sense of these changes? In answering these questions—one descriptive and the other speculative—this book will move across several subfields of media and communications research, including global television studies, media industry studies, and media geography. Along the way, we also delve into the history of earlier systems for transnational television distribution (especially satellite) and consider how they raised similar questions in the past.
Understanding Internet-Distributed Television
The rise of what Amanda Lotz describes in her book Portals (2017a) as “internet-distributed television”—professionally produced content circulated and consumed through websites, online services, platforms, and apps, rather than through broadcast, cable, or satellite systems—is an excellent opportunity to bring together two previously disconnected strands of television scholarship. The first of these is the rich body of literature about global and transnational television, which focuses on the connections (and irreconcilable differences) between institutions, practices, textual forms, and viewing cultures around the world (Barker 1997; Parks and Kumar 2003; Straubhaar 2007; Chalaby 2005, 2009; Buonnano 2007). The second is the literature on television’s digital transformations, which explores the recent history of television technologies and their cross-pollination with other media and internet technologies (Spigel and Olsson 2004; Bennett and Strange 2011; Murphy 2011; Lotz 2014, 2017a). The arrival of internet-distributed television requires a rethinking of the potential connection between these two fields and their underlying categories: space and technology.
It is not merely that the future of television looks rather different in different places (Turner and Tay 2009, 8), although this is certainly true. Rather, internet distribution of television content changes the fundamental logics through which television travels, introducing new mobilities and immobilities into the system, adding another layer to the existing palimpsest of broadcast, cable, and satellite distribution. Internet television does not replace legacy television in a straightforward way; instead, it adds new complexity to the existing geography of distribution.
The arrival of mature internet-distributed television services such as Netflix is significant in global media debates. Until direct-broadcast satellite systems arose in the 1980s, television signals were mostly contained within national boundaries.2 Even though programming was traded internationally, television distribution did not yet have a strongly transnational dimension. Recall Raymond Williams’s classic anecdote in Television: Technology and Cultural Form (1974) about sitting in a Miami hotel room and watching American broadcast television, with its unfamiliar and disorienting “flow,” for the first time. While Williams was familiar with American television as an imported medium, its actual broadcast distribution was something he could only experience by traveling to the United States.
One can only guess what Williams would make of today’s television landscape, with its dizzying array of platforms and on-demand content. Today, one no longer needs to travel overseas to access international television, for a great deal of it is easily accessible online (under certain circumstances, and with many gaps and restrictions, which we will consider later). Similarly, the circulation of content is no longer determined by broadcast and satellite signal reach. The advent of internet-distributed television services means that it is now significantly easier for audiences in many parts of the world to view content from overseas—and even in some cases to access live channels—through browsers, apps, and set-top boxes.
This online proliferation of content is one consequence of television’s digital transformation. The internet has become a distribution channel and archive for a diverse range of content, scattered unevenly across hundreds of platforms and portals. The digital mobility of content raises questions for scholars and students of media distribution, and also requires a rethinking of some of the assumptions that lie at the heart of television studies, because television content now circulates through the same infrastructure as other media, including ebooks, music, short videos, feature films, and podcasts. This has a number of significant conceptual implications for television studies that will be examined throughout this book.
Internet-Distributed Television as an Ecology
The first step in our analysis is to disaggregate the ecology of services, platforms, set-top boxes, and apps that constitute the field of internet-distributed television. Internet distribution of television content is not a unitary phenomenon; it involves a wide array of different services, institutions, and practices. Consider the way many viewers in broadband-enabled areas, especially younger audiences, watch TV: they use Google to search across sites for relevant free video streams, moving between the bits and pieces of content scattered around free video sites; they use third-party apps that filter and suggest particular programs; they follow recommendations from friends’ posts on social media; they have active and lapsed subscriptions to video portals, some of which may be shared with friends and family; and they may also purchase individual episodes or season passes on their laptops and phones. In addition, some may use BitTorrent and illegal streaming sites, or share downloaded episodes and full seasons via USB sticks, cloud storage, and Bluetooth transfers. Depending on where they live and how tech-savvy they are, they may also use a VPN (virtual private network) or a proxy service to access offshore media or get around government restrictions on digital media services.
A point that is not new but bears repeating is that an increasing proportion of the global audience now understands television as an online service dispersed across an ecology of websites, portals, and apps, as well as a broadcast and cable/satellite-distributed medium. Key elements of this distribution ecology include
online TV portals, such as BBC iPlayer (United Kingdom), ABC iView (Australia), NRK TV (Norway), and Toggle (Singapore), which are provided by major broadcast networks and cable/satellite providers through websites and apps and typically include some combination of new-release content, library content, and live channel feeds;
subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, HBO Now, Hayu, and CBS All Access, which offer a curated library of content for a monthly subscription fee;
transactional video-on-demand (TVOD) services, such as iTunes, Google Play Store, Microsoft Films & TV, and Chili, which offer sell-through content at different price points for purchase and/or rental;
hybrid TVOD/SVOD/free portals, such as YouTube, Youku, and Tencent Video, which offer free user-uploaded and professional content plus an additional tier of premium content available through subscription or direct purchase;
video-sharing platforms, such as Daily Motion, which offer a range of free, ad-supported amateur and professional content, often informally uploaded;3
informal on-demand and download services, including BitTorrent, Popcorn Time, file-hosting sites (cyberlockers), and illegal streaming sites;
unlicensed live, linear channel feeds, delivered through pirate websites, illegal TV streaming boxes, and live streaming services such as Periscope; and
recommender and aggregator apps, such as JustWatch, that advise what content is available across the various services.
This ecology is interconnected and highly dynamic, and therefore difficult to measure. To give a sense of scale, the European Audiovisual Observatory’s MAVISE database of online video services currently lists 546 free streaming services, 448 transactional services, 367 subscription services (including adult sites), and 28 video-sharing platforms.4 There is a lot of leakage between these categories. For example, catch-up services are becoming more and more SVOD-like, adding recommender systems and personal logins, while SVOD services are becoming more and more like conventional networks by producing their own exclusive content. Meanwhile, YouTube, Youku, and other hybrid sites tend to absorb innovations from many directions, combining advertising-funded free content, original content, live streams, user uploads, and pirated material in the one platform. To make things more complicated, there are also
