era, programs were widely viewed throughout the culture, but the explosion of content providers throughout the multi-channel transition enabled viewers to increasingly isolate themselves in enclaves of specific interests. As Webster explains, “new media” provide programming that is diverse and is correlated with channels, and they make content differentially available.12 For example, although many cable channels can be acquired nationwide, the varying carriage agreements and packaging of the channels by locally organized cable systems create different availability based on geography and subscription tier.
Webster argues that this programming multiplicity results in audience fragmentation and polarization.13 While much of the concern within the industry about audience fragmentation focuses on the consequences of smaller audiences for the commercial financing system that supports U.S. television, cultural critics are now considering how the polarization of media audiences contributes to cultural fissures such as those that emerged around social issues in the 2000 and 2004 elections as well as the continued sense that different sites of television news perpetuated divergent realities of national issues. Here, polarization refers to the ability of different groups of viewers to consume substantially different programming and ideas, rather than simply to the dispersal of audiences. New technologies contribute to this polarization in various ways; for example, control technologies, which enable audiences to view the same programs at different times, decrease the likelihood of viewers sharing content during a given period, while the new surplus of channels spreads the audience across an expansive range of programming.14 Moreover, viewers’ ability to use recording technologies to develop self-determined programming schedules also diminished the already languishing notion of television as an initiator of watercooler conversation—a notion once enforced through the mandate of simultaneous viewing.
The emergence of so many new networks and channels changed the competitive dynamics of the industry and the type of programming likely to be produced. Instead of needing to design programming likely to be least objectionable to the entire family, broadcast networks—and particularly cable channels—increasingly developed programming that might be most satisfying to specific audience members. At first, this niche targeting remained fairly general, with channels such as CNN seeking out those interested in news, ESPN attending to the sports audience, and MTV aiming at youth culture. As the number of cable channels grew, however, this targeting became more and more narrow. For example, by the early 2000s, three different cable channels specifically pursued women (Lifetime, Oxygen, and WE), yet developed clearly differentiated programming that might be “most satisfying” to women with divergent interests. These more narrowly targeted cable channels increased the range of stories that could be supported by an advertising-based medium. By the mid- to late 1990s, some cable channels built enough revenue to support the production of “broadcast-quality” original series such as La Femme Nikita (USA) and Any Day Now (Lifetime), and their particular economic arrangements allowed them to schedule series with themes and content unlikely to be found on broadcast networks.15 Their niche audience strategy and the supplementary income they gained from the fees paid by cable providers led cable channels to develop shows that have much more specific target audiences than those of broadcast series. The ability of cable channels to succeed with smaller audiences has made broadcasters’ mission difficult; once given an option, viewers have found the more precisely targeted content offered by many cable channels more satisfying than broadcasters’ least objectionable fare. Yet the expanse of cable channels has spread audiences thinly, and most cable channels remain constrained by their much smaller audiences and related lower advertising prices.
Indications of a Post-Network Era
The choice and control that viewers gained during the multi-channel transition only continued to expand as evidence of a post-network era emerged. Others (myself included) have previously used “post-network” to indicate the era in which cable channels created additional options for viewers—similar to the way I use the phrase “multi-channel transition” here. The term “post-network” is best reserved, however, as an indicator of more comprehensive changes in the medium’s use, one I suspect will ultimately take a nonlinear form. Here, “post-network” acknowledges the break from a dominant network-era experience, in which viewers lacked much control over when and where to view and chose among a limited selection of externally determined linear viewing options—in other words, programs available at a certain time on a certain channel. Such constraints are not part of the post-network television experience in which viewers now increasingly select what, when, and where to view from abundant options. Though I once intended the post-network distinction to simply indicate the erosion of network and channel control over how and when viewers watch particular programs, it has grown more feasible to imagine a post-network era devoid of networks or channels as the distinctive industrial entities they’ve served as thus far. In the early years of the post-network era, networks and channels have remained important sites of program aggregation, operating with distinctive identities that help viewers find content of interest. The gradual transition away from previous norms of mass audiences, new ways of accessing and paying for content, and the economic crises to which they contribute have decreased the profit margins of some sectors of the industry. Though multi-channel video programming distributors (MVPDs) such as Comcast, Charter, or DirecTV have passed costs for the ever-growing array of content to their subscribers, evidence of a breaking point for incremental cost increases has presented itself and reveals the inefficiency of bundling collections of unwanted channels into cable packages, and even of bundling unwanted programs into channels. Though this inefficiency could be tolerated in an era in which the license fees for channels were more modest, the fast growth in program costs—described by a cable industry financial analyst in 2013 as “multiples of the rate of inflation”—may yield a more radical departure from existing norms of packaging content, especially for those who predominantly view prized content and live sports and contests.16
Chapters 2 through 6 provide detailed considerations of the new industrial conditions that suggest the gradual establishment of a post-network era. These conditions include emerging technologies that enable far greater control over when and where viewers watch programming; multiple options for financing television production that develop and expand the range of commercially viable programming; greater opportunities for amateur production that have arisen with and been augmented by a revolution in distribution that exponentially increases the ease of sharing video; various advertising strategies including product placement and integration that have come to coexist with the decreasingly dominant thirty-second ad, as well as new economic models built on subscription and transaction payment; and advances in digital technologies that further expand knowledge about audience viewing behaviors, allow for pay-per-click advertisement pricing, and create opportunities to supplement sampling methods with census data about use. Once again, adjustments in the production process change the use of television as viewers gain additional control capabilities and access to content variation. Additionally, other new technologies have expanded portable and mobile television use and have removed television from its domestic confines.
Unlike the fairly uniform experience of watching television in the network era, by the end of the multi-channel transition, there was no singular behavior or mode of viewing, and this variability only continues to increase as the post-network era develops. For example, research on early DVR adopters found that they sometimes engaged television through the previously dominant model of watching television live. However, at other times and with other types of programming they also exhibited an emergent behavior of using the device not only to seek out and record certain content but also to pause, skip, or otherwise self-determine how to view it. Control technologies have effectively added to viewers’ choice in experiencing television, as they have enabled far more differentiated and individualized uses of the medium.
Two key non–television-related factors also figure significantly in creating the changes in audience behaviors that characterize the post-network era: computing and generational shifts. The diffusion of personal computers relates to changing uses of television in notable ways. During the multi-channel
