Media and the Post-Network Era
Welcome to the age of fast-food TV: nuggets of news and entertainment that can be consumed on cellphones, video game consoles and digital music players. Whether the programming is downloaded via iTunes software or over a cellular network, the trend is changing where—and how—TV watchers are tuning in.
—Meg James, Los Angeles Times, 200510
The digital revolution produced two types of consequences for television: interoperability and efficiency. These capabilities adjusted viewers’ experience as the common language of ones and zeros shared in the digital transmission, reception, and home recording of television advanced the medium considerably. It provided the technological opportunity to converge televisions, computers, and other home technologies, and also allowed more efficient signal transmission and storage. Digital transmission further expanded choice, as broadcasters and cable providers were able to relay more information in their broadcast spectrum and cable wire by using a digital signal and eventually Internet protocols. Digital technologies enabled broadcasters to offer multiple “channels” in the six megahertz of spectrum previously required to transmit one analog channel—and the number of channels continued to grow with better compression technologies. Likewise, cable providers expanded channel offerings and added on-demand services (VOD) once they were able to more efficiently compress their signals. The compression technologies allowed digital cable to increase channel offerings with additional niche channels that sought increasingly precise tastes; for example, the general sportscaster ESPN eventually competed in a sector of sports channels for various regions (MSG, Big Ten Network) and sports (NFL Network, Golf Channel, World Fishing Network), as an indication of the expanding fragmentation. The consequences of choice were widely experienced by the early 2000s and receive limited examination here, where I focus instead on the newer developments of convenience, mobility, and theatricality.
The State of Technology Adoption
Viewers’ use of television expanded considerably as they adopted the technologies developed and deployed throughout the multi-channel transition. Many of the technological shifts introduced incremental change to the industry in a manner that did not substantially challenge existing industrial practices, while other technologies instituted such considerable modifications that they contributed to adjustments throughout the production process. The technologies launched during the multi-channel transition were neither uniform in character nor deployed in an organized or coherent manner. Rather, many different sectors, such as computer and consumer electronics industries, governmental regulators, cable and satellite providers, and broadcasters, had varied stakes and visions for the role of these technologies in the future of the U.S. television industry.
All of the domestic technologies explored here were widely available by mid-2005, although penetration rates were still low for some of the more significant devices such as DVRs and high-definition (HD) televisions. A snapshot of technological diffusion and use collected in the spring of 2005 and then the fall of 2013 reveals the varied emergent and integrated status of different technologies (see table 2.1). The years between 2005 and 2013 are marked by a 40 percent gain in homes with DVRs, a nearly 40 percent increase in homes with broadband connection, and the emergence of “second screen” technologies such as tablets as well as the introduction of smartphone technology. These devices, along with VOD capability, feature technological affordances that enable viewers who desire a nonlinear television experience the ability to organize their viewing free from network schedules.
In the spring of 2005, 82 percent of homes with a television reported owning two or more sets, and nearly half (45 percent) owned a television with a screen larger than thirty inches.11 Number of sets became a decreasingly relevant statistic as the screens upon which television might be viewed multiplied well beyond the population of a given home. Ten percent of homes owned a set larger than fifty inches—a figure growing about 4 percent per year—while 26 percent reported having a home theater or Surround Sound audio system.12 Such audio technology reached this rate in 2000 and maintained considerable consistency, suggesting a likely adoption plateau.13 By 2005, only 9 percent of homes owned a high-definition set, although that was nearly twice as many as two years earlier.14 Substantially greater penetration of HD technology was achieved by 2013; however, not all homes that owned HD sets received HD content because of the varying availability of HD packages from cable and satellite services and general confusion on the part of set owners. As recently as October 2012, a Nielsen study revealed that only 29 percent of prime-time broadcast and 25 percent of prime-time cable programming was viewed in HD.15 Such data reveal how limited HD viewing remained despite the much greater presence of HD-capable sets.
Table 2.1. A Snapshot of Television Technology Diffusion, 2005 and 2013
| Spring 2005 (%) | Fall 2013 (%) | |
| Sets | ||
| Homes with television | 100 | 95.8 |
| Homes with 3 or more sets | 45 | 67 |
| Signals | ||
| Homes with cable | 67 | 54 |
| Homes with digital satellite | 20 | 31 |
| Homes with telco signal | n/a | 10 |
| Total multi-channel | 87 | 92 |
| Homes with only over-the-air reception | 14 | ~9 |
| Channels and Devices | ||
| Homes receiving 40 or more channels | 82 | unknown |
| Homes receiving 100 or more channels | 40 | 58 (in 2008)a |
| Homes with a VCR | 87 | 55 |
| Homes with a DVD player | 76 | 83 |
| Homes with a video game system | 39 | 56 |
| Homes with high-definition TV | 9b | 83 capable |
| Homes with a digital video recorder | 7b | 49 |
| Homes with a computer | 67b | 80 (Internet connected)c |
| Homes with a mobile phone | 72b | 87 |
| Smartphones (of mobile phone population) | n/a | 65 |
| Tablet | n/a | 29 |
| E-book reader | n/a | 26d |
| Homes online |
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