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![1 INTRODUCTION
Broadcasting in the form of radio and television has evolved significantly since it
was established during the beginning and middle of the twentieth century. Both
forms of broadcasting are now being reinterpreted through the far-reaching effects
of digitization and convergence. We are at a turning point with many promises
and expectations, but where traditional broadcasting is still central in an economic,
regulatory, social and cultural sense. Indeed, the oversimplified view that the current
digital broadcasting evolution is marking the obsolescence of radio and television,
typically voiced in industry analyses and market research reports, but also in
academic research, is counterbalanced by other studies. This is especially true if we
enlarge our view beyond the Anglo-Saxon part of the world and include economies,
industries, societies and audiences (or consumer markets) that deviate from the
trendsetting, early adopting and tech-savvy parts of the world.
Hence this book starts from the observation that digitization is producing some
fundamental changes in the way broadcasting is organized, produced, distributed,
received and consumed, but that technological change is always interacting with wider
political, economic, social and cultural contexts, that help us put into perspective
the dawn of a new age. Building on empirical studies and theoretical reflections on
the phenomenon of broadcasting, most of them dealing with television, this book
aims to encourage readers to reflect on how the transition from traditional to digital
broadcasting is not only reconfiguring but sometimes also reproducing established
arrangements of regulation and policy, industries and economies, production and
content and audience practices.
The original and traditional notion of broadcasting dates back to modernity’s
restless and vehement escalation between the two world wars and after World War
II, and is deep-rooted both in the anxiety of the then power elites for control over
the populations, and the more noble democratic pursuit of a public sphere and
spirit of community (Gripsrud 2010c; Scannell 1989; Williams [1974] 2003).
Hence, the centre-periphery model of broadcasting is built upon the principle that
symbolic content (i.e. news, music, talk shows, quizzes, soap operas) should be
disseminated from one centre to many people, citizens, populations and consumers
so that they would be informed, entertained and brought together in collective,](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/25111159-250511210259-7e71948c/75/Digital-Broadcasting-An-Introduction-To-New-Media-Jo-Pierson-Joke-Bauwens-18-2048.jpg)
Digital Broadcasting An Introduction To New Media Jo Pierson Joke Bauwens
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- 7. Bloomsbury New MediaSeries ISSN 1753-724X Edited by Leslie Haddon, Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Sciences, and Nicola Green, Department of Sociology, University of Surrey. The series aims to provide students with historically grounded and theoretically informed studies of significant aspects of new media. The volumes take a broad approach to the sub- ject, assessing how technologies and issues related to them are located in their social, cultural, political and economic contexts. Titles in this series include: Mobile Communications: An Introduction to New Media The Internet: An Introduction to New Media Games and Gaming: An Introduction to New Media Digital Broadcasting: An Introduction to New Media Digital Arts: An Introduction to New Media
- 8. DIGITAL BROADCASTING An Introduction toNew Media Jo Pierson and Joke Bauwens Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc
- 9. Bloomsbury Academic An imprintof Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway 50 Bedford Square New York London NY 10018 WC1B 3DP USA UK www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2015 © Jo Pierson and Joke Bauwens, 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pierson, Jo. Digital broadcasting : an introduction to new media / Jo Pierson, Joke Bauwens. pages cm. -- (Berg new media series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-84788-740-5 (paperback) -- ISBN 978-1-84788-741-2 (hb) 1. Broadcasting- -History. 2. Digital television. 3. Digital audio broadcasting. 4. Television broadcasting. I. Bauwens, Joke. II. Title. HE8689.4.P54 2015 384.54--dc23 2014042381 ISBN: HB: 978-1-8478-8741-2 PB: 978-1-8478-8740-5 ePub: 978-1-4725-1727-2 ePDF: 978-1-4725-1726-5 Series: Bloomsbury New Media Series Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN
- 10. Dedicated to LiekePletsers
- 12. CONTENTS Acknowledgements xi 1 Introduction1 Broadcasting in Transition 3 A Multifaceted Approach to Digital Broadcasting 6 Outline of the Book 9 2 A Historical Approach to Digital Broadcasting 11 The Installation of Broadcasting Media 12 Broadcasting and Changing Conceptions of the Home 14 Models of Broadcasting Systems 18 Broadcasting Policies in the Age of Scarcity 20 Broadcasting Policies in the Age of Availability 21 Broadcasting Policies in the Age of Plenty 23 3 The Broadcasting Industry 29 Changes in Competition 30 From Value Chains to Value Networks 32 Business Models 33 Digital Broadcasting Industry from a Value Network Perspective 34 Content Creation and Production: Content and Application Developers 35 Content Aggregation and Packaging 39 Content Distribution 39 Digitization of Television Distribution 40 Digitization of Radio Distribution 42 Content Service Provision 45
