We Now Disrupt This Broadcast: How Cable Transformed Television and the Internet Revolutionized It All
- ISBN-10
- 0262345552
- ISBN-13
- 9780262345552
- Category
- Technology & Engineering
- Pages
- 280
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2018-04-13
- Publisher
- MIT Press
- Author
- Amanda D. Lotz
Description
The collision of new technologies, changing business strategies, and innovative storytelling that produced a new golden age of TV. Cable television channels were once the backwater of American television, programming recent and not-so-recent movies and reruns of network shows. Then came La Femme Nikita, OZ, The Sopranos, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, and The Walking Dead. And then, just as “prestige cable” became a category, came House of Cards and Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video, and other Internet distributors of television content. What happened? In We Now Disrupt This Broadcast, Amanda Lotz chronicles the collision of new technologies, changing business strategies, and innovative storytelling that produced an era termed “peak TV.” Lotz explains that changes in the business of television expanded the creative possibilities of television. She describes the costly infrastructure rebuilding undertaken by cable service providers in the late 1990s and the struggles of cable channels to produce (and pay for) original, scripted programming in order to stand out from the competition. These new programs defied television conventions and made viewers adjust their expectations of what television could be. Le Femme Nikita offered cable's first antihero, Mad Men cost more than advertisers paid, The Walking Dead became the first mass cable hit, and Game of Thrones was the first global television blockbuster. Internet streaming didn't kill cable, Lotz tells us. Rather, it revolutionized how we watch television. Cable and network television quickly established their own streaming portals. Meanwhile, cable service providers had quietly transformed themselves into Internet providers, able to profit from both prestige cable and streaming services. Far from being dead, television continues to transform.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2018-04-06
- 280 pages
- Paperback
- MIT Press
Similar books
-
Media Disrupted: Surviving Pirates, Cannibals, and Streaming Wars
By Amanda D. LotzLotz looks in detail at how and why internet distribution disrupted each industry. The stories of business transformation she tells offer lessons for surviving and even thriving in the face of epoch-making technological change.
-
Portals: A Treatise on Internet-Distributed Television
By Amanda D. LotzPortals considers what we know about the future of television, even though we remain early in a process of transformative change.
-
The Television Will Be Revolutionized, Second Edition
By Amanda D LotzIn this revised, second edition of her definitive book, Amanda D. Lotz proves that rumors of the death of television were greatly exaggerated and explores how new distribution and viewing technologies have resurrected the medium.
-
Media in the Digital Age
By John Vernon PavlikDigital technologies have fundamentally altered the nature and function of media in our society. This book critically examines digital innovations and their positive and negative implications.
-
Television is the New Television: The Unexpected Triumph of Old Media in the Digital Age
By Michael WolffBeyond managing decline, and hoping for some fortuitous intersection with digital media (Time Warner lost five years in its merger with AOL, Viacom fired its CEO, Tom Freston, for not buying Myspace, while News Corp bought Myspace, ...
-
Netflix Nations: The Geography of Digital Distribution
By Ramon LobatoIt tells the story of how a global video portal interacts with national audiences, markets, and institutions, and what this means for how we understand global media in the internet age.
-
A Companion to Television
By Janet WaskoThe essays cover a myriad of topics and theories that have led to television’s current incarnation, and predict its likely future.
-
We Interrupt this Broadcast: Relive the Events that Stopped Our Lives-- from the Hindenburg to the Death of Princess Diana
By Joe GarnerDescribes such radio and television news stories as the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy assassinations, and the Challenger explosion
-
Digital Business Transformation: How Established Companies Sustain Competitive Advantage From Now to Next
By Nigel VazJust as impressively, he has done so in a highly readable and accessible format. This book is a compelling account of why digital business transformation is so much bigger than technology alone.
-
Grace and Gigabytes: Being Church in a Tech-Shaped Culture
By Ryan M. PanzerGrace and Gigabytes: Being Church in a Tech-Shaped Culture explores change and ministry at the intersection of technology, culture, and church.