Online TV by Catherine Johnson

Author:Catherine Johnson [Johnson, Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781138226876
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2019-01-22T00:00:00+00:00

Jinna Tay and Graeme Turner see this as part of a broader disruption of the Reithian ideal that television has a valuable role to play in constructing national audiences (2008, p.74). Within this rhetoric, online TV services like Netflix fracture the imagined national community of broadcast television into commercialised taste cultures and introduce programming originating from other countries that tend to address global audiences, rather than national or local ones (ibid.). This represents a broader decline in the value placed on television’s social role as audiences become increasingly fragmented and media policy, particularly in the West, has shifted focus towards regulating competition over national culture (Turner 2016, p.18).13 At the same time, however, as Lobato (2019) argues, evaluations of the international expansion of online TV services like Netflix and the increase in international co-productions are context specific. It could be argued, for example, that these developments in transnational television increase access to a broader range of multicultural content and produce programming that, as Bondebjerg argues, has the capacity to strengthen understanding between and across nations.

In sum, online TV has upset a number of established industry practices for the production of content. The increased capacity of online TV has facilitated experimentation in the form of television programming. At the level of high-end drama, this has involved the production of programmes with complex, highly serialised narratives of non-standard lengths, often released in one go in order to encourage binge viewing. Beyond high-end drama, TV natives, such as the BBC and NRK, are using online TV services as spaces to experiment with new content forms and to develop talent. The increasingly globalised nature of television production has also led to the origination of content by online and TV natives designed with transnational appeal.

However, despite these changes, there are also significant continuities in content production practices. Many online TV services still produce much of their content in standard lengths and release it weekly. This speaks to the continued relevance of linear television strategies to online TV, particularly for TV natives that are often seeking to create content that they can release on both linear and nonlinear services. Furthermore, programmes of standard lengths are easier to sell to the large number of linear channels looking for content on the international market. Many TV natives also function under regulatory remits that require them to produce content that serves the needs of domestic, national audiences. As Evens and Donders argue (2013, p.420), despite increased globalisation, television markets remain bound by regulatory, political, geographic, cultural, economic and historical factors that are highly national.

To a significant extent, the battlefield of online TV content production can be understood as a fight between online natives, which are investing heavily in content origination for nonlinear environments, and TV natives that are still bound to the demands of linear broadcasting. However, it is important to recognise that many TV natives are embracing the possibilities that online TV represents to experiment with content production, as we have seen with NRK and the BBC. At

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