- 13. v i ii c o n t e n t s Network-based Audiovisual Services 45 Audiovisual Services via the Web 46 Portable Audiovisual Services 48 Content Service and Technology Consumption 48 4 Production in the Digital Era 51 The Field of Media Production 53 Professionalism and Amateurism 55 Fan- and Amateur-based Production 57 The Industry Fights Back 59 Something Old? 60 Something New? 62 Broadcasting and Interactivity 66 5 Channels in the Digital Broadcasting Era 71 From Broadcasting to Ecocasting 72 From Channel Scarcity to Channel Abundance 73 Survival of the Fittest: Branding 76 From Grazing to Browsing 80 Public and Community 84 6 Audiences in the Digital Broadcasting Era 89 Audience Approaches 90 Understanding New TV Audiences: Tools, Affordances and Practices 91 Affordances and Practices of Entertainment 94 Affordances and Practices of News 96 Affordances and Practices of Everyday Life Organization 98 Affordances and Practices of Sociality 99 7 Rethinking Digital Broadcasting and New Media 105 Liquidization 106 Defamiliarization 107 Storytelling 108 De- and Recentralization 109 Democratization and Participation 111 Conclusion 112
- 14. c o nt e n t s i x Annotated Guide to Further Reading 115 Exercises and Questions 123 Bibliography 129 Index 151
- 16. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremostwe would like to thank the series editors, Leslie Haddon and Nicola Green, for their excellent advice, unconditional support and enduring patience. We are also very grateful to the great team at Berg and Bloomsbury – especially Katie Gallof, Mary Al-Sayed, Laura Murray, Tristan Palmer, Claire Cooper and Kim Storry – for their feedback, support and patience. We would also like to thank all our colleagues, in particular Wendy Van den Broeck, Bram Lievens, Iris Jennes, Karen Donders, Tom Evens, Nils Walravens, Pieter Ballon and Rob Heyman, for their invaluable inspiration and input. Our acknowledgement also goes to the trainees Tamar Betsalel and Tine Castro who have helped us in the preparatory data collection. We also wish to thank the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the research centre iMinds-SMIT for being such a generous professional home. Finally we would like to dedicate this book to our dearest families and friends, for enabling us to take the time and space to write this book.
- 18. 1 INTRODUCTION Broadcasting inthe form of radio and television has evolved significantly since it was established during the beginning and middle of the twentieth century. Both forms of broadcasting are now being reinterpreted through the far-reaching effects of digitization and convergence. We are at a turning point with many promises and expectations, but where traditional broadcasting is still central in an economic, regulatory, social and cultural sense. Indeed, the oversimplified view that the current digital broadcasting evolution is marking the obsolescence of radio and television, typically voiced in industry analyses and market research reports, but also in academic research, is counterbalanced by other studies. This is especially true if we enlarge our view beyond the Anglo-Saxon part of the world and include economies, industries, societies and audiences (or consumer markets) that deviate from the trendsetting, early adopting and tech-savvy parts of the world. Hence this book starts from the observation that digitization is producing some fundamental changes in the way broadcasting is organized, produced, distributed, received and consumed, but that technological change is always interacting with wider political, economic, social and cultural contexts, that help us put into perspective the dawn of a new age. Building on empirical studies and theoretical reflections on the phenomenon of broadcasting, most of them dealing with television, this book aims to encourage readers to reflect on how the transition from traditional to digital broadcasting is not only reconfiguring but sometimes also reproducing established arrangements of regulation and policy, industries and economies, production and content and audience practices. The original and traditional notion of broadcasting dates back to modernity’s restless and vehement escalation between the two world wars and after World War II, and is deep-rooted both in the anxiety of the then power elites for control over the populations, and the more noble democratic pursuit of a public sphere and spirit of community (Gripsrud 2010c; Scannell 1989; Williams [1974] 2003). Hence, the centre-periphery model of broadcasting is built upon the principle that symbolic content (i.e. news, music, talk shows, quizzes, soap operas) should be disseminated from one centre to many people, citizens, populations and consumers so that they would be informed, entertained and brought together in collective,
- 19. 2 d ig i t a l b r o a d c a s t i n g simultaneous moments of reception as participants in a flow of continuous, sequential dissemination. Hence, modern citizens living their anonymous lives in large-scale, bureaucratized, complex, scattered and industrialized environments would still feel connected to a larger community of shared public interest (Gripsrud 2010c: 9). Obviously, various developments are increasingly challenging this blueprint of broadcasting, not the least digitization that reverses or erodes the very foundations of broadcasting. With the World Wide Web and social media in particular one-to- many is converted into many-to-many; with the various new delivery platforms flows are interrupted and simultaneity is turning into on-demand; with the increase in the number of services, ‘broad’ is becoming ‘narrower’. Is, then, digital broadcasting not a contradiction in terms? In this book we will argue that it is not, but rather, from a dialectical perspective, we will explore how, with the digitization of broadcasting, change and stasis – both in technological and social terms – presuppose and need each other. Hence the old is in the new and vice versa (cf. Van Den Eede 2012: 371). This is clearly shown in the significant role television and radio are still occupying in everyday life. As broadcast