THE TV GUIDE

WHAT HAS CAUSED THIS CHANGE IN THE TYPE OF TELEVISION CONTENT AND DISTRIBUTION METHODS?

 

Content creators and filmmakers are habitually more concerned with the production, financing and reception aspects of their work rather than the way by which it will be actually distributed to consumers. Perhaps the first thing for TV content creators to consider would be the ways in which their audience is going to access and ultimately receive the content. These rapidly moving times have brought about vast and ever-evolving changes to broadcast television as we once knew it, which in turn causes us to consider the future of this malleable medium. The essence of these changes can be broken down into two subcategories, the societal causes of change and the technological reasons. Understandably, these two elements can be seen as going hand in hand to push broadcast TV further down the path to extinction.  According to the 2014 Nielson Report, “The Total Audience Report,” the total viewership of Internet streaming services, (Netflix, Hulu, Stan etc), has consistently increased by 60% each month last year, where as total broadcast TV viewership has only been decreasing by roughly 4% each month. Whilst the report explains that traditional TV viewers are still the majority, it clearly shows that if these figures continue their trajectory, then traditional broadcast TV is doomed to a relatively close expiration date.

 

To appreciate the complete nature of these causes for change, one must first understand on a more fundamental level, how the content itself has changed over the past 60 years. “The Golden Age of Television” is a term that has been distributed to an array of television series, from the 2000’s to current times. Many Journalists, such as, Jeff Simon, from the Buffalo Times, argue that it is the sheer amount of new series being injected into the television landscape that has caused the “incorrect assumption” that Television is in it’s prime. Contrastingly, French Theorist Alexis Prichard, in his book “The New Golden Age of American Series”, (2011), explains that it is the shift from family orientated viewings of shows like “Gilligan’s Island” and ‘Dr Who” to Television as an art form with series like “The Sopranos” and “The Wire” being the ‘pioneers’ of this inundation of new immersive television. It is important to notice the correlation between the time period of this explosion of serial content and the advancements in technology at the time.

 

To name one example, the development of DVD’s allowed for video compression of higher quality as well as ‘mass storage’ capabilities, audiences were now capable of purchasing a whole season of a desired TV show to watch periodically at their leisure. People were able to watch drama film quality content that dwarfs the usual feature length film runtime of 90 minutes, with shows that continued an epic story over 10’s of hours per season. The appeal of such an experience grew exponentially as consumers longed for ‘that perfect series,’ a new trend emerged where people would no longer wait week-to-week to find out what happens to their favourite characters, rather they would ‘binge-watch’ a box set of a series over a short period of time to conclude their story’s journey. This ‘trend’ in the connection between the ease of access due to technological improvements and the increase in TV show releases can be further examined in the introduction of streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, Stan etc. As consumers gained further comprehensive methods of viewing content, a demand for high quality television shows ensued.

 

The most common viewpoint is that broadcast television as the main method of television distribution is diminishing solely due to advances in technology. This rather linear perspective stresses the importance of Internet development, in particular, streaming capabilities. Initially, the Internet and video were akin to oil and water, the concept of mass broadcasting of media was out of the question for the Internet’s point to point network structure at the time. The change transpired as data compression and faster speed (broadband) technology combined to allow for video files to be uploaded and eventually ‘streamed’ to a mass, global audience. Still, It took the better part of a decade for streaming of video content to move past merely >10 minute Youtube videos to a systematic distribution of Film and Television, this was mainly due to lack of the ingenuous, user friendly and most importantly, legal technology we have today. Since the actual raw technology was there years ago, it suggests that what is really causing this current shift in distribution is actually a combination of both legal obstacles as well as ease of access and a process known as “time-shifting.” Television viewers in the aforementioned ‘Golden Era’ of TV, are most likely ‘watching’ a series at the present moment, but the term ‘watching,’ now has a meaning other than its literal definition. If a person says, ‘I am watching Breaking Bad,’ It means that they have watched a previous number of episodes of the show but are yet to conclude the full story. “Time-Shifting,” as described by I.T. consultant “Margaret Rouse,” from ‘Computing Fundamentals Online,’ is the “process of recording and storing data for later viewing.” The convenience of ‘time-shifting,’ accessible via programs like Netflix or even one’s own personal video recorder (PVR) showed to be perhaps one of the ultimate pitfalls in broadcast television. The fact that a viewer could now ‘be watching’ a series at a time of their convenience, as opposed to setting their schedule around a TV guide, was one of the greatest “pushing factors” for the change in distribution from live broadcasting to what came to be called ‘on-demand’ viewing of a series.

 

Since TV is still at its core a business, it is worth examining the legal implications that the distribution changes have generated. There is a system in the world of television whereby the studios of film and TV that create a particular show form a relationship with a specific distribution company. At a great cost, the producers of a series have to pay the distribution companies to get a good viewing time and most importantly to actually play on your TV at home. The studios will then recuperate a lot of that loss through the advertising revenue and licensing agreements provided by the cable network itself. What this suggests is that if the current trend from broadcast television to online release continues at the speed that it does now, the content creators may eventually be forced to bypass the current distribution methods and potentially sell their show in a pay-per-view style process, straight from content creators to the consumers.

 

Roughly 20 years ago, an almost similar ‘phenomenon’ occurred with the arrival of satellite (a.k.a. Cable) television. The US held the significantly predominant portion of satellite subscribers worldwide, this encouraged other Western content developers to ‘sell their television to the U.S.’ as put by University Professor, Jeanette Steemers, in her 2014 journal, “Addressing Transformations in the International Distribution of Television Content.” This ‘growing marketplace’ allowed for other Western content producers to become active in their attempts to penetrate this profitable distribution network. What this situation brings to light now, is how content that was possibly not attainable at the time to viewers from a certain country, was now accessible due to the international television marketplace created by improvement in technology. To bring the focus back to current times, the global trade of TV content has reached astonishing heights due to the various online services success in distribution. However, with these successes there will almost always be complications that arise from international business relations, especially when dealing with ‘ownership.’

 

An example of this ‘fragmentation’ of production process is the UK produced series “Downton Abbey” which was an undisputed success in both the U.S. and Australian television markets. However the show was created by Carnival Films, a subdivision of NBC Universal, which is an American distribution corporation. This tangled spider web of interrelations presents a potential opportunity for further consolidation when it comes to the production and distribution of TV series.

 

It is clear that the industry has come a long way since the conception of TV as a global marketplace, however there is still always room for further changes to distribution. There is no single reason for the changes that have occurred to distribution of television over time, it was rather a culmination of factors that have led to us as consumers to question just how long, traditional broadcast television has before it becomes an ancient technology.