viewing gets lost in the use of background television; among some sectors of the audience, time-shifted viewing accounted for well over 20 percent of prime-time viewing. The stakes of such moments of transition are so considerable that selective release of data could affect perceptions just as significantly as not recognizing the new questions and methods that need to be explored.
Digital Control Yields Convenience
Digital technologies allow for such a new array of television uses that it is difficult to sort out the variety of technological affordances provided by different devices and how those then map onto or deviate from how audiences actually use them. The typical audience member may focus only on what different technologies do, and thus organize them differently than I do here, as I am also concerned with how the capabilities of devices also require adjustments in other production practices. This section examines the new conveniences offered by technologies, beginning with technologies that make home viewing more convenient, then those that enable portable (non-live) viewing out of the home, and finally a consideration of how the convenience of breaking from the linear schedule occurs across domestic and portable technologies.
Viewers first gained the convenience of defying networks’ schedules with the VCR, which established a modest beginning that since has been expanded by DVRs and digital devices that integrate Internet and television to vastly expand consumer control. The first technologies made television more convenient by allowing viewers greater control over when they would view, though continued to bind that viewing to domestic sets. By the time these domestic control technologies began reaching audiences larger than early adopters—around 2010—a second expansion in convenience emerged as the technology, infrastructure, and distribution strategies converged to meaningfully establish portable television. These technologies (laptops, tablets, and smartphones) and broadband-delivered aggregators (such as Netflix, YouTube, and Hulu) expanded the nonlinear viewing made possible by the first technologies by enabling viewers to access this content anywhere they could receive a broadcast signal, access a wireless Internet connection, or even receive a mobile phone signal—which, for those with ample financial resources, meant virtually anywhere in the United States.
The first digital control device, the DVR, initially appeared to offer little additional capability than the VCR. Yet its efficiency and ease of use made its contribution significant. While programming a VCR was perceived as so difficult that a joke about the flashing 12:00 VCR clock became ubiquitous, DVRs featured one-step recording capabilities from their introduction in 1999. For some DVR users, time shifting became the default mode of viewing for most programming—particularly in prime time—a difference suggestive of a shift from mere control to convenience. Even early-generation devices featured on-screen menus and programming schedules far easier to navigate and quicker to load than those offered by digital cable systems over a decade later. The remote capabilities available with some machines that enabled viewers to program the DVR from out of the home by accessing it via computer or mobile phone further illustrated the convergence of digital technologies and expanded control.
The ease of recording common to DVRs and their tape- and disc-free, hard-drive–based archive made them a significant threat to the conventional practices of the television industry. VCR users could—and unquestionably did—“zip” through commercials in recorded material, but VCR use tended to be restricted to more isolated occasions of particular shows; based on Nielsen data, MAGNA Global estimated that VCR recording accounted for only 6 percent of the average prime-time audience in 2005.32 Industry analysts marveled at the level of satisfaction earned by DVR technologies, as adopters recounted that their DVR “changed their lives” and professed “love” for the machine. Like many skeptics, I saw the DVR as an insubstantial advance from the VCR, until I used one. I quickly joined the converted as my whole approach to viewing television changed radically once I could easily control so many aspects of the experience. By the 2007-2008 season, as DVR penetration rates reached above 25 percent, networks and advertisers agreed to begin buying and selling advertising based on the “C3” report Nielsen had developed that included live viewing plus DVR viewers who watched recorded programs and viewed commercials within three days of recording.33 DVR penetration continued to grow, and networks agitated for a move to a “C7” measure that would count playback done within a week. Yet, though nearly 50 percent of homes had DVRs in 2013, Nielsen reported that homes with DVRs watched only eleven hours, thirty minutes of recorded programming each month—a mere 8 percent of average total viewing.34
The introduction of the DVR affected television in wide-ranging ways. DVRs were many viewers’ first experience with nonlinear viewing, a way of viewing that growing VOD offerings and online streaming from Netflix or Hulu would expand. The DVR also provided the first clear technological threat to the conventional advertising model of thirty-second commercials embedded in programming, and fear of this technology led to adjustments in advertising strategies and program financing models.
Yet by 2014, just as the DVR had infiltrated nearly half of television homes, its future began to appear uncertain. Distribution technologies such as VOD and online streaming that developed after the initial DVR diffusion suggest that its role in the transition to the post-network era may be more as a technology that provides a bridge to the post-network era, rather than as a technology of the post-network era. Subsequent, arguably complementary, technologies made the effort of selecting and recording content that DVRs required—even if largely mechanized through “season pass” type settings—seem somewhat burdensome. With viewer control embedded in its name, VOD expanded viewers’ control over their television experience and is a technology characteristic of the industry’s shift beyond a mere multi-channel transition toward a more full-fledged, post-network era as VOD requires no linear television experience.35 VOD technologies provide a range of services akin to DVRs: both devices enable viewers to pause, stop, and rewind or fast-forward through programs. But the key distinction between them lies in where the technologies store content. DVRs pull content from the twenty-four-hour linear stream of programming that networks transmit and store the recordings on a device in the home (though next-generation devices have cloud-based storage, which makes this distinction negligible). VOD technologies store content on a server maintained by cable providers, and viewers access this programming bank at will, choosing among the offerings of the provider. VOD functionality can also be controlled by the MVPD, most commonly by disabling fast-forward capability.
The slow pace at which MVPDs introduced VOD offerings and developed a robust programming supply is far more a matter of the complicated rights allowances required in a business of many middlemen and advertising protocols than of technological capability. The development of VOD libraries required extensive negotiation between content creators, cable channels, and MVPDs in order to identify a financial model that would serve all three entities and still be desirable to viewers.36 Throughout the mid-2000s, MVPDs rebuilt their infrastructure and offered VOD as part of top-tier digital subscription packages. By 2005, free VOD was available to 26 percent of cable subscribers, but primarily allowed them to view only “extras” and “bonus footage” rather than full episodes.37 Some cable services experimented with subscription video on demand (SVOD), but the model of paying specifically for the on-demand content was less popular (unsurprisingly) than the “free” access, which cable services included as a “value-added” perquisite to encourage digital cable subscription. Subscription services such as HBO did include on-demand access to much of its content as part of subscription comparatively early on, providing its subscriber base with the earliest access to full-length on-demand content.
The other impediment slowing VOD development resulted from finding a way to monetize content. Distributors lacked a motivation until VOD viewing could be “counted” in ratings. Not until around 2012 did technologies allowing “dynamic advertisement insertion”—or the capability to change the advertisements included in VOD streams over time or by subscriber zip code—develop. These systems could change the advertisements based on date or location of the viewer and provided an economic motivation for MVPDs to push VOD adoption.
In just the seven years between editions of this book,
