The Television Will Be Revolutionized, Second Edition. Amanda D. Lotz
Nearly 50 percent of U.S. homes owned VCRs by 1987;5 this figure increased to 65.4 percent by 1990, 88.1 percent at the end of the century, and peaked at 98.4 percent in 2003, after which VCR rates declined and DVDs (and later DVRs) began replacing the technology.6 The recording devices allowed viewers to negate programmers’ strategies through time shifting and introduced new competitors such as the home video purchase and rental market. In addition to enhancing viewers’ television capabilities by allowing them to record and review television shows, the VCR also enabled the television set to function entirely independently of the networks’ linear program schedules.
Another key characteristic of the early multi-channel transition resulted from the arrival of cable, which introduced profound changes in both technology and distribution. As a technology, cable substantially altered viewers’ experience with its introduction of a vast array of channels. In 1988, 50 percent of U.S. households subscribed to cable, which was the subscription base analysts believed necessary for cable operators to provide a large enough audience to achieve profitability.7 This subscription level marked an increase from just 19.9 percent in 1980, grew to 56.4 percent by 1990, and reached 68 percent in 2000. By 2000, nearly ten million additional households received programming via direct broadcast satellite (DBS—services such as DirecTV or Dish Network).8 In the mid-2000s, “telcos”—companies traditionally known for providing phone service, such as Verizon and AT&T—began competing in some markets, offering packages of channels and then-state-of-the-art Internet service. By 2014, 10 percent of homes received television content from a telco. Since the mid-2000s, cable, satellite, and telco penetration grew to roughly 90 percent of U.S. television homes.9
Broadcasters maintained many of their network-era programming practices throughout the multi-channel transition even though the audience that regularly viewed them decreased in scope. The increase in program outlets significantly shifted the size and composition of the audience watching the Big Three networks, but it required decades for this change to reach an economic crisis point. In some ways, a paradox of remaining the “most mass” programming outlet reaffirmed the status of broadcasters and allowed them to remain disproportionately dominant throughout much of the multi-channel transition despite their slipping share of the audience. Cable channels drew audiences, but the multiplicity of cable channels was significant only in aggregate; any one channel drew a small fraction of the audience still reached by a broadcaster, and other than content-specific channels such as CNN, MTV, and ESPN, cable channels created very limited original programming during the multi-channel transition. The broadcast networks achieved some cost cutting by scheduling more programs from cheaper genres such as newsmagazines and early “reality” shows, but the broadcast networks were able to maintain many of their core practices throughout the multi-channel transition. Broadcasters’ continued dominance and cable channels’ limited encroachment enabled a conciliatory coexistence that ruptured once cable channels began producing “broadcast-quality” series in the early 2000s and deviated from broadcast norms of season length and scheduling patterns.
Analog technologies enabled limited control and choice during the multi-channel transition, but the arrival of digital television technologies at the end of the century vastly reconfigured technological capabilities and introduced characteristics of a post-network era. The shift from an analog technology such as the VCR to the DVR and DVD may seem insignificant in terms of the similar capabilities each provides, but the arrival of digital technologies profoundly changed television.
Digital Media and the Post-Network Era
Welcome to the age of fast-food TV: nuggets of news and entertainment that can be consumed on cellphones, video game consoles and digital music players. Whether the programming is downloaded via iTunes software or over a cellular network, the trend is changing where—and how—TV watchers are tuning in.
—Meg James, Los Angeles Times, 200510
The digital revolution produced two types of consequences for television: interoperability and efficiency. These capabilities adjusted viewers’ experience as the common language of ones and zeros shared in the digital transmission, reception, and home recording of television advanced the medium considerably. It provided the technological opportunity to converge televisions, computers, and other home technologies, and also allowed more efficient signal transmission and storage. Digital transmission further expanded choice, as broadcasters and cable providers were able to relay more information in their broadcast spectrum and cable wire by using a digital signal and eventually Internet protocols. Digital technologies enabled broadcasters to offer multiple “channels” in the six megahertz of spectrum previously required to transmit one analog channel—and the number of channels continued to grow with better compression technologies. Likewise, cable providers expanded channel offerings and added on-demand services (VOD) once they were able to more efficiently compress their signals. The compression technologies allowed digital cable to increase channel offerings with additional niche channels that sought increasingly precise tastes; for example, the general sportscaster ESPN eventually competed in a sector of sports channels for various regions (MSG, Big Ten Network) and sports (NFL Network, Golf Channel, World Fishing Network), as an indication of the expanding fragmentation. The consequences of choice were widely experienced by the early 2000s and receive limited examination here, where I focus instead on the newer developments of convenience, mobility, and theatricality.
The State of Technology Adoption
Viewers’ use of television expanded considerably as they adopted the technologies developed and deployed throughout the multi-channel transition. Many of the technological shifts introduced incremental change to the industry in a manner that did not substantially challenge existing industrial practices, while other technologies instituted such considerable modifications that they contributed to adjustments throughout the production process. The technologies launched during the multi-channel transition were neither uniform in character nor deployed in an organized or coherent manner. Rather, many different sectors, such as computer and consumer electronics industries, governmental regulators, cable and satellite providers, and broadcasters, had varied stakes and visions for the role of these technologies in the future of the U.S. television industry.
All of the domestic technologies explored here were widely available by mid-2005, although penetration rates were still low for some of the more significant devices such as DVRs and high-definition (HD) televisions. A snapshot of technological diffusion and use collected in the spring of 2005 and then the fall of 2013 reveals the varied emergent and integrated status of different technologies (see table 2.1). The years between 2005 and 2013 are marked by a 40 percent gain in homes with DVRs, a nearly 40 percent increase in homes with broadband connection, and the emergence of “second screen” technologies such as tablets as well as the introduction of smartphone technology. These devices, along with VOD capability, feature technological affordances that enable viewers who desire a nonlinear television experience the ability to organize their viewing free from network schedules.
In the spring of 2005, 82 percent of homes with a television reported owning two or more sets, and nearly half (45 percent) owned a television with a screen larger than thirty inches.11 Number of sets became a decreasingly relevant statistic as the screens upon which television might be viewed multiplied well beyond the population of a given home. Ten percent of homes owned a set larger than fifty inches—a figure growing about 4 percent per year—while 26 percent reported having a home theater or Surround Sound audio system.12 Such audio technology reached this rate in 2000 and maintained considerable consistency, suggesting a likely adoption plateau.13 By 2005, only 9 percent of homes owned a high-definition set, although that was nearly twice as many as two years earlier.14 Substantially greater penetration of HD technology was achieved by 2013; however, not all homes that owned HD sets received HD content because of the varying availability of HD packages from cable and satellite services and general confusion on the part of set owners. As recently as October 2012, a Nielsen study revealed that only 29 percent of prime-time broadcast and 25 percent of prime-time cable programming was viewed in HD.15 Such data reveal how limited HD viewing remained despite the much greater presence of HD-capable sets.
Table 2.1.