medium similar to Miege's publishing "model.19 Tele­ vision adopted multiple possible revenue streams in ways that mirror the bookstore (DVD sell-through, iTunes downloading), magazine subscrip­ tion (premium cable networks such as HBO), and the library (free on de­ mand), as well as other related venues, such as the subscription library model of NetFlix, which was initially envisioned as a film rental service, but was used by many to watch television on DVD as well. Each of these possible transactions of capital for content created new and distinct re­ lationships between the economic model, programming, and how these forms of television might function as a cultural institution. And, as New­ comb notes, these alternative transaction or publishing models thrive on specialty, distinction, and niche taste—all of which unmistakably

Understanding Television at the Beginning of the Post-Network Era I 3 5

distinguish the practices of the multi-channel transition and post-net­ work era from network-era norms that privileged the opposite character­ istics.

Post-network-era practices have led the television audience not only to fracture among different channels and devices, but also to splinter tem­ porally. The control over the television experience that various technolo­ gies offer has ruptured the norm of simultaneity in television experience and enabled audiences to capture television on their own terms. More­ over, as New York Observer columnist Tom Scocca notes, the ephemer­ ality once characteristic of the.medium has also come to be less promi­ nent; for example, the video experiences offered by YouTube allow for archiving images so they may be called up at will.2,0 New devices have provided tools to capture television and consequently have produced a norm of asynchronous viewing that has altered the interaction of the cul­ ture with the medium in crucial ways. Television devices remained ubiq­ uitous and accessible in the post-network era, but the ubiquity of specific content has been eliminated as broad audiences have come to share little programming in common and less frequently view it simultaneously.

The adjustments to the U.S. television industry chronicled here pro­ vided as extraordinary a shift for those who work in it as those trying to understand it. Much of the slow pace of change throughout the multi­ channel transition resulted from the lack of clear business models that could reflect the dynamics of a new era. Those who long profited from the norms of television's operation under a flow model were unwilling to re­ linquish their dominant status or pursue actions likely to hasten greater change. The diversification in economic models, changing industrial rela­ tionships, and challenges to regulatory practices posed by new technolo­ gies all required revisiting many of the foundational industrial assump­ tions of television and how it operated.

Theorizing Niche Media: Identifying Phenomenal Television

Regardless of whether we have truly reached the post-network* era, the U.S. television industry and its norms of operation have changed significantly. The most noteworthy adjustment evident by 2005 was the erosion of television's regular operation as a mass medium. Although it has continued to play this role in isolated moments, television is no longer organized in this way and has not been since the mid-1990s. By then, it

36 I Understanding Television at the Beginning of the Post-Network Era

was already apparent that we needed to reassess television and see.it as a medium that primarily reaches niche audiences. Continued transition in television's core economic models would only further adjust the type of programming that could be profitably produced and television's opera­ tion as a cultural institution.

N o mass medium arose to supplant television in the wake of its in­ dustrial change, and it might be that mass media as they existed in the twentieth century were remnants of a particular set of industrial and eco­ nomic relations from another era.21 Niche-focused media long have played an important role in society by communicating cultural beliefs, al­ beit to narrower groups than mass media. Women's magazines provide an illustrative example, as ample critical scholarship has explored how this media form that targets a specific audience consistently reproduced cer­ tain discourses of beauty, identity, and female behavior.22 Niche media are identified as important voices to specific communities, but have received less critical attention than mechanisms of mass messaging.

Theorizing the cultural significance of niche media might begin by ex­ ploring those industries that have operated in this organization for some time, and the magazine industry—with its era of mass distribution earlier in the century—may provide the most relevant point of comparison. Joseph Turow considers the process through which this industry transi­ tioned from mass market publications with titles such as Life, Look, and the Saturday Evening Post to more narrowly targeted magazines and ar­ gues that demand from advertisers to reach ever more specific audiences fueled the fragmentation.23 While acknowledging the economic value and efficiency targeting provides to advertisers, he raises a cautionary flag about such fragmentation and rightly notes the dangers for ideals of democracy and community that result from what develop into "gated in­ formational communities."24 The redefinition of television in the course of the multi-channel transition as a medium that supports fragmented au­ diences and polarized content consequently has exacerbated the cultural trends and outcomes that Turow identified in the magazine industry.

