Читать книгу The Television Will Be Revolutionized, Second Edition - Amanda D. Lotz - Страница 7

PREFACE

Every book has its own story about the process of its creation—call it a book’s biography. Part of the biography of the first edition of The Television Will Be Revolutionized is that I returned the proofs to New York University Press three days after the birth of my first child, in July 2007. So watching that child head off to kindergarten in the fall of 2012 gave the age of the book an uncommon physical form. Oddly, it was easier to fathom that it was time for kindergarten than that the insights of the book were now five years old.

Much has happened in the television industry in these intervening years, though much has also remained unchanged. When the first edition went to press, I was playing around on the beta version of Hulu—though there was little content, YouTube was still a start-up, the broadcast networks had clunky interfaces for streaming the very little content they made available, and there was nothing but movies or advertorials available through video on demand. A cable executive interviewed for this edition noted that the speed with which broadband-delivered video became ubiquitous caught even most industry insiders by surprise. Those on the forefront had tried out the slow-streaming, blocky, early ventures in this area and didn’t think much of the experience. Then it all seemed to change overnight. Netflix, HBO GO, smartphones, tablets, TV Everywhere, oh my! The vast proliferation of content through various broadband providers is addressed in all of the book’s revised chapters, as it has affected every aspect of the industry and provides the biggest paradigmatic adjustment from the first edition.

The revised second edition updates developments throughout the television industry over the last seven years, focuses the book more on broad frameworks for thinking about these changes than on cataloging a multiplicity of initiatives and experiments, and makes general improvements upon certain aspects that I found suboptimal when I revisited it. In some places, details about the conditions of the industry in 2006 remain because they provide a valuable benchmark of the transition that allows the book to be a history of the present, while other details have been eliminated. Though many consider the book to be about the post-network era, I saw the contribution of the first edition primarily as a calling into existence and systematic explanation of the multi-channel transition period of the 1980s and 1990s. This context building prepares us to be able to talk about and theorize a post-network era and remains unchanged and unchallenged by the last seven years. The second revised edition maintains that contribution here and also expands on what can be said of the post-network era as it has come into greater relief. The structure and organization of the book remain largely intact; substantive adjustments are noted below.

It is the curse of a project like this to be inevitably out of date. During the time lag of the production process alone, new developments will occur. There are even developments that transpired before I submitted the manuscript that I elected to exclude because their consequences and likelihood of lasting impact, though potentially substantial, were not yet clear (Aereo; Chromecast). Here, I’ve focused more on frameworks for understanding developments than on cataloging what different companies are doing in 2014 because of the inevitable change. For example, YouTube seems to have a new monetization strategy about every nine months, so instead of detailing the strategy in place at the moment of manuscript submission, I focus more on the industrial differences of advertising and subscription economic models and the consequences they’ve produced for content in other media. I find my voice bolder here than in the first edition, but I’m a conservative prognosticator by nature. I’m more enamored with the consequences of new technologies, regulations, or economic strategies than with crystal ball gazing, and when teaching the book, am interested in encouraging my students to think about new developments in this way as well. It remains an obvious class assignment to have students investigate what has happened since the book was written; and I’ll have done my job well if I’ve given them enough tools here to make arguments about why, how, and to whom those changes matter.

When I first proposed the revision, I suspected I would need to add a great deal to the first version, but instead found a considerable amount I wished to cut. To me, the first edition now read as though the author felt she needed to prove her mettle on the topic by offering a detailed and exhaustive recounting of the vast experiments in each industrial process—and that was probably the case. Here I rest on the reputation of my past work and do less to chronicle each new thing. Maybe I’ve omitted something that will prove important in time, but the last seven years have offered countless lessons about television use, distribution, and financing, and I chose to focus more on areas now offering some evidence and consistency, rather than the most current thing. I don’t doubt that a few years hence I’ll either be back at this or we’ll deem that a new book is needed and that this one has become a historical text. The frameworks the book uses for thinking about television are the parts that will live on regardless of further redevelopment of industry practices and changes in the companies that dominate them.

The introduction is now more succinct, and the detailed discussion of the different eras has been moved into the first chapter. In its place, I provide a new section that argues that we need to begin speaking of television content with more specificity when we consider the post-network era. I posit the categories of prized content, live sports and contests, and linear viewing as three such categorizations. I use these different ways of experiencing content throughout the book to illustrate how industrial adjustments affect each differently.

Except for the addition of the era explanations, chapter 1 remains the most unchanged. This book has been successful in reaching a variety of audiences, and this is the chapter that most marks it as a scholarly endeavor—which makes it more and less interesting to different audiences. In some ways the distinction of phenomenal television that I offered in 2007 is now made more precise through discussion of prized content and live sports and contests, which are distinctions defined as much by viewer behavior as by content. Given that only a narrow group of early adopters experiences television in the ways made possible by post-network distribution technologies, it is difficult to think much further about the uses of television in the post-network era beyond what was possible in 2007.

