A cursory reading of the history of streaming television will paint its inception and effect as techno-deterministic. However, this is not the whole picture. I will argue that not only technological but also cultural conditions of the post-network era (2004 – present) gave rise to streaming technology, empowering some previously underserved television viewers by making their interests more difficult to ignore. This complicates an understanding of social change through a purely techno-deterministic framework by presenting industry and market (expressions of culture) as equally powerful as technology (Lessig, 2006) in determining the state of society. I will begin by briefly tracing how the technological evolution of TV affects content. I will then illustrate how the market affects content by explaining how ad-supported television commodifies audiences and how technological evolution turned that relationship on its head culminating in a demand for streaming television. I will conclude by exploring the implications of this mutual shaping of technology with culture that resulted in the popularity and disruptive power of streaming television.

A significant advantage of our current multichannel TV landscape is the greater diversity in the kinds of stories that can be profitably told. While audiences have always been drawn by a myriad of subjects, the nature of the network era (1950s to mid-1980s) favored mass audiences (Lotz, 2014), so an appeal to the “least objectionable” was mandated for much of television’s history (Mittell, 2015, p. 32). As choices grew with the advent of cable and then online technology, audiences fragmented (Lotz, 2014). With the plethora of options, fewer viewers could be counted on to watch the same thing. Television executives had to reconsider the traditional financing models that were based on pricing advertising space on total audience numbers. Because of this audience fragmentation, the qualities of the audience (demographics) have become just as and at times more powerful than the number of viewers (Lopez, 2017). As audiences disperse, networks have had to appeal to more diverse viewer interests by creating content that attracts specific and sometimes very niche audiences (narrow-, multi-, and micro-casting) in order to stay viable in their advertising-supported business (Lotz, 2014).

Television programming depends on the audience it is made for, and that audience depends on who advertisers need as customers. American television networks have always privileged particular types of viewers, but circumstances have expanded that group. In “Why We Don’t Count” (1990) Eileen Meehan explains how the ratings many perceive to be indicative of a show’s popularity, are actually a measure of only certain viewers’ preferences. The “commodity audience” is the portion of the viewing audience who those in power think of as having purchasing power and being susceptible to the influence of advertising (Meehan, 1990). Advertisers generally want the highest number of this group to see their advertising in order to get the highest return on their investment in the form of customers. As technology created more channels, the TV audience splintered. Elana Levine describes this time as “a tension between global and local profit bases, mass and niche markets” in her piece “Fractured Fairy Tales and Fragmented Markets,” (2005, p. 209). The rise of participatory media has furthered this shift. In “The Value of Media Engagement” Henry Jenkins explains this significance:

“Traditional television ratings represent the audience as the primary commodity exchanged through the practices of broadcast media. By contrast, engagement-based models see the audience as a collective of active agents whose labor may generate alternative forms of market value. This approach places a premium on audiences willing to pursue content across multiple channels as viewers access television shows on their own schedules, thanks to videocassette recorders and later digital video records (DVRs), digital downloads, mobile video devices, and DVD box sets (Jenkins, p. 116).

The popularity of shows that break down the previously unidirectional nature of television proves that change comes not just from technology, but also from people—from culture. Shows like The Talking Dead harness this deeper engagement, giving viewers the chance to publically voice and question the choices of producers. This is ultimately a societal good because in the past, the voices of many were muted. In Legitimating Television, Newman and Levine (2011) illustrate this point by open the closed door that is the showrunner’s office and hearing what they have to say about viewer silencing, “Tim Kring contended that a serialized drama like Heros suffers in the ratings—measured primarily on the basis of live viewership, and thus not including these new distribution outlets—because the kind of viewers it attracts prefers new ways of accessing media content,” (Newman & Levine, 2011, p. 1). In the network era, it didn’t matter that many thousands of people wanted to see a show if the commodity audience didn’t. Netflix’s Chief Content Officer, Ted Sarandos, also contends that network era television left out many voices (Curtin, Holt, Sanson, 2014). In the Media Industries Project’s (Curtin, Holt, Sanson, 2014) interview with Sarandos, he talks about how traditional ratings measurement discounted the viewing habits of some quite rabid TV viewers like his daughter who watches time-shifted, “[S]he doesn’t count at all because she doesn’t watch it in a way the current measurement system values. She likes to stack—to marathon on a Saturday afternoon—and that’s the way the entire CW audience watches content” (Curtin, Holt, Sanson, 2014, p. 137). As cable, then satellite, then online technology expanded viewing options, more and different types of viewers began to matter to television executives. Jenkins points to the expansion of ratings to “same-day viewing plus those who watch within the three following days [and now, seven days] via time-shifting technologies,” (Jenkins, 116). When audience measurement became more precise through technology and demographic research, previously ignored groups were discovered to be voracious consumers. As homosexuality has become normalized in American society, gay viewers have ascended to the commodity audience. I say ascended because the commodity audience has always been a position of privilege in many ways. When the preferences of the commodity audience are better understood via DVR inclusive and Twitter ratings, their everyday viewing choices affect a channel’s programming. In this way, technology has effectively further empowered the commodity audience while also expanding its membership.

