that it was widely viewed because of the vast and substantive audiences programs had to draw to survive. Often popular shows were particularly important sites of analysis because broad viewership on a mass medium denoted a certain scope of influence. In a narrowcast environment, content must do more than appear “on television” to distinguish itself as having cultural relevance, since now much that appears on television might be seen by just a few viewers. For example, the particular economic model of advertiser-supported cable networks allows them to produce shows viewed by 1 percent of the available audience and for these shows to still be considered hits. Network-era theories might still apply to some programming produced in this narrowcast environment, and phenomenal television denotes such programming. Although the task of determining relevance and distinction is more difficult in the post-network era, phenomenal television does have identifiable attributes, as specified below.
Themes, topics, and discourses that appear in multiple and varied outlets indicate a form of phenomenal television. The criterion here is not purely quantitative—that is, a topic that appears in seven shows is not necessarily “more” phenomenal than one appearing in six. Rather, multiplicity might indicate a society-wide negotiation of an issue or a crisis in existing understandings in the same manner it did in the network era. Trans-show or trans-network themes derive importance in a narrowcast environment because such scope indicates content that has achieved or is likely to achieve uncommon audience breadth despite fragmentation and polarization. Ideas appearing in multiple shows—particularly different types of shows—might indicate concerns relevant to the broader society rather than distinct subcultures.53 For example, in the year after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, DC, multiple narratives exploring fictional renditions of the aftermath appeared across at least twelve shows on seven networks.54 Cultural critics could not look to just one of these shows as indicative of cultural sentiment on the subject, or even just that of television; instead, the niche media environment required a more holistic evaluation of the multiplicity of stories that likely reached varied audiences. This attribute responds to the way that individual programs and episodes rarely have the cultural significance previously common because of the fragmentation of audiences, although when thematically similar content is viewed and considered in aggregate, television has the potential to operate much as it did in the network era.
Attention to institutional factors such as what network or type of network airs a show relative to the network’s common audience derives increased importance after the network era and plays a role in determining phenomenal television. Despite all being forms of television, broadcast, basic cable, and subscription cable have different regulatory and economic processes that contribute to their norms of operation and the possible programs they can create. These outlets also vary amply in audience size, and this too is a factor we must address in considering the reach and importance of a program or theme. Many programs—particularly those on premium and basic cable—reached narrow audiences throughout the multi-channel transition, but too often particular audience conditions were not addressed in framing analyses of or concerns about programs. Additionally, factors such as whether viewers watch content as part of linear schedules or on demand have come to further distinguish contemporary television programming as more viewers incorporate new control devices into their regular viewing habits. In the network era, we could assume a broad and heterogeneous audience who viewed linear schedules of network-planned programs. Now we cannot presume that the audience represents the culture at large; instead, it embodies only a distinct segment or component thereof. Assessing the type of network providing programming offers significant insight into the audience of a particular program.
Programs that achieve watercooler status earn a certain degree of importance due to their ability to break through the cluttered media space, but this alone does not indicate phenomenal television. We must also explore how and why a program achieves this prominence. A watercooler show that is supported by a particularly large promotion budget might be less meaningful than a show that captures the zeitgeist of the moment or gains its attention from the way that it resonates with a cultural sentiment or a struggle percolating below the surface of mainstream discourse. Phenomenal television can “go under the radar” and circulate out of sight or beyond the awareness of most of society, but examinations of such television must attend to how and why such shows are important. In the network era, watercooler shows were often those that were somehow boundary-defying, but few boundaries remain, and merely airing on television has become less indicative of social significance than was once the case.
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
