Technologies involved in the digital transition enabled profound adjustments in how viewers used television, and these newly enabled capabilities necessitated modifications in many other industrial practices. Emerging devices considerably enhanced viewers’ ability to control television first in, then out of the home. The increased control over how, when, and where to view provided by digital video recorders (DVRs), DVDs, electronic programming guides (EPGs), digital cable boxes, laptops, smartphones, and tablets expanded convenient uses of television. These devices enhanced the comparatively limited capabilities first afforded by analog technologies such as VCRs and allowed viewers far more flexibility in when and where they watched television.
Live broadcast has long been perceived as an inherent technological attribute of television—perhaps because audiences lacked technological tools to control their viewing throughout the network era. As new technologies emerged, the industry initially perceived liveness to be important and endeavored to identify technological solutions that would enable reception of live television almost anywhere—what I categorize as mobile television. However, as U.S. viewers came to use various television technologies, the ability to control viewing, which included using tools to both time-shift and place-shift, emerged to have far greater desirability than the ability to view live television outside the home.
In discussing technological advancements, I differentiate between portable and mobile television use, a distinction not commonly observed in industry discussions. In my parlance, viewers use mobile television when they access live television outside the home, as opposed to the time- and place-shifting characteristic of portable television. These distinctions can seem confusing because many devices allow both portable and mobile television use: Laptops, tablets, and smartphones can be used to download content and store it for nonlinear viewing or to stream live video. While viewers may rarely think of these distinctions, they are important because the liveness of mobile viewing preserves the advertising model particular to linear viewing in a manner quite different from the mostly nonlinear use of portable television. Portability fits clearly within the realm of expanding convenient uses of television, while the desire for immediacy characterizes mobile television. In sum, this chapter distinguishes between mobile television technology use, which accounts for out-of-the-home live viewing, and portable television technology use, in which viewers take once domestic-bound content anywhere for viewing at any time.
Additionally, technological advancements in audio and visual quality—many of which resulted from the digital transmission of television signals—expanded the theatricality of television until the distinction intended by the word (to signify the feeling of watching a film at the theater) became insignificant. The emergence of high-definition sets as replacements for the long inferior NTSC television standard particularly contributed a technological revolution in the quality of the television experience. Digital transmission alone allowed some enhancement of television’s audio and visual fidelity, but the high-definition images in particular appeared as crisp as reality and offered the detail available on film.
Each of these attributes of post-network technologies—convenience, mobility, and theatricality—redefined the medium from its network-era norm. Their significance results from the considerably revised and varied uses of television that consequently have emerged and that contrast with the unstoppable flow of linear programming, the domestic confinement, and the staid aesthetic quality of the network era. Rather than these technological assassins causing the death of television, as many writing about television in the mid-2000s claimed, the unprecedented shift of programming onto tiny mobile phone screens, office computers, and a wide range of portable devices ultimately reasserted the medium’s significance. But the new technological capabilities required adjustments in television distribution and business models in order to make content available on the new screens, which provided a challenging task given the inconsistent interests of rights holders such as content creators (studios) and distributors (traditional channels and networks). Studios sought to maintain tight control over content so as not to disrupt the traditional revenue streams and the long-term value of copyright ownership. Networks desired strategies likely to drive viewers to other content on the network or to other network locations—like network-owned websites—from which the distributor might earn additional value. Both studios and networks sought to maintain their established status in the television industry while new broadband distributors and consumer electronics developers endeavored to rethink many of the business’s established “rules.”
The various post-network technologies produced complicated consequences for the societies that adopted them. Viewers gained greater control over their entertainment experience, yet became attached to an increasing range of devices that demanded their attention and financial support. Many viewers willingly embraced devices that allowed them greater authority in determining when, where, and what they would view, although as fees and services enabling new conveniences proliferated, they also struggled with the burden of the many costs previously borne by advertisers. In many cases, the “conventional wisdom” forecasting that the new technologies would have negative consequences for established industry players proved faulty; technologically empowered viewers used devices to watch more television and provided the industry with unexpected new revenue streams at the same time they eroded old ones. The emergence of these technologies consequently resulted in contentious negotiations within and between factions as viewers assessed what capabilities were worth the cost, the consumer electronics industry endeavored to embed its products in the daily use of as many as possible, legacy media (such as broadcast networks) evolved their business models, and legacy and new media services (cable providers and Internet aggregators like YouTube and Hulu) developed mechanisms to make new technologies useful and programming accessible.
Network-Era and Multi-Channel Transition Technologies
The lack of technological variation during the network era enforced a fairly uniform television experience for viewers. Television sets that received very few signals over the air functionally defined the technological experience in the network era, while the use of antennas and CATV added complexity and limitations for some viewers. These devices, however, tended only to enable viewers in rural or mountainous areas the same access to the medium enjoyed by their urban brethren. Either way, viewers had no technological control over television and little choice among content. Certainly, the transition to color television was significant, and many of the technologies that began to revolutionize television use during the multi-channel transition were introduced to early adopters while all other characteristics of the network era remained firmly intact. For most, however, a single television in the home without remote control or VCR characterized the network-era technological experience with television. This uniformity of use aided the industry’s production processes because it enabled the industry to assume certain viewing conditions and rely on viewers to watch network-determined schedules.
Technological developments of the multi-channel transition introduced profound changes for users, first by enhancing choice and control with analog technologies such as cable network distribution, VCRs, and remote control devices. Experiments with remote controls began in the early days of radio and continued through its refinement and into the television era.3 The industry sold as many as 134,000 remote-equipped televisions as early as 1965. Despite these early starts, Bruce Klopfenstein argues that 1984 to 1988 marked the period of most rapid overall remote control diffusion, due to the simultaneous distribution of cable and VCR remote controls in concert with those of television sets.4
The VCR is one of the first technologies to trouble our understandings of “television.” The distribution of the VCR as an affordable technology, which achieved mass diffusion at the same time as the remote control, significantly expanded viewers’