media they remain easily accessible to all, in the sense of requiring fewer digital competences than computer technology. Meanwhile, television and radio have structured and – for the time being – still structure the everyday life, leisure time and the cultural habits of many people. Studies show that watching television (together with listening to the radio) at home is still the major free-time activity in many countries all over the world. Television as a media technology provides a so-called ‘ontological security’ for people, a secure knowledge that it is always there, precisely because of the extent to which it is familiar, indeed ‘domesticated’ (Silverstone 1994a; Silverstone 1994b). Equally, although people spend less time listening to traditional broadcast radio on broadcast bands in the radio spectrum (FM, AM and other bands), radio as a medium remains significant with a broad reach and substantial listening time. Thus it has become easier than ever for people to access music and niche content through the internet, while online radio use is increasing (Ofcom 2010). Readers will be invited at many junctures to think about television and radio in other formats, and in different places, than they would ‘traditionally’ think about these media – making reference to technologies such as tablet computers, streaming media, Blu-ray discs, mobile television, MP3 players, smartphones, internet television and other emerging ‘broadcast’ media. Likewise, the pre-digital era of broadcasting will sometimes also be discussed in this book as a point of comparison, and in order to demonstrate that the transformations we are witnessing today were already emerging more than 20 years ago, with the various convergences and divergences of different platforms, technologies and software. Digital transitions and other even earlier technological developments have already led to changes in the forms, functions and possibilities – or so-called ‘affordances’
- 20. i n tr o d u c t i o n 3 (Gibson 1977) – offered by broadcast media. Since the spread of video cameras and camcorders, audiovisual technologies have become more accessible for the larger public (together with user-friendly editing tools), extending the amateur filming community (making home movies, using low-cost toy video cameras and smart- phones). Reception equipment has evolved from one central radio and television set in the living room, to multiple audiovisual receivers or screens throughout the house (e.g. in the bedroom, home office, kitchen). More and more households, at least in the more affluent parts of the world, have specific equipment at their disposal that enhances the multi-sensory and immersive experience of television and radio reception. Home surround-sound and digital music dock systems equal the sound and image quality of movie theatres and music studios. Unlike these changes that point at a growing importance of so-called quality of reception experience, we also see that broadcast content like footage, music, clips and movies are produced, shared and consumed on different kinds of social media platforms (such as YouTube and Facebook). These are consumed as snacks, ‘packaged bite-size nuggets made to be munched easily with increased frequency and maximum speed’ (Miller 2007). The quality of the sound and image of this audiovisual content is less important than its lightness, brightness, digestibility, ease-to-access and novelty (see, for example, Shao 2009). More futurist developments point at converged multi- media environments in the home and – in the end – an internet-of-things smart space where data driven media channels, broadcasting channels included, will potentially act through algorithms as pervasive central gateways for communication and inter- action with people and objects. We are already seeing how digital video recorders (DVR) connected to television sets (e.g. TiVo, Apple TV, network operator devices) and television via internet (e.g. Netflix, Amazon Instant Video) can recommend certain content and (re)organize the way programmes are watched, based on user data. BROADCASTING IN TRANSITION Drawing upon an interdisciplinary and international field of research and theory that deals with the impact of digitization on broadcasting and on television in particular, we take the transition to a digital era as our point of departure and pose the overarching question of what this means for various stakeholders involved: service providers, broadcasting companies, infrastructure and platform providers, media professionals, policymakers, researchers and, last but not least, large groups of people all over the world who are watching and making use of television and radio. The transitions are often described as major, innovative and disruptive – and to a certain extent rightly so because the relatively long domination of analogue radio and television (more than 70 and 50 years respectively) is coming to its end. Hence various scholars, policymakers, industry spokespeople and media have been