Television's new abundant offerings make it difficult to determine a proper frame through which to examine programming and assess its significance. We are accustomed to moral panics and activism that de­ velop from concern about the vast reach of mediated messages. Thinking about television in the age of narrowcasting requires that we take into ac­ count the substantial variation now encompassed by its programming. "Successful" television programs might now gather audiences that range

Understanding Television at the Beginning of the Post-Network Era I 37

from tens of thousands to tens of millions, while channels might be ac­ cessible in anywhere from three million to one hundred million homes. Some programs stream into the home without any viewer payment, oth­ ers require a subscription for a channel of programming (HBO), and viewers now can buy specific programs on DVD or as single-show down­ loads. With such ample variation in the availability and' ubiquity of tele­ vision programming, we need more specific models for understanding television's operation in the culture, ones that will enable us to differen­ tially assess its significance.

Toward this end, I propose "phenomenal television" as a particular category of programming that retains the social importance attributed to television's earlier operation as a cultural forum despite the changes of the post-network.era. In the network era, television content derived its rele­ vance simply from being on the air, which necessarily meant that it was widely viewed because of the vast and substantive audiences programs had to draw to survive. Often popular shows were particularly important sites of analysis because broad viewership on a mass medium denoted a certain scope of influence. In a narrowcast environment, content must do more than appear "on television" to distinguish itself as having cultural relevance, since now much that appears on television might be seen by just a few viewers. For example, the particular economic model of adver­ tiser-supported cable networks allows them to produce shows viewed by 1 percent of the available audience and for these shows to still be consid­ ered hits. Network-era theories might still apply to some programming produced in this narrowcast environment, and phenomenal television de­ notes such programming. Although the task of determining relevance and distinction is more difficult in the post-network era, phenomenal televi­ sion does have identifiable attributes, as specified below.

Themes, topics, and discourses that appear in multiple and varied outlets indicate a form of phenomenal television. The criterion here is not purely quantitative—as in a topic that appears in seven shows is "more" phenomenal than one appearing in six; rather, multiplicity might indicate a society-wide negotiation of an issue or a crisis in existing un­ derstandings in the same manner it did in the network era. Trans-show or trans-network themes derive importance in a narrowcast environment because such scope indicates content that has achieved or is likely to achieve uncommon audience breadth despite fragmentation and polar­ ization. Ideas appearing in multiple shows—particularly different types of shows---might indicate concerns relevant to the broader society rather

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than distinct subcultures.25 For example, in the year after the September n , 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, multiple narratives ex­ ploring fictional renditions of the aftermath appeared across at least twelve shows on seven networks.2* Cultural critics could not look to just one of these shows as indicative of cultural sentiment on the subject, or even just that of television; instead, the niche media environment re­ quired a more holistic evaluation of the multiplicity of stories that likely reached varied audiences. This attribute responds to the way that indi­ vidual programs and episodes rarely have the cultural significance previ­ ously common because of the fragmentation joi audiences, although when thematically similar content is viewed and considered in aggregate, television has the potential to operate much as it did in the network era.

Attention to institutional factors such as what network or type of net­ work airs a show relative to the network's common audience derives in­ creased importance after the network era and plays a role in determining phenomenal television. Despite all being forms of television, broadcast, basic cable, and subscription cable have different regulatory and eco­ nomic processes that contribute to their norms of operation and the pos­ sible programs they can create. These outlets also vary amply in audience size—and this, too, is a factor we must address in considering the reach and importance of a program or theme. Many programs—particularly those on premium and basic cable—reached narrow audiences through­ out the multi-channel transition, but too often particular audience condi­ tions were not addressed in framing analyses of or concerns about pro­ grams. Additionally, factors such as whether viewers watch content as part of linear schedules or on demand further have come to distinguish contemporary television programming as more viewers incorporate new control devices into their regular viewing habits. In the network era, we could assume a broad and heterogeneous audience who viewed linear schedules of network-planned programs. N o w we cannot presume that the audience represents the culture-at-large; instead, it embodies only a distinct segment or component thereof. Assessing the type of network providing programming offers significant insight into the audience of a particular program.

