Although I distinguish these five components as different activities, they must be understood as interrelated processes connected by multidirectional influences. Thus, for example, changes in advertising can introduce 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 studios need. Moreover, the relations among the five components are constantly in flux. During the multi-channel transition, when adjustments in distribution capabilities affected economic models, the altered economic models then enabled certain creative norms—all of which affected the type and range of programming likely to be produced. Such an approach to production differs considerably from ideas about industry operation 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.”60 These circuit-based models or frameworks for studying media such as television provide a sophisticated conceptualization of the relationship between the creation of culture and the imperatives of commercial industries. Processes and factors other than production, such as reception, sociohistorical 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 regulatory interests that also mediate in the creation of cultural forms.
Because of my focus on production, other parts of the circuit of culture 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 conditions 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 little to the details of many of these broad, structuring regulatory actions, except in the instances when they particularly affect specific production practices, because they remain consistent throughout the history of broadcasting.
Here, though, I must emphasize the significance of the deregulatory policy that allowed expansive consolidation and conglomeration throughout media industries that the government began implementing at the beginning of the multi-channel transition, even though it is not a topic examined extensively in the book. This policy produced considerable regulatory consequences despite the reduced regulatory influence that the term “de-regulation” might suggest. Most notably, deregulation significantly changed what type of owner predominated throughout the television industry. 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 satellite providers into common ownership. New media entities were often integrated 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, Facebook, Amazon) and the consumer electronics industry (Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, Apple) remained separate from conglomerates dominating television content (News Corp, Viacom, Time Warner, and Disney) and many other legacy media.
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 allowed 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 public airwaves to secure billions of dollars in profits, but regulators largely ignored this opportunity. Although regulatory rhetoric might have proclaimed 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.61 For the most part, the changes in industry operation chronicled here did not result from the competition that deregulation was supposed to inspire; instead, they came largely from the actions of companies outside the FCC’s purview (consumer electronics and computing).
The degree to which the medium and the industry redefined themselves with remarkably little re-regulatory input introduced notable challenges 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 establishing the regulatory conditions appropriate to emerging post-network norms. Regulators could radically adjust the playing field for the industry at any time—as the intermittent threat of mandating à la carte cable service suggested throughout the mid-2000s—but they seemed unlikely to deviate from the “market-driven” logic underscoring their decisions 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 foundations; however, by 2013, regulators had established no clear principles that reflected the substantial industrial adjustments occurring.
Each of the following five chapters focuses on a different aspect of production in order to explain the broad changes that have taken place over the past twenty years, the new norms being established in the post-network 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 have used to watch television and how new devices have enabled viewers unprecedented control over how, where, and what they view—and increasingly, to even make their content.
2
Television Outside the Box
The Technological Revolution of Television
Never before have the balance sheets, strategies, constituent relationships and very existence of media conglomerates been shaped so radically by technology and changing consumer habits. Never before has so much revenue been put on the line, and never before has there existed the potential for so much content, distribution, packaging and pricing to be placed beyond the reach of the media giants.
—Hollywood Reporter, 20051
TV has evolved in the past, but the current digital revolution shock is unprecedented. And, just as in earlier periods of fecundity, TV production, distribution, and consumption are all being redefined and refreshed by outsiders, from Apple’s Steve Jobs to the new amateur producers peopling YouTube or Blip.tv.
—Wired, 20072
The first epigraph, taken from an uncharacteristically forward-looking think piece by one of the industry’s key trade publications, captures the uncertainty and anticipation of the industry as early as 2005. Industry workers knew that technological change was approaching. Many had seen the diverse platforms and applications