- 21. 4 d ig i t a l b r o a d c a s t i n g announcing for more than ten years now either the death or the reinvigoration of broadcasting as an economic system, cultural form and social institution (Katz 2009). However, as with many other media evolutions, change and novelty are far less revolutionary than often believed, or at least happen at a far slower pace than heralded. Let us, for example, consider the slow adoption of digital television technology among viewer audiences (Van den Broeck and Pierson 2008). In the US, the first digital satellite television service was offered in 1994, and in 2000 digital High Definition television was introduced. These digital television technologies enhanced the quality of reception, and of image and sound; brought about an increase in the number of available television and radio channels; facilitated access to better information services; and enabled interactivity (e.g. on-demand services and polling-voting) (Sourbati 2004). Yet, European audiences were not immediately willing to invest money in the new technologies, as they did not see an added value that justified the costs (Iosifidis 2006). Obviously, the existing broadcasting system and service also play a crucial role in the pace of digital broadcasting adoption. In countries that have a paid television tradition, digital television is more quickly embraced than in countries where viewers are used to free-to-air television. In 2007, IP Network, the leading European broadcast advertising network owned by RTL group, estimated that the average penetration of digital television in the 26 EU countries (Malta not included) was 40.8 per cent (IP Network 2008). Figures from 2013 by the research and consulting institute IDATE show that 65.2 per cent of the world’s households have access to digital television. They are expected to rise to 92 per cent in 2018 (Ollivier and Pouillot 2014: 62). It was only by packaging different audiovisual, internet and telecommunication services as one product and in this way offering one or more of these services at a decreased price – often marketed as ‘triple play’ (combining broadband internet access, television and telephone) or ‘quadruple play’ (when mobile phone service provisions are added) – that digital television was adopted more rapidly. Hence, we will see throughout this book that traditional radio and television are still not dead, and that the ‘core idea’ (cf. Peters 2009) or socially accepted use of these media is not easily replaced by new meanings and social uses. At the same time, broadcasting media, which used to be so familiar and obvious to us, are turning into new media, i.e. ‘media we do not yet know how to talk about’ (Peters 2009: 18). In particular, technological, political, economic, social and cultural developments related to the internet and telecommunications are strongly affecting the media we used to know so well. Mackay and O’Sullivan (1999: 4–5) describe digital television as an ‘old’ medium in ‘new times’, a phrase that captures well what television as a social institution, as an industry, as a technology and as a social-cultural practice is going through in ‘the overall, largely digitized media system where the internet now plays an important role’ (Gripsrud 2010b: xv). In other words: we are
- 22. i n tr o d u c t i o n 5 witnessing the ‘refashioning’ and ‘remediation’ of a medium that tries to answer the challenges of new media (Lister et al. 2003: 39-40). For example, one of the shifts technology developers and cultural industries are interested in is the proliferation of different networked devices in the living room, and how this might affect the modes of watching and using television. More and more people already use their computer, smartphone or tablet as a second screen while watching television, and many developers are exploiting this in order to create applica- tions that enable interaction related to television content. Moreover, interactive digital broadcasting is moving beyond the set-top box, as connected television sets and appli- cations like internet television (e.g. Google TV, Apple TV) link traditional television with the internet. In industry milieus it is often believed that these developments, which show a move towards device divergence instead of device convergence, will change the way people experience the role of broadcasting. In this respect data driven personalized services and recommendations systems will need to take into account the multiple users that are often present when watching television. On the other hand, connected devices enable social interaction at a distance, allowing communication and other remote interactions to take place through or alongside television. As such, digital broadcasting might be a good example of ‘media renewability’ (Peters 2009), a process that passes through five periods: (1) technical invention; (2) cultural innovation; (3) legal regulation; (4) economic distribution; and (5) social mainstream (op. cit.: 18). As will become clear, the writing of this book and the knowledge we are building upon is situated in the transition between the first period – ‘during which media are recognized rarely as “new” and usually thought of as “old plus”’ (op. cit.: 18) – and the next three stages, during which broadcasting is developing ‘new social uses’, and ‘the interested parties explicitly contest and negotiate for media power’, both in legal and economic terms (ibid.). The last period, ‘social mainstream’, has for the time being still not arrived in large parts of the world. Yet small groups in affluent societies already consider digital broadcasting as no longer new. Perhaps McLuhan’s four laws of media, which he himself, medium determinist par excellence, has called the ‘tetrad of the effects of technologies and artefacts’ (McLuhan and McLuhan 1988: 99), provide a better theoretical framework to get a grip on the ambiguity and insecurity that media in transition create. Rather than seeing media evolutions and media effects as a sequential process, McLuhan sees a cluster of four processes simultaneously at work, which are all in the medium enclosed from its very start, i.e.: enhancement, obsolescence, retrieval and reversal. ‘Usually’, he continues, ‘“media study” (and equally promotion) covers only the first two aspects’ (ibid.). That is, we are particularly interested in how a new medium enhances, intensifies, accelerates and makes things possible. Conversely, we also pay a lot of attention to the complementary process of enhancement and chiefly inves- tigate what is displaced, pushed aside or obsolesced by the new medium. However,
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