Programs that achieve eewater-cooler status" earn a certain degree of importance due to their ability to break through the cluttered media space, but this alone does not indicate phenomenal television. We must also explore how and why a program achieves this prominence. A water- cooler show that is supported by a particularly large promotion budget

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Understanding Television at the Beginning of the Post-Network Era I 39

might be less meaningful than a show that captures the Zeitgeist of the moment or gains its attention from the way that it resonates with a cul­ tural sentiment or a struggle percolating below the surface of mainstream discourse. Phenomenal television can "go under the radar" and circulate out of sight or beyond the awareness of most of society, but examinations of such television must attend to how and why such shows are important. In the network era, water-cooler shows were often those that were some­ how boundary defying, but few boundaries remain and merely airing on television has become less indicative of social significance than was once the case.

Incongruity suggests another feature of phenomenal television, which has a tendency to break into unexpected gated communities. For exam­ ple, incongruity might exist in cases where the ideology of a story conflicts with the dominant perspective anticipated to be shared by the audience of that network. The ability for like to speak only t o like is one of the greatest consequences of narrowcast media because it decreases the probability of incongruity and disables the type of negotiation theorized to be central to the ability of network-era television to operate as a cul­ tural forum. In many ways, the significance of a show such as All in the Family resulted from the heterogeneous audience that had their views al­ ternatively challenged and reinforced by the differing perspectives articu­ lated by Archie and Meathead. Similarly, a show such as The Cosby Show was particularly important because its depictions of upper-middle-class black life reached both black and white homes i n a segregated society ac­ customed to representations of African Americans as being poverty- stricken or criminals. It remains significant to have a dramatic series fo­ cused on the lives and sexuality of a group of gay men (Queer as Folk) or lesbian women (The L Word), but these shows aired on a subscription channel that built an identity as the destination for gay and gay-friendly people, which made the content of these shows far more congruous than if it had aired elsewhere. Incongruous moments, such as the sophisticated negotiation and deconstruction of hegemonic masculinity provided by Playmakers and aired on ESPN or the critical exploration of the abuses of the Taliban against women on The WB family drama jth Heaven— which notably aired before September 11, 2001—expose audiences to ideas they may not normally self-select. The incongruity of these shows relative to what the audiences of these channels and their programs might expect can defy the tendency of narrowcasting to perpetuate gated media communities.

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Programming affirmed by hierarchies of artistic value and social im­ portance—those programs imbued with what Pierre Bourdieu terms "cultural capital''—indicate another distinction of phenomenal televi­ sion. I do not wish to suggest that what I term "phenomenal television" is categorically "better" than other television—in the manner that "qual­ ity" television has been inconsistently used. Rather, what I am proposing is that television programming of specific aspiration and accomplishment —whether this be an ambitious period drama, a rigorous piece of inves­ tigative journalism, or a pointed political satire—might also distinguish itself as phenomenal because of its particular effort to enrich or expand cultural dialogue or thinking and to maximize the creative potential of the medium.

This delineation of characteristics of phenomenal television is not in­ tended to suggest that programs that do not meet any of these criteria are unimportant. Rather, it marks a preliminary effort to develop a multifac­ eted theory in response to the growing multiplicity of television and its operation as a niche medium. The conditions of the post-network era re­ quire reconsidering everything we once knew about television and more clearly differentiating among its many forms. Size of audience is, a significant consideration, but there are also features that distinguish pro­ grams in terms of content and in ways that are important to assess. The idea of phenomenal television provides a way to adjust our assumptions of television while keeping its increasingly niche operation in mind.

