Well, for years, critics and academics have been speaking about the end of tv as we know it. I'm not talking talking aesthetics here. Let's face it, when Carol Burnett called it quits in the seventies, was there really any reason to watch tv anymore? (Okay, I'm kidding, mostly.) I'm talking about the structure and format of broadcast television in America being over. As someone who teaches broadcasting history, I'm sensitive to the idea that what I'm teaching is very much itself history now. TV historian David Marc alluded to this in a section of his 1984 book Democractic Vistas, a section titled "What Was Broadcasting?"
That was, in fact was a signpost: with the expansion of cable television and narrowcasting to specific markets, the massive wide scope of American television was dropping. The three-network structure that had dominated since the days of radio was being rebuilt...or torn down, depending on your point of view. Through the early seventies, All in the Family was the number one show on television for five consecutive years, with ratings numbers that no weekly prime time shows today could possibly hope to achieve or maintain. Despite its apparent controversial nature, AITF was America's last major consensus in the realm of television.
By 1975 -- the last year Norman Lear's sitcom was number one -- HBO began broadcasting feature films that were unavailable after they'd had their theatrical runs; these films were run without commercial interruptions, because HBO was a pay-tv service. That same year, Sony introduced the Betamax, allowing us to record our favorite programs while we were out at work and watch them later, allowing us to bypass commercials. As satellite communications allowed for greater transmissions of broadcasts, superstations like Ted Turner's WTBS in Atlanta became available on many local cable systems or to anyone willing to spring for a dish (back then, about the size of a small roof). As more and more channels began to be added to the cable spectrum, these channels produced singular formats. Home Shopping Club and QVC sold stuff. MTV stood for "Music Television," and all it showed were music videos and some concert specials that had been originally run on the premium cable networks. The Weather Channel gave us... well, you know.
At the time of Marc's book, the fragmentation of the broadcast market was well underway. By the end of the eighties, a fourth broadcast network was launched -- Fox -- and in the nineties the internet exploded, creating new channels by which Americans could consume television. In the past decade, the explosion of mobile devices has allowed us to travel with an entire library of television entertainment in our pockets. And now, with smart tv's, it's even easier to watch tv without having to fork over money to cable or satellite providers -- and to bypass advertisements.
All along this path, the End of Broadcasting has been declared. Certainly the dominance of ABC, CBS, and NBC began to erode even before Fox entered the broadcasting fray. A number of writers strikes also hurt the industry's efforts to continue to produce quality fiction programming, and contributed significantly to the rise of reality-tv shows. With the relaxing of the FCC rules, and the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine, politically charged talk shows proliferated, with no worries about having to be fair or balanced. One of the more interesting supposed signposts of the end of the network era was NBC's decision to stop providing prime-time fiction programming at the ten o'clock hour in favor of a new talk show by longtime Tonight Show host Jay Leno. By no longer producing dramas like E.R. for that ten pm slot -- and not even offering its newsmagazine Dateline at that hour -- NBC seemed to be admitting that it was becoming too costly to produce prime-time fiction, that ratings and advertising revenue streams were insufficient to justify the additional expense. (Not that Leno was a bargain, mind you, but one big show like his was still cheaper than producing five separate dramas.)
As we know, that sign turned out to be a dead end: the network affiliates went crazy that their local 11 pm news shows were doing terrible because Leno's show was not doing well, and NBC had to buy out Conan O'Brien's contract so that Leno could return to The Tonight Show. (Conan, the odd man out, did not go back to his 1230 am slot, where Jimmy Fallon had taken over Late Night. He signed a deal with TBS.) NBC has maintained a measure of success, and with Hulu, gets its current content available on the internet for audiences on-demand...if they are willing to pay for a premium subscription.
While I've been critical of NBC's ruthlessness in pulling content off youtube, the fact of the matter is that the technology is such that streaming video off the internet has improved enough to the point where we will not be interrupted by the annoying "buffering" frames anymore. And when video services like netflix began to stream video to its members -- initially thanks to a sweetheart deal with content providers, who had not considered the value of their product when they signed the deal -- the way that television could be watched was significantly altered.
This possibility had existed in the age of the home video box sets: getting an entire season of The Sopranos at the local Blockbuster Video was easy enough, and you could catch up with all your wealthier friends who'd sprung for HBO. At least until the next season began. (I was in that position when I decided to write an essay on Sex and the City -- I had to give up and pay for HBO to stay current.) But what Netflix has done with its series House of Cards means something quite different.
First, the decision to greenlight the project was based on evaluating data; normally, writers pitch series to tv executives and they think about it for a while. If they like it, it's a go. But there's no assurance that a show will get beyond its pilot episode, or even complete a full season. When David Fincher approached Netflix to produce an American adaptation of a British miniseries about a Machiavellian MP, the executives didn't wait for their guts to tell them what to do; they looked at their data and saw that Fincher's films and those of the star attached to the project Kevin Spacey were very highly rated and regularly streamed or ordered via DVD. Netfix agreed to 13 and later 26 episodes of House of Cards, and also applied a new strategy to its release. Where networks -- even premium ones like HBO -- release one episode weekly, House of Cards's entire first season was available to stream on Netflix on the first of this month. Thus, audiences don't have to wait to see what happens next; they can find all they can if they have 13 hours to spare on a weekend.
This represents a major shift in how we watch television and how it will be made in the future. Netflix has not released any figures on how many people streamed the series upon its release, and this leaves House of Cards beyond the measuring stick for the industry, the Nielsen ratings. The success of the series will be indicated by how many more seasons Netflix orders. Advertising dollars become less relevant, since Netflix is essentially a premium delivery system like HBO. And since Netflix exists only on the internet, it is not beholden to producing time schedules, since everything is on-demand for its members. Now that television sets themselves are internet-ready, streaming to a high quality television is even easier than ever.
And the change in the media delivery system has an effect on the dramatic content of the streaming series. The main writer for House of Cards was not beholden to having to create a cliffhanger for each weekly episode, since he could count on some viewers to watch more than one episode at a time. There may come a time when episodes themselves disappear!
I've yet to see House of Cards, which I'm sure will be good. As drama, it's probably not going to change the world. But as the first of its kind, it's a major step toward a longform content that to some extent David Chase pioneered with The Sopranos. (How many times did you hear that show compared to a novel?)
I'm also thrilled with this stuff because it liberates me from my cable company. I pay them for my internet, but I sent back the box that gave me a million channels. Now, I have my smart tv, my streaming video memberships (which don't cost me 60 bucks a month) and I can watch what I want. This is the future.
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