of the multi-channel transition, the bottleneck broke open in late 2005 and has expanded to offer nearly limitless possibilities for viewers to access programming. Chapter 4 explores how viewers gained access to television in an increasing array of outlets that featured differentiated business models. New distribution methods made once unprofitable programming forms viable and decreased the risk of unconventional programming, opening creative opportunities in the industry and contributing to the fundamental changes in the production processes discussed throughout the book.
Chapter 5 examines the shifting strategies for financing television, particularly the emergence of alternatives to the advertiser-supported model that dominated previous eras. In the last decade, U.S. television has experienced notable expansions in subscription and other direct-pay economic models, as well as a diversifying array of strategies for advertiser support. Here again distinctions among prized content, live sports and contests, and linear viewing reveal divergent futures for financing, and the emergence of more diversified strategies is symptomatic of the conditions of a multifaceted post-network era that relies upon multiple, coexisting financing strategies.
Following the examination of financing and advertising, chapter 6 explores the often-unconsidered role of audience measurement, which proved particularly contentious in the late years of the multi-channel transition and as the post-network era developed. The industry leader, Nielsen Media Research, endeavored to introduce technological upgrades that reallocated advertising dollars, while new distribution methods and advertising strategies required impartial measurement for validation. The existing paradigm of audience measurement proved increasingly insufficient for the variation characteristic of post-network television. This chapter considers the crucial role of audience measurement and developments during the tumultuous early 2000s, as well as the consequences adjustments in this sector might bring to the production of television in the future.
While chapters 2 through 6 include many examples that apply somewhat abstract industrial practices to specific shows and circumstances, chapter 7 takes a detailed look at how technology, creation, distribution, financing, and audience measurement intersect in five very different programs. Each of the five cases explored here owes its existence or success to production practices uncharacteristic of the network era and tells a particular and distinctive story about production processes at the end of the multi-channel transition. These shows, Sex and the City, Survivor, The Shield, Arrested Development, and Off to War, illustrate how changes in multiple practices interconnected to expand the range of stories that could be profitably told on U.S. television, as well as point to some of the implications of this expanded storytelling field for the industry and culture. I also address more recent shows that continue the paths charted by these early shows, but still lack as full a history, such as Girls and Video Game High School or the fortunes of the “stars” produced thus far by YouTube.
The perspective here involves looking ahead, not to predict, but to prepare for a new era of television experience and criticism. The precise forms that the technologies and uses of television will take are not definite, but substantial industrial ruptures are already apparent, and the need for practical information and conceptual models to rethink the medium is evident. The following pages may consequently both serve as a eulogy to the television we have experienced to this point and prepare our understanding of the medium yet to come.
1
Understanding Television at the Beginning of the Post-Network Era
Before continuing further, we must develop the distinctions between the U.S. network era, the multi-channel transition, and the post-network era in greater detail. This chapter opens with a concise recounting of the major developments of sixty-five years of U.S. television that explains the norms that produced a particular experience of television in each era. The second half of the chapter steps back from the details of industrial operation that otherwise motivate the story told in these pages to reflect on how television has been thought of and the role it has been perceived to play in society. The adjustments in industrial norms have produced corresponding changes in television content and in viewers’ experience of television. The second half of the chapter discusses past consequences and conjectures about future developments in television’s transition from a medium designed first for a mass audience and then for niche audiences.
The Network Era
The series of fits and starts through which U.S. television developed complicates the determination of a clear beginning of the network era. Early television unquestionably evolved from the network organization of radio. This provides a compelling argument for dating the network era to the first television broadcasts of the late 1940s, if not to the days of radio. Alternatively, the industrial conditions of early television enabled substantial local production and innovation, which made these early years uncharacteristic of what developed in the early through mid-1950s and became the network-era norm. Dating the network era as beginning in 1952 takes into account the passage of the channel allocation freeze, the period from 1948 to 1952 during which national television licensing was halted as the FCC organized its practice of frequency distribution, color television standard adoption, and other institutional aspects that regularized the network experience for much of the country.1
Television certainly began as a network-organized medium, but many of the industrial practices and modes of organization that eventually defined the network era were not established immediately. By the early 1960s, network-era conventions were more fully in operation: the television set (and for some, an antenna) provided the extent of necessary technology; competition was primarily limited to programming supplied to local affiliates by three national networks that dictated production terms with studios; the networks offered the only outlets for high-budget original programming; thirty-second advertisements—the majority of which were sold in packages before the beginning of the season—supplied the dominant form of economic support and were premised upon rudimentary information about audience size.
The network era of U.S. television was the provenance of three substantial networks—NBC, CBS, and ABC—which were operated by relatively non-conglomerated corporations based in the business center of New York. These networks were organized hierarchically with many layers of managers, and each was administered by a figurehead with whom the identity and vision of the network could be associated.2 Established first in radio, the networks spoke to the country en masse and played a significant role in articulating postwar American identity.3 Networking was economically necessary because of the cost of production and the need to amortize costs across national audiences. Networking used economies of scale to recoup the tremendous costs of creating television programming by producing one show, distributing it to audiences nationwide, and selling advertising that would reach that massive national audience. Gathering mass audiences through a system of national network affiliates enabled networks to afford “network-quality” programming with which independent and educational stations could not compete.
The financial relationships between networks and the production companies that supplied most television programming have changed throughout the history of television, but the dominant practices of the network era were established by the mid-1960s. Film studios and independent television producers had only three potential buyers of their content and were thus compelled to abide by practices established by the networks. In many cases the networks forced producers to shoulder significant risk while offering limited reward through a system in which the producers financed the complete cost of production and received license fees (payments from the networks) that were often 20 percent less than costs. Studios also sold the programs to international buyers or in syndication to affiliates after the program had aired on a network, but the