In many cases, the presumptions of network-era theory remain relevant in thinking about the cultural role of niche media and require only slight modification. For example, in 1978 John Fiske and John Hartley de­ scribed the "bardic" role of television, noting how programs could "ar­ ticulate the main lines of the established cultural consensus about the na­ ture of reality."27 Such a premise remains relevant in a narrowcast envi­ ronment, but with the difference that television articulates the main lines of cultural consensus for the particular network and its typical audience member rather than for society in general. A so-called "boundary defy­ ing" program such as The Shield, which explores the psyche and actions of a corrupt detective, may se^m too far outside of the accepted reality of the television audience on»the whole, but the ambiguity of right and wrong it represents does appeal to a specific group of-viewers who-accept the complexity of human action and the arbitrariness of the justice system.

A category such as phenomenal television is just ah initial tool for un­ derstanding the role of niche media in society; much more thinking in this

Understanding Television at the Beginning of the Post-Network Era I 41

area is certainly needed. Theories of niche media can in most cases rea­ sonably assume certain characteristics of the audience—as niche media succeed because of their ability to tap into certain affinities that bring au­ dience members together. But even though television programming of the multi-channel transition and post-network era increasingly targeted niche audiences, the breadth of content transmitted through the medium re­ mained accessible to many beyond those targeted audiences. Those who watch niche content, but for whom it was not intended, might be viewed as "cultural interlopers"—as when teens' parents watch MTV or liberals view Fox News; although not all niche programming is equally suscepti­ ble to such practices. Industrial and economic factors such as how media are paid for vary the likelihood of interlopers across different types of tele­ vision and in comparison with other niche media such as magazines. For example, subscriptions that provide access to a package of cable channels readily allow cultural interloping; subscriptions to specific programs, as in the case of pay-per-view, do not. Television watching is also often a shared activity in households, which increases the probability of co-habitants ex­ posing others to television content not geared toward them.

Such possibilities for cultural interloping may further change as post- network distinctions solidify. Television purchased on a transactional basis, such as the pay-per-episode model available, on iTunes, may be less likely to reach interlopers because of the added fees required to access this content. By contrast, subscriptions to channels might better facilitate in­ terloping—as in the case of a viewer who subscribes to Showtime for the movies, but samples Queer as Folk because it has no added cost. Impor­ tant similarities and differences might be identified with other media such as magazines that have a fee per use and tend to be consumed in solitude, but can often be picked up in places like waiting rooms and read for free. These discrepancies and variations suggest the degree to which a one-the­ •ory-fits-all-media—and even a one-theory-fits-one-medium—framework is inadequate for theorizing niche media and post-network-era television. Similarities among media might exist, but specific contexts remain crucial in assessing the particularities of varied media.

The Persistence of Television as a Cultural Institution

The ubiquity that earned television much of its perceived significance has also been changing as a result of post-network reconfigurations. As the

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42 I Understanding Television at the Beginning of the Post-Network Era

possibilities for portable and mobile television explored in the next chap­ ter indicate, television is everywhere it has ever been and in many more places. Paradoxically though, individual "pieces" of television (shows, episodes) are shared by fewer and fewer viewers. Together, these devel­ opments further the need to consider specific contexts and factors that are far narrower than "television" per se allows. For example, in March 2006, two University of Chicago professors released a study widely re­ ported in newspapers across the country that found that children who watched television were not substantially harmed by the behavior.28 Such reports—with varied findings—appear yearly (even monthly) from re­ searchers in many different fields. With rare exception these studies talk about the effect of "television," as though there were no differences in the experience of it, no differences in what is watched or how. Certainly, ef­ fects studies are not the only form of research to suffer from such un­ specified generalizations concerning television, but the point is that vari­ ations in the medium that emerged throughout the multi-channel transi­ tion indicated how untenable these generalizations had become, if they were ever meaningful.

Instead of utilizing uniform assumptions and explanations of televi­ sion, we might diversify our thinking by establishing "modes of televi­ sion" that group similar functions of the medium. Indeed, for all the dif­ ferences in viewing, every instance is not so distinctive as to be funda­ mentally unlike any other. Establishing some frequent modes of television use aids in distinguishing characteristics in a great many of television's it­ erations. At least four distinctive modes of television function existed by 2005: Television as an electronic public sphere; Television as a subcul­ tural forum; Television as a window on other worlds; and Television as a self-determined gated community.

