Web-based digital television

The Internet itself, whether delivered via cable, modem or wireless, has become a medium of television distribution in its own right. From sites like BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file-sharing site specializing in films and television along with music and games, to the popular iTunes which allows authorized TV downloads for a fee, to the rapidly growing YouTube with its user-generated videos, the Internet has made a new kind of access to formerly heavily controlled programming possible. Most major television-producing institutions have added a significant Internet presence to their offerings, not only distributing programmes themselves via their owned and operated websites, but providing a wealth of additional information and entertainment in an online form. Yet such venues pose a considerable threat to the economic and public service functions of established broadcasters. In the USA, where monetizing, or figuring out how to make money from, web-based television remains the highest priority, networks and cable channels first experimented with digital downloads via Apple’s iTunes service. For fees in the range of $1.99 an episode, viewers could download episodes of prime time television programmes a few hours after their initial broadcast, to be viewed on iPod or computer, or for the technologically sophisticated, relayed to the digital television set. In the summer of 2007 the NBC network broke off from iTunes to start its own web distribution service via Amazon’s Unbox, which will allow both temporary downloads for low prices and purchase by download for a higher fee. The BBC initiated its own video on demand digital download service in 2005 to operate in conjunction with the Interactive Media Player, a type of digital video recorder. ITV began experimenting with special ‘mobisodes’ of Coronation Street (ITV 1960–) clips sent to cell phones in 2006. ‘Entertainment is no longer linear,’ said Jana Bennett, BBC Director of Television. ‘You have to think in terms of a broader life cycle of a show – how it will play on TV or computer, in a game, on a phone – and you have to embrace a new kind of creative partnership with your audience’.

DVD

One area of digital distribution that seemed to take the television industry by surprise was the sale of television series on DVD (Digital Video Discs), particularly whole seasons in box-set format. The videocassette, an analogue technology, had an enormous impact on the film business but much less on television. Videotapes were bulky and possessed a small recording capacity; they worked fine for feature films but a whole season of a television programme would have weighed quite a bit and have taken up an entire shelf! But DVDs presented a whole new set of possibilities. Not only could five or six television episodes fit on a single disc, the discs were lightweight and could be packaged four or five together in a compact box, enough room even for a US-style 26-episode series – and commentary and extra features besides. It took a while for the television industry to recognize the potential of this additional market for their goods; only the success of a few popular programs on DVD beginning in 2005 – The Sopranos (HBO 1999–2007), Sex and the City (HBO 1998–2004), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Warner Brothers 1997–2003) – began to open eyes to the potential in both sales and rental. The BBC was not slow to follow up on this market, especially for past hits like Monty Python (1969–1974) and Blackadder (1983–1989), along with more traditional offerings such as The BBC TV Shakespeare Collection (2005). A market for DVD sales across national and linguistic boundaries has sprung up, thanks in part to the storage capacity that allowed subtitling in several different languages to exist on one disc, easily selected by the viewer. Entrepreneur distributors like Koch Entertainment in the USA began to offer not only British series but television programmes from France, Germany and Italy, and large distributors like Amazon.com expanded their international offerings in 2005 and 2006. However, as the advent of new high-definition DVD, in two competing formats – Blu-Ray and HD-DVD – threatened to raise prices and make old players obsolete, many began to wonder if the increase in Internet speed would not give downloads the advantage in coming years. DVD sales of independent and smaller productions stalled in 2007, due to an abundance of releases and concentration at the retail level, with less-known productions getting squeezed out.

Reception

We have already noted that digital television’s capacities blur the distinction between production and reception common to analogue media, but it is worth noting a few aspects of what users or viewers can do with their new digital options when it comes to putting digital technology to use. It turns out that, though regularly scheduled television programmes still retain their popularity, the ability to shift programmes to more convenient times and to view them in time-compacted blocks (not doled out week by week) have become increasingly popular. DVRs, including the popular TiVo, were introduced in the USA in 2004; by 2007 nearly 20 per cent of US homes owned at least one DVR and used them for an ever-increasing proportion of their television viewing, as did viewers in the UK, where both Sky and the BBC introduced DVRs in 2005, far ahead of most other countries. Fast-forwarding through the advertisements seems to be especially cherished, to the alarm of many in the television industry. One US cable company, Time Warner, announced in 2007 that it would make a DVR available to its customers that would allow programme shifting but would specifically not be able to fast forward through the advertisements. Combine DVDs, DVRs, iTunes, BitTorrent and YouTube with the ever-growing array of on-demand options available on digital distributions systems and, as Derek Kompare points out, television as a medium seems well on its way to a shift away from its traditional configuration as a service to the mass public, streaming a continuous flow of common communication strictly regulated in its availability, to a model more closely analogous to publishing or to the film industry. Individuals make selections from an expanding inventory of offerings available from a number of sources at different times, across formerly policed barriers of time, space, nation, language and format.

Television screens have both expanded and shrunk dramatically, from the increasingly theatre-like flat screens, now part of home entertainment centres, to the tiny windows on cell phones and iPods. The computer screen becomes a television, while television screens hook up with computers. Many former couch potatoes now use their television screens only for playing video games. New programme forms debut from ‘mobisodes’ and ‘webisodes’ – television material only available on cell phones or websites – to increasingly interactive formats that allow viewers to affect the narrative, as in voting for the next Pop Idol or calling in questions to be discussed on air. If we do not like such changes, YouTube and digital production technologies allow us to make our own television. Clearly, the digital revolution is still in progress, and television remains one of its main battlefields.