The following pages update understandings about television’s industrial practices from which others might build analyses of the substantial adjustments occurring within other media systems and their societies of reception. The book also contributes to the necessary rethinking of “old” media in new contexts. The deterioration of the foundational business model upon which the commercial television industry long has operated suggests that a substantive change is occurring. Examining the industry at an embryonic moment of norm creation sheds light on how power is transferred during periods of institutional uncertainty and reveals how new possibilities can develop from emerging industrial norms. There is a similarity between the industrial moment considered here and that examined in Todd Gitlin’s 1983 book Inside Prime Time.20 Both books chronicle the consequences of industrial practices of the television industry at the close of an era. Gitlin, however, captured this moment unintentionally, while this work is reflexively aware of the transitory status of the practices it explores.
Perhaps paradoxically, I take a particular type of television—“prime-time programming”—as the book’s focus. Despite significant industry changes, as I completed the book, prime-time programming remained the most viewed and most widely discussed form of “television,” though its high costs did not make it the most lucrative. The post-network era threatens to eliminate time-based hierarchies, but the distinctive status of prime time is determined as much by its budgets and production practices as by the time of day in which it has traditionally “aired.” Changing industrial norms bore consequences for all programming. Adjustments in production components also affected affiliate and independent stations in significant and particular ways, but the breadth of these matters prevents me from addressing them here. Although the affiliates represent a large part of the television industry, the consequences of post-network shifts affected these stations in substantially different ways depending, among other things, on whether the station was owned and operated by a network, whether it was located in a large or small market, and the network with which the station was affiliated.21
The next chapter develops the distinctions of the network era, multi-channel transition, and post-network era with greater detail and briefly steps away from the book’s main focus on how shifts in industrial practices and business norms affect programming to meditate on some of the more abstract and bigger issues—some might say theories—called into question by these institutional adjustments. Concerns about how television operates as a cultural institution, the adaptation of tools used to understand it, and the development of new ones aid us in thinking about intersections of television and culture that may not be the primary concern of those who work in the industry. Such questions and concerns are nonetheless of crucial importance to the rest of us who live in this world of fragmented audiences and wonder about the effects of the erosion of the assumptions we have long shared about television.
Each aspect of production examined in chapters 2 through 6 changed on a different timetable in the course of the multi-channel transition. By 2005, profoundly different technological capabilities and distribution methods had emerged, though these new possibilities were pushed further by 2010, once broadband distribution of full-length professional content suggested greater change. Though indications of post-network technologies and distribution norms may now be evident, other production components remain insubstantially adjusted. Thus, each of these chapters focuses on a particular production component—technology, creation, distribution, financing, and audience measurement—and explores the process of transition, what practices have changed, and their consequences with regard to how television functions as a cultural institution.
With a focus on technology, chapter 2 explores how new devices have made television more multifaceted and allowed more varied uses than were common during the network era. By 2005, new television technologies enabled three distinct capabilities—convenience, mobility, and theatricality—that led to different expectations and uses of television and created a diversified experience of the medium in contrast to the uniform one common in the network era. Technologies including DVRs, VOD, portable television, and high-definition television—among many others—produce complicated consequences for the societies that adopt them as viewers gain greater control over their entertainment experience, yet become tethered by an increasing range of devices that demand their attention and financial support. The technological field expanded in 2010 as television delivered by Internet technologies expanded the mobility and portability of television and freed the medium from its staid domestic norm to be experienced on an array of screens.
Chapter 3 explores the practices involved in the making of television, particularly the institutional adjustments studios and networks made during and after the implementation of the financial interest and syndication rules, as well as the effects of these adjustments on the content the industry produces. Studios have responded to changing economic models by battling with creative guilds and unions to maintain new revenue streams, shifting production out of union-dominated Los Angeles, and creating vertically integrated production and distribution entities. Changing competitive practices among networks have resulted in significant adjustments in the types of shows the industry produces and expanded the range of profitable storytelling. The chapter thus examines how redefined production norms have created opportunities for different types of programming and required new promotion techniques.
Some of the most phenomenal adjustments in the television industry result from viewers’ expanded ability to control the flow of television and to move it out of the home. Whereas a distribution “bottleneck” characterized the network era and much of the multi-channel transition, the bottleneck broke open in late 2005 and has expanded to offer nearly limitless possibilities for viewers to access programming. Chapter 4 explores how viewers gained access to television in an increasing array of outlets that featured differentiated business models. New distribution methods made once unprofitable programming forms viable and decreased the risk of unconventional programming, opening creative opportunities in the industry and contributing to the fundamental changes in the production processes discussed throughout the book.
Chapter 5 examines the shifting strategies for financing television, particularly the emergence of alternatives to the advertiser-supported model that dominated previous eras. In the last decade, U.S. television has experienced notable expansions in subscription and other direct-pay economic models, as well as a diversifying array of strategies for advertiser support. Here again distinctions among prized content, live sports and contests, and linear viewing reveal divergent futures for financing, and the emergence of more diversified strategies is symptomatic of the conditions of a multifaceted post-network era that relies upon multiple, coexisting financing strategies.
Following the examination of financing and advertising, chapter 6 explores the often-unconsidered role of audience measurement, which proved particularly contentious in the late years of the multi-channel transition and as the post-network era developed. The industry leader, Nielsen Media Research, endeavored to introduce technological upgrades that reallocated advertising dollars, while new distribution methods and advertising strategies required impartial measurement for validation. The existing paradigm of audience measurement proved increasingly insufficient for the variation characteristic of post-network television. This chapter considers the crucial role of audience measurement and developments during the tumultuous early 2000s, as well as the consequences adjustments in this sector might bring to the production of television in the future.
While chapters 2 through 6 include many examples that apply somewhat abstract industrial practices to specific shows and circumstances, chapter 7 takes a detailed look at how technology, creation, distribution, financing, and