Television as an electronic public sphere identifies the operation of television in the network era as it was explained by Horace Newcomb and Paul Hirsch's cultural forum model, Todd Gitlin's delineation of tele­ vision's ideological processes, or John Fiske and John Hartley's notion of the medium's bardic role.29 Drawing primarily on Newcomb and Hirsch, we might say that television operates as an electronic public sphere when it reaches a vast and heterogeneous audience and offers a shared experi­ ence or content that derives its importance from the scope of its reach, its ability to provide a space for the negotiation of ideological positions, and as a process-based system of representation and discourse. Now, how­ ever, television decreasingly operates in this way. When it does, it usually

Understanding Television at the Beginning of the Post-Network Era I 43

does so on unplanned occasions, except for a few remaining events such as the Super Bowl. At the same time, though, it is helpful to see the elec-. tronic public sphere as existing on a continuum. Thus, for example, in comparison with the network-era reach of television—when top shows were watched by 40 to 50 percent of television households—popular con­ temporary shows such as American Idol have a narrower scope—only 15.7 out of a universe of 109 million homes watch it.3° But even with only an average of 14 percent of U.S. television households watching the show, it is among the most widely viewed regular programs in a given year.

Television operates as subcultural forum when it reproduces a similar experience as the electronic public sphere, but among more narrow groups that share particular cultural affinities or tastes. MTV is likely to be the best example, in that the network provides the lingua franca for adolescents and operates as "must-see TV" in order for teens to achieve cultural competence. The key difference between the electronic public sphere and a subcultural forum (note the embedded "cultural forum" in the terminology) is that the latter is characteristic of television that reaches smaller and more like-minded audiences. Many Spanish-language networks may speak to similar experiences in immigrant audiences, just as Fox News provides a version of daily news and events that serves view­ ers who choose to watch a news outlet with its particular sensibility. Im­ portantly, when television operates as a subcultural forum, it is often in­ tegrated with the use of other media that similarly reflect subcultural tastes and sensibilities. Viewers incorporate a television network or set of programs into a broader set of media, reproducing particular silos of specific world views.

Post-network television also can function as a window into other worlds. In some ways this is a corollary to its function as a subcultural forum, as the ubiquity and availability of television make it a convenient means for exposing oneself to programming targeted to a different audi­ ence—or to interlope. Television makes it easy to be a casual anthropol­ ogist and travel in worlds very different from one's own, although by no means are all those worlds equally available. Viewers engage in television as a window into other worlds when, as cultural interlopers, they view niche media not targeted to them. Parents trying to understand teen cul­ ture can gain glimpses into it on MTV—although understanding how teens receive the content or how any intended audience makes meaning of programming is another matter entirely. In leaving my own silo of in­ formation and taste culture, I have explored the excessive and regressive

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44 I Understanding Television at the Beginning of the Post-Network Era

masculinity offered by Spike or the stories of masculinity in crisis aired on FX shows Rescue Me and Nip/Tuck. Ever-expanding cable systems make available ever more worlds—including networks and content originating from outside of the United States, although, again, all worlds and per­ spectives are far from equally available. Perhaps one of the most telling aspects of post-millennium U.S. culture emerges from the uncommon use of television as a window into other worlds relative to television as a sub­ cultural forum.

Finally, a fourth mode of television as a self-determined gated com­ munity has emerged particularly as a result of increasing flexibility in dis­ tribution and opportunities for viewers to access programming on de­ mand. Here, television's cultural role is even more specific than when it functions as a subcultural forum. This mode encompasses particular uses and personalized organizations of television—as well as individuals' pur­ suit of specific content, including that which may be amateur-created. The operation of this more nascent mode can be observed in the videos sub­ mitted to aggregators such as YouTube or in those attached to social-net­ working sites such as MySpace. Here self-created television becomes a forum of expression and a way for viewers to communicate—most likely with established peers—which they do by sharing their television. As tele­ vision and web viewing become more integrated and convenient, viewers will also share recommendations, links, and viewing line-ups that con­ tribute to the personalization of television. Self-determined viewing be­ haviors include deliberately shifting among the variety of modes of use noted here and creating specialized viewing communities.

