Many people feared the ever lasting changes that would come with the distribution and implementation of the internet into daily activites such as television itself. For one, Jenner (2018) recalls an Emmy sketch in which people thought that streaming services and shows were going to take over television all together. Just a couple of years later, series on Netflix began receiving nominations for Emmy awards, making television seem like a thing of the past.

In order to understand the reasoning for this, we can look at Jenners take on the different periods/eras of tv and how that might have influenced the increased demand for internet-distributed television. She begins by saying that there was an era of “scarcity”, where everything was associated with live tv, few channels, and essentially a sense of “exclusivity”, enforced by the “scarcity characteristic of linear distribution” (Lotz, 2017). This was followed by the era of “availability”, which took place around the 80’s, involving more competition as the developments of newer tech put tv at a difficult position in which they had to fight to keep being seen as the better medium. However, this then led to the era of “plenty”, where tv programmes were available on a variety of mediums and the audiences began craving styles of viewing that were once unavailable to them (e.g. on-demand viewing, binging watching, etc.) (Jenner, 2018: 10-12).

The above graph, for example, shows tv vs internet consumption from 2009-2020 (with the last two years showing a predicted increase) (Cheng, 2018). Even since 2009, we are able to see that while tv usage is still relatively high, internet usage has tripled and is predicted to grow even more in the next couple of years. We can assume that this is largely due to the increase in online streaming services such as Amazon Prime, Netflix, Youtube, etc. which, more than ever, puts power into audiences hands and allows them to take advantage of both non-linear and internet distributed content, ultimately making it a huge problem/competitor for traditional television.

By Emilia Woznicka

BA Media and Communications

Bibliography:

Cheng, P.B., Jenny (2018). The internet is projected to surpass TV in 2019 as people’s favorite source of media. [online] Business Insider. Available at: https://www.businessinsider.com/internet-consumption-soon-surpass-minutes-tv-watched-2018-6?r=US&IR=T [Accessed 8 Nov. 2023].

Jenner, M. (2018), Netflix and the Re-Invention of Television, Springer International Publishing AG, Cham. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central.

Lotz, A.D. (2017) Portals: A Treatise on Internet-Distributed Television. Available at: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/maize/mpub9699689/