Incongruity suggests another feature of phenomenal television, which has a tendency to break into unexpected gated communities. For example, 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 to 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 cultural forum. In many ways, the significance of a show such as All in the Family resulted from the heterogeneous audience that had their views alternatively challenged and reinforced by the differing perspectives articulated 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 in a segregated society accustomed to representations of African Americans as being poverty-stricken or criminals. It remains significant to have a dramatic series focused on the lives and sexuality of a group of gay men (Looking) 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 they had aired elsewhere. Incongruous moments, such as the sophisticated negotiation and deconstruction of patriarchal 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 7th 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.
Programming affirmed by hierarchies of artistic value and social importance—those programs imbued with what Pierre Bourdieu terms “cultural capital”—indicate another distinction of phenomenal television. I do not wish to suggest that what I term “phenomenal television” is categorically “better” than other television, in the manner that “quality” 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 investigative 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 intended to suggest that programs that do not meet any of these criteria are unimportant. Rather, it marks a preliminary effort to develop a richer vocabulary and to build multifaceted theory in response to the growing multiplicity of television and its operation as a niche medium. The conditions of the post-network era require 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 programs in terms of content and in ways that are important to assess. The idea of phenomenal television provides a way to adjust our assumptions about 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 described the “bardic” role of television, noting how programs could “articulate the main lines of the established cultural consensus about the nature of reality.”55 Such a premise remains relevant in a narrowcast environment, 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-defying program such as The Shield, which explores the psyche and actions of a corrupt detective, may seem too far outside 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 an initial tool for understanding the role of niche media in society; much more thinking in this area is certainly needed. Theories of niche media can in most cases reasonably assume certain characteristics of the audience—as niche media succeed because of their ability to tap into certain affinities that bring audience 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 remained 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 susceptible to such practices. Industrial and economic factors such as how media are paid for vary the likelihood of interlopers across different types of television 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 cohabitants exposing 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 interloping—as in the case of a viewer who subscribes to HBO for the movies, but samples Looking because it has no added cost. Important 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-theory-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 possibilities for portable and mobile television explored in the next chapter 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 developments further the need to consider specific contexts and factors that are far narrower than a simple construction “television” allows. For example, in March 2006, two University of Chicago professors released a study widely reported in newspapers across the country that found that children who watched television were not substantially harmed by the behavior.56 Such reports—with varied findings—appear yearly (even monthly) from researchers 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, effects studies are not the only form of research to suffer from such unspecified generalizations concerning television, but the point is that variations in the medium that emerged throughout the multi-channel transition indicated how untenable these generalizations had become, if they were ever meaningful.
Instead