The commodity audience is not only larger with increased diversity of who “counts,” but also more powerful because of technological and social convergence. In “The Rise of The Connected Viewer” Aaron Smith and Jan Boyles (2012) on behalf of The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found that “52% of all adult cell owners” are what they term “connected viewers,” people who use their phone while watching TV (Smith & Boyles, 2012, p. 2). The increase in connected viewing, or what Henry Jenkins terms “social convergence,” shows the waning power of television executives to command viewer attention and control the conversation about their shows. The qualities and preferences of TV viewers cannot be taken for granted when there is such a threat of viewer distraction or worse immediate, unmediated public expression of discontent. Where in the past era of more solitary viewing if some people didn’t enjoy a show no one outside the immediate vicinity might know, with connected viewing, an entire social network can be alerted to viewers’ perceived failing of a show before the first commercial break. Social media sites like Twitter and Facebook enable direct interaction between television audiences and television makers. Viewers can also connect with each other across countries and continents to almost collectively bargain with a virtual seat at the proverbial table. Social media activism has influenced some executives and producers to give shows and storylines a second look—though always with a capitalist eye—sometimes profoundly impacting their future.  Duncan Brown and Jeffrey Blevins in “Can the FCC Still Ignore the Public?” (2008) explore an early case of Internet-assisted viewer activism from which they determined that “it appears that the factors facilitating greater public involvement have developed to the point where, at least sometimes, the public and civil society organizations can either block, or at least modify, the demands of entrenched corporate interests,” (Brown & Blevins, 2008, p. 449). They conclude by noting “[t]he World Wide Web now makes it easier for these monitoring organizations to coordinate their activities. Such use of the World Wide Web may also help citizen-based groups to become involved in the earliest stages of policy discussions,” (Brown & Blevins, 2008, p. 466). That was in 2007, before smartphones were widely used, so one can imagine the greater power viewers have due to the immediacy of their response when “the earlier stages of the policy-making process are crucial in defining a perceived problem and narrowing down the range of policy options that will be considered as potential solutions in the later stages,” (Brown & Blevins, 2008, p. 466). Brown & Blevins (2008) quote from a 2003 speech by FCC Commissioner Copp says it best, “’This Commission faces a far more informed and involved citizenry. The obscurity of this issue that many have relied on in the past, where only a few inside-the-Beltway lobbyists understood this issue, is gone forever,’” (p. 465).

A more diverse group of viewers have gained power in the post-network era as commodity audiences have expanded. While technological advances and profitable narrowcasting have empowered some audiences, American television still privileges the tastes of those viewers who executives think of as ideal consumers. Though the definition of the ideal consumer has diversified, the hegemony of “wealthy, white, male, heterosexual” endures in representation both in front of and behind the camera. Perhaps in a utopian society of true equality among all people, market forces could be said to be fair determiners of what ought to be on television. That is not America. It may be that the commercial nature of the American television system is the biggest obstacle to greater empowerment and equality among television viewers. Among private financing models, advertising-supported television seems to be the most problematic financing model in its privileging of advertiser’s consumers over the needs and desires of the American public as a whole. Publically funded television in the mode of the UK public service (BBC) seems like the better way for television to fulfill its public service mandate (Evans & McDonald, 2014). That is not America. As a country that allows even healthcare to be driven by the private monetary profit, equality in empowerment would require a significant ideological shift away from neoliberalism by the American people.

In this way, while technology does shape us to a certain degree by allowing or disallowing certain practices, it is always at the discretion and direction of humans acting to their own interests. Technology exists within the context of our desires. While the technology itself may suggest a more connected and diverse ideology, human ambition and self-interest override and redirect the capacities of technology to our own ends. In an age of connectedness, audiences have, perhaps ironically, fragmented (Douglas, 2006; Lotz, 2014). Thus, a look at contemporary television trends shows that rather than being shaped into an empathetic community, we have instead further burrowed into ourselves. What is termed technological progress has merely further enabled humans to act as they always have: sticking to themselves and their interests unless provoked to unification by a phenomenon. The Buggles sang that “video killed the radio star” in 1980, but if the Internet killed the network TV star, in a mutual shaping framework, we must also take responsibility for the revolution. After all, the guillotine doesn’t operate itself.

 

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References

Brow, D. H., Blevins, J.L. (2008). Can the FCC Still Ignore the Public?: Interviews With Two Commissioners Who Listened. Television & New Media, Vol 9 (Issue 6), 447 – 470

Curtain, M., Holt, J., Sanson, K., Sutter, K., (2014). Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer, Netflix. Distribution Revolution: Conversations about the Digital Future of Film and Television (132-145). University of California Press. Retrieved from https://content.ucpress.edu/chapters/12814.excerpt.pdf

Douglas, S. J. J. (2006). The Turn Within: The irony of technology in a globalized world. American Quarterly 58(3), 619-638. The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Evans, E., McDonald, P. (2014). Online Distribution of film and television in the UK: Behavior, taste, and value. In Jennifer Holt and Kevin Sanson (ed.) Connected Viewing: Selling, streaming, and sharing media in the digital era

Lessig, L. (2006). Code 2.0. Retrieved from http://codev2.cc/download+remix/Lessig-Codev2.pdf

McLuhan, M., Fiore, Q., & Agel, J. (1967). The medium is the massage. New York: Bantam Books.

Meehan, Eileen. (1990). Why We Don’t Count. In Patricia Mellencamp (ed.) Logics of Television. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Newman, M. Z., & Levine, E. (2011). Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status. New York, NY: Routledge.

Kiddo-Lopez, L. (2017). How Technology Changes Society [lecture]. Communication Arts 250: Survey of Contemporary Media. University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

Levine, E. (2005). Fractured Fairy Tales and Fragmented Markets: Disney’s Weddings of a Lifetime and the Cultural Politics of Media Conglomeration. Television & New Media, Vol 6 (Issue 1), 71 – 88. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476403255820

Lotz, A. D. (2014). The television will be revolutionized, Second Edition. NYU Press [Kindle Edition].

Mittell, J. (2015). Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. NYU Press.

Smith, A., Boyles, J. (2012 July 17). The rise of the “connected viewer”. Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. Retrieved from http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Connected-viewers.aspx