Certainly other modes may already exist that I have not included. The expanding fan cultures facilitated by the web perhaps suggest another dis­ tinct mode of television that might be labeled "television as cult conduit." The point I wish to highlight is the variety and differences in just the few functions given here. Each mode features varied characteristics and leads to very different cultural outcomes—television "means" differently in each of these modes—and does so in ways that previous explorations of television have not considered. I do not intend these four modes to ac­ count for all of television viewing; rather, I hope that identifying them will encourage others to consider television in terms of specific contexts and uses, rather than thinking about television-related phenomena as charac­ teristic of television-at-large.

Delimiting the different ways television functions leads us to fore­ ground the multifaceted nature of television and the growing diversity of

Understanding Television at the Beginning of the Post-Network Era I 45

uses viewers may adopt. You use the television that you flip on in the background while making dinner differently from the way you use the set to record a show you reserve for a time when all other distractions can be avoided—and that content consequently has different meaning and im­ portance. Likewise, the television you view on a portable device on a daily train commute or the videos you search out online also indicate still other relationships between content and use. Each of these examples il­ lustrates fundamental distinctions among use, content, and audience. In each case, the viewer may be watching television, but to understand the behavior and its cultural function, we need to develop more specific frameworks to explain differentiation among types of television content —such as phenomenal television—and why viewers watch in particular ways.

Key Ideas for Thinking about Television's Revolution

Finally, I turn to the key ideas and definitions particularly important for the reconsideration of television offered in the remaining pages. Most viewers remain unaware of the business of television, such as the intricate processes involved in deciding what shows to produce, selling them to networks, and finding advertisers, but understanding the business of tele­ vision and how it is changing is crucial to comprehending why the indus­ try produces certain shows and how to intervene in this system. Those who have sought changes in the cultural output of television—shifts in depictions of ethnic groups and women, for example—have been most successful when they have illustrated that their goal was a matter of "good business" for the industry, as has been the case for many social ini­ tiatives.31 The production of expressiye forms like television shows is a challenging business, and no matter the extent of market research, many of the tools other sectors of business use to understand what their con­ sumers want and to predict success are ineffective in the creation of cul­ tural forms.

I closely examine many components of production that figure centrally in the creation of U.S. television programming and focus exclusively on the commercial sector despite the existence- of a small public broadcast­ ing system. As I noted in the introduction, rather than thinking of pro­ duction as just the making of a show, I define production as all of the ac­ tivities involved in the creation and circulation of television program­

4 6 I Understanding Television at the Beginning of the Post-Network Era

ming. I organize this broad conception of production into five "produc­ tion components"— technology, creation, distribution, advertising, and audience research—and explore each in subsequent chapters. I do not in­ tend any prioritization in the production components catalogued here. Sometimes technologies and distribution practices enhanced preceding developments intentionally (as in creating access to shows for video iPods);, while other adjustments occurred independently (Slingbox).

Although I distinguish these five components as different activities, they must be understood as interrelated processes connected by multi-di­ rectional influences. Thus, for example, changes in advertising can intro­ duce adjustments in how producers create programs, while changes in the creation of programs can likewise affect how advertisers are integrated in programming, as well as how much advertiser support networks or stu­ dios need. Moreover, the relations among the five components are con­ stantly in flux. During the multi-channel transition in which adjustments in distribution capabilities affected economic models, the altered eco­ nomic models then enabled certain creative norms—all of which affected the type and range of programming likely to be produced. Such an ap­ proach to production differs considerably from ideas about industry op­ eration that assume power and influence operate in a one-way, top down, hierarchical manner and that allow factors such as ownership structures a more deterministic role in the creation of expressive forms and day-to­ day industry operations.

Just as production encompasses multiple components, production also exists as one "cultural process" in what some have termed the "circuit of culture" and others a "circuit of media study."32 These circuit-based models or frameworks for studying media such as television provide a so­ phisticated conceptualization of the relationship between the creation of culture and the imperatives of commercial industries. Processes and fac­ tors other than production, such as reception, socio-historical context, and particular cultural artifacts, are interconnected, with each affecting and being affected by the others. The production of television involves the negotiation of many different interests and requires a complicated model to adequately address the intersections of varied commercial and regula­ tory interests that also mediate in the creation of cultural forms.

