Changing Channels: Scheduling, Temporality, New Technologies (And The Future Of 'Television' In Media Studies)

Abstract

This paper argue that the processes of digitisation and a user-based taste for interactivity have far-reaching implications for broadcast television. While much previous writing has focused on the ways in which digitisation impacts on broadcast television production, regulation, market demand, competition, and policy, this study is interested in the ways in which we can theorise the impact of interactivity on television viewers’ engagement with alternative forms of television distribution. It is argued that rigid television scheduling and the flow of television series as ‘slow release’ is increasingly less compatible with potential viewing patterns of everyday, western urban viewers, and that access to television series through DVD releases and Internet downloads results from an emerging cultural desire or demand by viewers for greater control over the temporal aspects of television entertainment.