era as it has come into greater relief. The structure and organization of the book remain largely intact; substantive adjustments are noted below.
It is the curse of a project like this to be inevitably out of date. During the time lag of the production process alone, new developments will occur. There are even developments that transpired before I submitted the manuscript that I elected to exclude because their consequences and likelihood of lasting impact, though potentially substantial, were not yet clear (Aereo; Chromecast). Here, I’ve focused more on frameworks for understanding developments than on cataloging what different companies are doing in 2014 because of the inevitable change. For example, YouTube seems to have a new monetization strategy about every nine months, so instead of detailing the strategy in place at the moment of manuscript submission, I focus more on the industrial differences of advertising and subscription economic models and the consequences they’ve produced for content in other media. I find my voice bolder here than in the first edition, but I’m a conservative prognosticator by nature. I’m more enamored with the consequences of new technologies, regulations, or economic strategies than with crystal ball gazing, and when teaching the book, am interested in encouraging my students to think about new developments in this way as well. It remains an obvious class assignment to have students investigate what has happened since the book was written; and I’ll have done my job well if I’ve given them enough tools here to make arguments about why, how, and to whom those changes matter.
When I first proposed the revision, I suspected I would need to add a great deal to the first version, but instead found a considerable amount I wished to cut. To me, the first edition now read as though the author felt she needed to prove her mettle on the topic by offering a detailed and exhaustive recounting of the vast experiments in each industrial process—and that was probably the case. Here I rest on the reputation of my past work and do less to chronicle each new thing. Maybe I’ve omitted something that will prove important in time, but the last seven years have offered countless lessons about television use, distribution, and financing, and I chose to focus more on areas now offering some evidence and consistency, rather than the most current thing. I don’t doubt that a few years hence I’ll either be back at this or we’ll deem that a new book is needed and that this one has become a historical text. The frameworks the book uses for thinking about television are the parts that will live on regardless of further redevelopment of industry practices and changes in the companies that dominate them.
The introduction is now more succinct, and the detailed discussion of the different eras has been moved into the first chapter. In its place, I provide a new section that argues that we need to begin speaking of television content with more specificity when we consider the post-network era. I posit the categories of prized content, live sports and contests, and linear viewing as three such categorizations. I use these different ways of experiencing content throughout the book to illustrate how industrial adjustments affect each differently.
Except for the addition of the era explanations, chapter 1 remains the most unchanged. This book has been successful in reaching a variety of audiences, and this is the chapter that most marks it as a scholarly endeavor—which makes it more and less interesting to different audiences. In some ways the distinction of phenomenal television that I offered in 2007 is now made more precise through discussion of prized content and live sports and contests, which are distinctions defined as much by viewer behavior as by content. Given that only a narrow group of early adopters experiences television in the ways made possible by post-network distribution technologies, it is difficult to think much further about the uses of television in the post-network era beyond what was possible in 2007.
Adjustments to chapter 2, which focuses on technology, are mostly of the “update” variety. The development and fast penetration of smartphones required significant adjustment in the discussion of mobile uses of television, although with the exception of sports programming, these devices are used more for “portable” television than for “mobile” (live) television in the United States. I’ve also added two tables charting key moments in the shift to nonlinear viewing and significant milestones in digitally distributed U.S. sports.
Chapter 3 includes new discussion of funding from outside the industry, new funding and distribution models such as the 10-90 sitcom, and the production mechanisms of series originally produced for online distribution. Other sections are updated; most notably, I include a discussion of the emerging use of social media in promotion. The conclusion to this chapter is also new.
I’ve reframed chapter 4’s discussion of shifting windows. Strategies that seemed important in 2007 have been revealed to be but transitional practices in the broader evolution to nonlinear viewing norms. An abbreviated discussion of reallocation, repurposing, and DVD sales remains—as these were important strategies in the trajectory of change—and I’ve added extensive new discussion of video on demand and broadband streaming. Addressing the emergence of Netflix was a much-needed component, not only because of what Netflix does, but also because its competition pushed established entities to adopt endeavors such as TV Everywhere far more quickly than would have occurred otherwise. The discussion of distribution to the home is more streamlined, as the arrival of the DOCSIS 3.0 standard largely eliminated the distinction of IPTV that existed in 2006. I’ve updated the competitive and regulatory framework to acknowledge the role—albeit limited—of telco service providers and Google Fiber, the evolution of net neutrality as a regulatory issue, cable and Internet bundling, and the fact and fiction of “over-the-top” access as it had developed by 2014. Because of the increased technical language and jargon, I have added a table defining different delivery technologies early in the chapter; I’ve also added a time line chronicling the technological developments in the evolution of digital television distribution.
I have adjusted the framing of chapter 5 from advertising to financing to better address the variety of subscription and transaction financing structures being used by nonlinear television. The chapter now opens by addressing key differences between advertiser-supported and viewer-supported financing and the necessity of keeping these distinctions clear when we consider how content is received. In many ways, HBO and Netflix are more alike because they are non–advertiser-supported subscription services than different because one comes in through cable and the other over broadband—a distinction I suspect will be technologically nebulous the next time I revisit this book. A condensed discussion of advertiser-supported alternatives to the thirty-second advertisement remains, and the sponsorship section now addresses sports programming more specifically. I’ve expanded the discussion of efforts to save the thirty-second ad to include discussion of pre-roll video ads that support Hulu and YouTube. I also explore how new dynamic ad insertion technologies now make it possible for advertisers to monetize advertisements in VOD (video on demand) to an extent likely to expand this nonlinear form of distribution.
The exploration of audience measurement in chapter 6 has been updated to match the reframing of the previous chapter away from an exclusive focus on advertiser-supported television. I’ve reorganized the chapter to make the steady progression of new measurement norms developed throughout the last decade more systematic, and updated data based on new interviews with executives at Nielsen and follow-up interviews with some who were quoted in the first edition.
Chapter 7 is still built upon the same case studies as the first edition. When I considered replacing them with newer shows, I ultimately determined that I would lose more than I gained. The original case studies are extraordinary “firsts” that have given rise to so many similar successors that there is not much that is distinctive about newer shows; these case studies have become the new normal. The opportunity to take an