Because of my focus on production, other parts of the circuit of cul­ ture receive minimal attention despite their relevance to the changes that mark the emergence of the post-network era. Often, these other cultural processes serve as structuring forces that significantly affect the condi­

Understanding Television at the Beginning of the Post-Network Era I 47

tions of production. For example, regulatory actions dating to the 1920s continue to determine the fundamental characteristics of the competitive terrain upon which the television industry operates. However, I attend lit­ tle to the details of many of these broad, structuring regulatory actions, except in the instances that they particularly affect specific production practices, because of their consistency throughout the history of broad­ casting and the existence of other works that attend to regulation and policy in great detail.

Here, though, I must emphasize the significance of the deregulatory policy that the government began implementing at the beginning of the multi-channel transition, even though it is not a topic examined exten­ sively in the book. This policy produced considerable regulatory conse­ quences despite the reduced regulatory influence that "de" regulation might suggest. Most notably, deregulation allowed massive consolidation and conglomeration of all aspects of television and much of the media in­ dustry. Ownership of the roughly 1,400 television stations nationwide was substantially consolidated by the networks and a few station groups while conglomerates also gathered broadcast networks, cable channels, production facilities, and even distribution routes such as cable and satel­ lite providers into common ownership. New media entities were often in­ tegrated into these vast media conglomerates—as in the case of the AOL/ Time Warner merger—although in many cases the architects of the new media age (Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, Apple) and the consumer elec­ tronics industry remained separate from conglomerates dominating tele­ vision (News Corp., Viacom, Time Warner, and Disney) and many other "old" media.

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Regulators had the perfect opportunity to intervene in broadcast norms during the digital transition mandated by the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The forced transition to digital transmission could have al­ lowed Congress and the Federal Communications Commission to revisit the vaguely defined mandate that stations operate in the "public interest, •convenience, and necessity" in exchange for the opportunity to use pub­ lic airwaves to secure billions of dollars in profits, but regulators largely ignored this opportunity. Although regulatory rhetoric might have pro­ claimed that deregulation would lead to competition, most of the actions of the FCC since the end of the network era have been strongly influenced by the powerful industries the agency was created to regulate.33 For the most part, the changes in industry operation chronicled here did not re­ sult from the competition deregulation was supposed to inspire; instead,

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48 I Understanding Television at the Beginning of the Post-Network Era

they came largely from the actions of companies outside of FCC purview (consumer electronics and computing).

The degree to which the medium and the industry redefined them­ selves with remarkably little re-regulatory.input introduced notable chal­ lenges by the late multi-channel transition. The interventions made by the regulatory sector—seen most distinctly in the fin-syn rules (explained in Chapter 3), shifting cable policies, and deregulation of ownership—had massive implications for the industry's operation and in structuring the norms of production. At the same time, the relative swiftness with which production components responded to changes in various production practices decreased the relevance of the lumbering regulatory sector in es­ tablishing the regulatory conditions appropriate to emerging post-net­ work norms. Regulators could radically adjust the playing field for the in­ dustry at any time—as the intermittent threat of mandating a la carte cable service suggested throughout the mid-2ooos—but they seemed un­ likely to deviate from the "market-driven" logic underscoring their deci­ sions for the previous two decades—that is, except in the case of content regulation. The developments of the multi-channel transition merited sweeping regulatory action that revisited broadcasting's regulatory foun­ dations; however, by the beginning of 2007, regulators had established no clear principles that reflected the substantial industrial adjustments oc­ curring.

Each of the following five chapters focuses on a different aspect of pro­ duction in order to explain the broad changes that have taken place over the past twenty years, the new norms being established in the post-net­ work era, and why these changes in how television is made affect both the types of programs that are produced and the role of these stories in the culture. The next chapter looks at the changing technologies viewers used to watch television and how new devices enabled viewers unprecedented control over how, where, and what they viewed—and increasingly, to even make their content.