member rather than for society in general. A so-called boundary-defying program such as The Shield, which explores the psyche and actions of a corrupt detective, may seem too far outside the accepted reality of the television audience on the whole, but the ambiguity of right and wrong it represents does appeal to a specific group of viewers who accept the complexity of human action and the arbitrariness of the justice system.
A category such as phenomenal television is just an initial tool for understanding the role of niche media in society; much more thinking in this area is certainly needed. Theories of niche media can in most cases reasonably assume certain characteristics of the audience—as niche media succeed because of their ability to tap into certain affinities that bring audience members together. But even though television programming of the multi-channel transition and post-network era increasingly targeted niche audiences, the breadth of content transmitted through the medium remained accessible to many beyond those targeted audiences. Those who watch niche content, but for whom it was not intended, might be viewed as “cultural interlopers”—as when teens’ parents watch MTV or liberals view Fox News; although not all niche programming is equally susceptible to such practices. Industrial and economic factors such as how media are paid for vary the likelihood of interlopers across different types of television and in comparison with other niche media such as magazines. For example, subscriptions that provide access to a package of cable channels readily allow cultural interloping; subscriptions to specific programs, as in the case of pay-per-view, do not. Television watching is also often a shared activity in households, which increases the probability of cohabitants exposing others to television content not geared toward them.
Such possibilities for cultural interloping may further change as post-network distinctions solidify. Television purchased on a transactional basis, such as the pay-per-episode model available on iTunes, may be less likely to reach interlopers because of the added fees required to access this content. By contrast, subscriptions to channels might better facilitate interloping—as in the case of a viewer who subscribes to HBO for the movies, but samples Looking because it has no added cost. Important similarities and differences might be identified with other media such as magazines that have a fee per use and tend to be consumed in solitude, but can often be picked up in places like waiting rooms and read for free. These discrepancies and variations suggest the degree to which a one-theory-fits-all-media—and even a one-theory-fits-one-medium—framework is inadequate for theorizing niche media and post-network-era television. Similarities among media might exist, but specific contexts remain crucial in assessing the particularities of varied media.
The Persistence of Television as a Cultural Institution
The ubiquity that earned television much of its perceived significance has also been changing as a result of post-network reconfigurations. As the possibilities for portable and mobile television explored in the next chapter indicate, television is everywhere it has ever been and in many more places. Paradoxically, though, individual “pieces” of television (shows, episodes) are shared by fewer and fewer viewers. Together, these developments further the need to consider specific contexts and factors that are far narrower than a simple construction “television” allows. For example, in March 2006, two University of Chicago professors released a study widely reported in newspapers across the country that found that children who watched television were not substantially harmed by the behavior.56 Such reports—with varied findings—appear yearly (even monthly) from researchers in many different fields. With rare exception these studies talk about the effect of “television,” as though there were no differences in the experience of it, no differences in what is watched or how. Certainly, effects studies are not the only form of research to suffer from such unspecified generalizations concerning television, but the point is that variations in the medium that emerged throughout the multi-channel transition indicated how untenable these generalizations had become, if they were ever meaningful.
Instead of utilizing uniform assumptions and explanations of television, we might diversify our thinking by establishing “modes of television” that group similar functions of the medium. Indeed, for all the differences in viewing, every instance is not so distinctive as to be fundamentally unlike any other. Establishing some frequent modes of television use aids in distinguishing characteristics in a great many of television’s iterations. At least four distinctive modes of television function existed by 2005: television as an electronic public sphere; television as a subcultural forum; television as a window onto other worlds; and television as a self-determined gated community. These persisted as general norms relevant to thinking about television’s role in culture a decade later; but by 2014, the industrial distinctions among prized content, live sports and contests, and linear television seemed more indicative of how those in the television industry were distinguishing among television contexts.
Television as an electronic public sphere identifies the operation of television in the network era as it was explained by Horace Newcomb and Paul Hirsch’s cultural forum model, Todd Gitlin’s delineation of television’s ideological processes, or John Fiske and John Hartley’s notion of the medium’s bardic role.57 Drawing primarily on Newcomb and Hirsch, we might say that television operates as an electronic public sphere when it reaches a vast and heterogeneous audience and offers a shared experience or content that derives its importance from the scope of its reach, its ability to provide a space for the negotiation of ideological positions, and as a process-based system of representation and discourse. Now, however, television decreasingly operates in this way. When it does, it usually does so on unplanned occasions, except for a few remaining events such as the Super Bowl. At the same time, though, it is helpful to see the electronic public sphere as existing on a continuum. For example, in comparison with the network-era reach of television—when top shows were watched by 40 to 50 percent of television households—popular contemporary shows such as American Idol have a narrower scope—only 19.8 million out of a universe of 114 million homes watched it most weeks when it was at its peak.58 But even with only an average of 17 percent of U.S. television households watching the show, it was among the most widely viewed regular programs in a given year.
Television operates as subcultural forum when it reproduces a similar experience as the electronic public sphere, but among more narrow groups that share particular cultural affinities or tastes. MTV is likely to be the best example, in that the network provides the lingua franca for adolescents and operates as “must-see TV” in order for teens to achieve cultural competence. The key difference between the electronic public sphere and a subcultural forum (note the embedded “cultural forum” in the terminology) is that the latter is characteristic of television that reaches smaller and more like-minded audiences. For example, Fox News provides a version of daily news and events that serves viewers who choose to watch a news outlet with its particular sensibility. Importantly, when television operates as a subcultural forum, it is often integrated with the use of other media that similarly reflect subcultural tastes and sensibilities. Viewers incorporate a television network or set of programs into a broader set of media, reproducing particular silos of specific worldviews. Broadband distribution of television and aggregators such as YouTube channels now serve far more narrow subcultures than were possible with the television available throughout the multi-channel transition.
Post-network television also can function as a window onto other worlds. In some ways this is a corollary to its function as a subcultural forum, as the ubiquity and availability of television make it a convenient means for exposing oneself to programming targeted to a different audience—or to interlope. Television makes it easy to be a casual anthropologist and travel in worlds very different from one’s own, although by no means are all those worlds equally available. Viewers engage in television as a window onto other worlds when, as cultural interlopers, they view niche media not targeted to them. Parents trying to understand teen culture can gain glimpses into it on MTV—although understanding how teens receive the content or how any intended audience makes meaning of programming is another matter entirely. In leaving my own silo of information and taste culture, I have explored the excessive and regressive masculinity offered by Spike or the stories of masculinity in crisis aired on the FX shows Rescue Me and Nip/Tuck.
