And it is not only the experience of viewers and insights of scholars that are changed, the adjustments to the U.S. television industry chronicled here provided as extraordinary a shift for those who work in it. The diversification in economic models, changing industrial relationships, and challenges to regulatory practices posed by new technologies all required revisiting many of the foundational industrial assumptions 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, already 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 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 operation as a cultural institution.
No mass medium arose to supplant television in the wake of its industrial change, and it might be that mass media as they existed in the twentieth century were remnants of a particular set of industrial and economic relations from another era.49 Niche-focused media long have played an important role in society by communicating cultural beliefs, albeit 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 certain discourses of beauty, identity, and female behavior.50 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 exploring 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. In considering the process through which this industry transitioned from mass market publications with titles such as Life, Look, and the Saturday Evening Post to more narrowly targeted magazines, Joseph Turow argues that demand from advertisers to reach ever more specific audiences fueled the fragmentation.51 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 informational communities.”52 The redefinition of television in the course of the multi-channel transition as a medium that supports fragmented audiences 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 develop from concern about the vast reach of mediated messages. Thinking about television in the age of narrowcasting requires that we take into account the substantial variation now encompassed by its programming. “Successful” television programs might now gather audiences that range from tens of thousands to tens of millions, while channels might be accessible in anywhere from three million to one hundred million homes. Some programs stream into the home without any viewer payment, others require a subscription for a channel of programming (HBO), and viewers now can buy particular programs on DVD or as single-show downloads. With such ample variation in the availability and ubiquity of television programming, we need more specific models for understanding television’s operation in the culture, ones that will enable us to differentially 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 relevance 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 advertiser-supported cable networks allows them to produce shows viewed by 1 percent of the available audience and for these shows to still be considered hits. Network-era theories might still apply to some programming produced in this narrowcast environment, and phenomenal television denotes such programming. Although the task of determining relevance and distinction is more difficult in the post-network era, phenomenal television 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—that is, a topic that appears in seven shows is not necessarily “more” phenomenal than one appearing in six. Rather, multiplicity might indicate a society-wide negotiation of an issue or a crisis in existing understandings 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 polarization. Ideas appearing in multiple shows—particularly different types of shows—might indicate concerns relevant to the broader society rather than distinct subcultures.53 For example, in the year after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, DC, multiple narratives exploring fictional renditions of the aftermath appeared across at least twelve shows on seven networks.54 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 required a more holistic evaluation of the multiplicity of stories that likely reached varied audiences. This attribute responds to the way that individual programs and episodes rarely have the cultural significance previously common because of the fragmentation of 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 network airs a show relative to the network’s common audience derives increased 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 economic processes that contribute to their norms of operation and the possible 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 throughout the multi-channel transition, but too often particular audience conditions were not addressed in framing analyses of or concerns about programs. Additionally, factors such as whether viewers watch content as part of linear schedules or on demand have come to further 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. Now 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 watercooler status earn a certain degree of importance due to their ability to break through the cluttered media space, but this alone does not indicate