networks and content originating from outside the United States, although, again, all worlds and perspectives are far from equally available. Perhaps one of the most telling aspects of post-millennium U.S. culture emerges from the uncommon use of television as a window onto other worlds relative to television as a subcultural forum.
Finally, a fourth mode of television as a self-determined gated community has emerged particularly as a result of increasing flexibility in distribution and opportunities for viewers to access programming on demand. Here, television’s cultural role is even more specific than when it functions as a subcultural forum. This mode encompasses particular uses and personalized organizations of television, as well as individuals’ pursuit of specific content, including that which may be amateur-created. The operation of this more nascent mode can be observed in the videos submitted to aggregators such as YouTube or in those attached to social networking sites. Here self-created television becomes a forum of expression and a way for viewers to communicate—most likely with established peers—which they do by sharing their television. As television and web viewing become more integrated and convenient, viewers will also share recommendations, links, and viewing lineups that contribute to the personalization of television. Self-determined viewing behaviors include deliberately shifting among the variety of modes of use noted here and creating specialized viewing communities.
Certainly other modes may already exist that I have not included. The expanding fan cultures facilitated by social media perhaps suggest another distinct mode of television that might be labeled “television as cult conduit.” The point I wish to highlight is the variety and differences in just the few functions given here. Each mode features varied characteristics and leads to very different cultural outcomes—television “means” differently in each of these modes—and does so in ways that previous explorations of television have not considered. I do not intend these four modes to account for all of television viewing; rather, I hope that identifying them will encourage others to consider television in terms of specific contexts and uses, rather than thinking about television-related phenomena as characteristic of television at large.
Delimiting the different ways television functions leads us to foreground the multifaceted nature of television and the growing diversity of uses viewers may adopt. You use the television that you flip on in the background while making dinner differently from the way you use the set to record a show you reserve for a time when all other distractions can be avoided—and that content consequently has different meaning and importance. Likewise, the television you view on a portable device on a daily train commute or the videos you search out online also indicate still other relationships between content and use. Each of these examples illustrates fundamental distinctions among use, content, and audience. In each case, the viewer may be watching television, but to understand the behavior and its cultural function, we need to develop more precise frameworks to explain differentiation among types of television content—such as phenomenal television—and why viewers watch in particular ways.
Key Ideas for Thinking about Television’s Revolution
Finally, I turn to the key ideas and definitions particularly important for the reconsideration of television offered in the remaining pages. Most viewers remain unaware of the business of television, such as the intricate processes involved in deciding what shows to produce, selling them to networks, and finding advertisers, but understanding the business of television and how it is changing is crucial to comprehending why the industry produces certain shows and how to intervene in this system. Those who have sought changes in the cultural output of television—shifts in depictions of nondominant ethnic groups and women, for example—have been most successful when they have illustrated that their goal was a matter of “good business” for the industry, as has been the case for many social initiatives.59 The production of expressive forms like television shows is a challenging business, and no matter the extent of market research, many of the tools other sectors of business use to understand what their consumers want and to predict success are ineffective in the creation of cultural forms.
I closely examine many components of production that figure centrally in the creation of U.S. television programming and focus exclusively on the commercial sector despite the existence of a small public broadcasting system. As I noted in the introduction, rather than thinking of production as just the making of a show, I define production as all of the activities involved in the creation and circulation of television programming. I organize this broad conception of production into five “production components”—technology, creation, distribution, financing, and audience research—and explore each in subsequent chapters. I do not intend any prioritization in the production components catalogued here. Sometimes technologies and distribution practices enhanced preceding developments intentionally, while other adjustments occurred independently.
Although I distinguish these five components as different activities, they must be understood as interrelated processes connected by multidirectional influences. Thus, for example, changes in advertising can introduce adjustments in how producers create programs, while changes in the creation of programs can likewise affect how advertisers are integrated in programming, as well as how much advertiser support networks or studios need. Moreover, the relations among the five components are constantly in flux. During the multi-channel transition, when adjustments in distribution capabilities affected economic models, the altered economic models then enabled certain creative norms—all of which affected the type and range of programming likely to be produced. Such an approach to production differs considerably from ideas about industry operation that assume power and influence operate in a one-way, top-down, hierarchical manner and that allow factors such as ownership structures a more deterministic role in the creation of expressive forms and day-to-day industry operations.
Just as production encompasses multiple components, production also exists as one “cultural process” in what some have termed the “circuit of culture” and others a “circuit of media study.”60 These circuit-based models or frameworks for studying media such as television provide a sophisticated conceptualization of the relationship between the creation of culture and the imperatives of commercial industries. Processes and factors other than production, such as reception, sociohistorical context, and particular cultural artifacts, are interconnected, with each affecting and being affected by the others. The production of television involves the negotiation of many different interests and requires a complicated model to adequately address the intersections of varied commercial and regulatory interests that also mediate in the creation of cultural forms.
Because of my focus on production, other parts of the circuit of culture receive minimal attention despite their relevance to the changes that mark the emergence of the post-network era. Often, these other cultural processes serve as structuring forces that significantly affect the conditions of production. For example, regulatory actions dating to the 1920s continue to determine the fundamental characteristics of the competitive terrain upon which the television industry operates. However, I attend little to the details of many of these broad, structuring regulatory actions, except in the instances when they particularly affect specific production practices, because they remain consistent throughout the history of broadcasting.
Here, though, I must emphasize the significance of the deregulatory policy that allowed expansive consolidation and conglomeration throughout media industries that the government began implementing at the beginning of the multi-channel transition, even though it is not a topic examined extensively in the book. This policy produced considerable regulatory consequences despite the reduced regulatory influence that the term “de-regulation” might suggest. Most notably, deregulation significantly changed what type of owner predominated throughout the television industry. Ownership of the roughly 1,400 television stations nationwide was substantially consolidated by the networks and a few station groups, while conglomerates also gathered broadcast networks, cable channels, production facilities, and even distribution routes such as cable and satellite providers into common ownership. New media entities were often integrated into these vast media conglomerates—as in the case of the AOL/Time Warner merger—although in many cases the architects of the