Adjustments to chapter 2, which focuses on technology, are mostly of the “update” variety. The development and fast penetration of smartphones required significant adjustment in the discussion of mobile uses of television, although with the exception of sports programming, these devices are used more for “portable” television than for “mobile” (live) television in the United States. I’ve also added two tables charting key moments in the shift to nonlinear viewing and significant milestones in digitally distributed U.S. sports.

Chapter 3 includes new discussion of funding from outside the industry, new funding and distribution models such as the 10-90 sitcom, and the production mechanisms of series originally produced for online distribution. Other sections are updated; most notably, I include a discussion of the emerging use of social media in promotion. The conclusion to this chapter is also new.

I’ve reframed chapter 4’s discussion of shifting windows. Strategies that seemed important in 2007 have been revealed to be but transitional practices in the broader evolution to nonlinear viewing norms. An abbreviated discussion of reallocation, repurposing, and DVD sales remains—as these were important strategies in the trajectory of change—and I’ve added extensive new discussion of video on demand and broadband streaming. Addressing the emergence of Netflix was a much-needed component, not only because of what Netflix does, but also because its competition pushed established entities to adopt endeavors such as TV Everywhere far more quickly than would have occurred otherwise. The discussion of distribution to the home is more streamlined, as the arrival of the DOCSIS 3.0 standard largely eliminated the distinction of IPTV that existed in 2006. I’ve updated the competitive and regulatory framework to acknowledge the role—albeit limited—of telco service providers and Google Fiber, the evolution of net neutrality as a regulatory issue, cable and Internet bundling, and the fact and fiction of “over-the-top” access as it had developed by 2014. Because of the increased technical language and jargon, I have added a table defining different delivery technologies early in the chapter; I’ve also added a time line chronicling the technological developments in the evolution of digital television distribution.

I have adjusted the framing of chapter 5 from advertising to financing to better address the variety of subscription and transaction financing structures being used by nonlinear television. The chapter now opens by addressing key differences between advertiser-supported and viewer-supported financing and the necessity of keeping these distinctions clear when we consider how content is received. In many ways, HBO and Netflix are more alike because they are non–advertiser-supported subscription services than different because one comes in through cable and the other over broadband—a distinction I suspect will be technologically nebulous the next time I revisit this book. A condensed discussion of advertiser-supported alternatives to the thirty-second advertisement remains, and the sponsorship section now addresses sports programming more specifically. I’ve expanded the discussion of efforts to save the thirty-second ad to include discussion of pre-roll video ads that support Hulu and YouTube. I also explore how new dynamic ad insertion technologies now make it possible for advertisers to monetize advertisements in VOD (video on demand) to an extent likely to expand this nonlinear form of distribution.

The exploration of audience measurement in chapter 6 has been updated to match the reframing of the previous chapter away from an exclusive focus on advertiser-supported television. I’ve reorganized the chapter to make the steady progression of new measurement norms developed throughout the last decade more systematic, and updated data based on new interviews with executives at Nielsen and follow-up interviews with some who were quoted in the first edition.

Chapter 7 is still built upon the same case studies as the first edition. When I considered replacing them with newer shows, I ultimately determined that I would lose more than I gained. The original case studies are extraordinary “firsts” that have given rise to so many similar successors that there is not much that is distinctive about newer shows; these case studies have become the new normal. The opportunity to take an even longer view of the original case studies and the more expansive distribution some have experienced also strengthens them through added richness. I have moved the discussion of The Shield’s early advertising struggles from the advertising chapter and incorporated it into the case study, and also moved the discussion using Arrested Development as an ideal text for a post-network distribution method to its case study. I’ve addressed the “progeny” of the different cases in the conclusion to each case study, including addressing Off to War as a precursor to YouTube original content.

The conclusion now looks ahead more than the previous version did, as I imagine what television might be like at the point when the post-network era has truly arrived. I extend my personal use anecdotes to identify the extensive ways my own television use has changed in the last seven years, and return to the discussion of the distinctions of prized content, live sports and contests, and linear television.

Without doubt, the most satisfying part of returning to this project was coming to find that the “end of television” discourse had finally abated and that considerable evidence existed suggesting that the moving pictures and sounds we’ve long characterized as “television” are enjoying expanded storytelling possibilities and integration into the lives of those who consume them. I know that this terrain will continue to evolve, and I am not interested in tying the future of television to its continued distribution by broadcast network or cable wire and channel. The passing of these technologies does not mark the death of television, but the passing of inferior distribution systems that were the best technologies available in another era. Exploring how new distribution technologies enable new ways of financing and producing the moving pictures and sounds we know as television provides much to consider in the years ahead.