Author: Christopher McTaggart

As television has evolved as a medium, its production, consumption, and dissemination into broader culture has fundamentally changed. I explore this shift in my final essay through direct formal comparison to contemporary cinema, but that inquiry remains largely focused on aesthetics and differences in consumption. However, after reading Denise Mann’s article: “It’s not TV, it’s Brand Management,” I’ve expanded my analysis to include production and industry culture. 

It’s difficult to say whether changing aesthetic preferences shaped industry structure, or if new business models (namely branding / corporate TV) enabled, or perhaps even necessitated this aesthetic shift. Either way, the end result is a new industry model, a new standard of aesthetics, and a new means of cross-platform “transmedia” engagement. The way TV is produced, the way it looks, and the way it’s consumed has changed drastically in just the past decade.

Starting with aesthetics, there has been a push for more “filmic” television in the past twenty / thirty years. This can perhaps be attributed to shows like Twin Peaks, which was among the first programs to bring cinematic conventions into the realm of television. David Lynch is primarily known for his cinematic work, so it makes sense that his skill set would spill over into television production, but this overlap was largely unprecedented. Later, shows like The Sopranos and The X-Files capitalized on this new aesthetic convergence to much success, and established a demand for this more filmic style of television. Put simply, if there’s money to be made, the added production cost is well worth it. 

However, these shows are still fundamentally different from programs like Lost or Game of Thrones. Even though Lost was largely inspired by The X-Files, their ultimate purpose and end goals don’t overlap. The X-Files was an organic creation – a vision created and fostered by Chris Carter – brought to fruition for its value in and of itself. Lost, on the other hand, is a bit of a corporate “test tube baby,” highly engineered and carefully orchestrated to enable multiple revenue streams and reap a return on investment. That’s not to say that it’s “bad” or somehow less valid than something like The X-Files. In fact, the socioeconomic capital provided by this corporate oversight should make for masterful television, and for the most part it succeeds. 

High budget “branded” television like Lost ushered in a new era of aesthetic and industry standards. With more money on the table, networks could afford to hire the best writers, actors, cinematographers, etc. This should make for a better end product, and ultimately a better viewing experience. However, there are also downsides to this business model. Ultimately, these downsides come down – like any industry – to money.

With the widespread adoption of this business model of fabricated branded television, the industry faces potential problems with sustainability. This can be attributed to two main problems. First, with so much capital invested in a handful of flagship shows, networks have to fill the rest of their air time with cheaper to produce reality and game shows. While this isn’t inherently a bad thing, it provides a barrier to entry for potentially good, but mid-budget shows. To get funded you have to pitch either a cheap reality show, or a massive transmedia franchise TV blockbuster. Secondly, in order to protect their investments in these TV blockbusters, networks cherry pick seasoned professionals with a proven track record. Again this isn’t inherently bad, but it limits opportunities for new talent and younger professionals who might otherwise be of great service to the industry. 

Between these two gripes, there is a clear problem. In a modern network environment dominated by either blockbuster or reality television, there’s a distinct lack of mid-budget young-talent-produced, auteurial work. Lost capitalized on the success of The X-Files, but in its very creation, jeopardized the next generation of organically created shows like those it drew inspiration from. It effectively boxed out these more auteurial works, enabling a business model that prioritizes high-investment with guaranteed return over a multitude of mid-priced but potentially successful shows. 

That’s not to say that this business model doesn’t work – it’s rapid adoption across the industry should be indicative of just how successful it is. However, it is fundamentally flawed, and lacks long term sustainability. Television is ultimately a business, and this era of corporate branded television makes that reality clearer now than perhaps ever before. I just wonder how many promising young writers and potentially groundbreaking shows have been passed up for the sake of comfortable, guaranteed return on investment. 

This might seem like a strange question to ask, but definitions are incredibly important in analyzing a medium, particularly when it comes to edge cases and the introduction of new information or technologies that fundamentally change our understanding of the original definition. 

I know this is cliche, but bear with me. Merriam-Webster defines “Television” as:

“an electronic system of transmitting transient images of fixed or moving objects together with sound over a wire or through space by apparatus that converts light and sound into electrical waves and reconverts them into visible light rays and audible sound”

With that working definition, our understanding of “television” is quite broad. Netflix fits the bill, but so does Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram. However, we don’t generally consider Snapchat TikTok or Instagram to be “television” which leaves us searching for a more cultural definition / understanding of the medium. I’ll shelve Netflix for now, but we’ll get back to that.

While this rigid technical definition of “Television” exists, it is certainly not the metric most people use to describe their viewing habits and media engagement. For now at least, most people still consider “television” to involve a TV set, a cable box, a viewing guide, etc. Just like the rigid textual definition, the more nuanced cultural definition of television revolves around the technology that enables such viewing. For a while, the technological evolution was in step with the cultural understanding of the medium. Yes, increasing access and new technologies like DVR changed our interaction with the content, but the form remained largely unchanged. Television was still premised on the presence of a TV, and the cultural experience – our cultural understanding of “television” – was still rooted in vestigial viewing patterns from the early days of the medium. Recently, however, technology has uncoupled itself from these vestigial patterns and understandings, allowing us to consume much the same content in an entirely different form.

This finally brings us to the question: Is Netflix Television? From the technical definition, it certainly is, however we need to look at the cultural elements, the nuanced empirical understanding of the medium. For starters, Netflix has a large technological overlap with traditional television – many people still watch Netflix on a smart TV or a Roku-like device that piggybacks on the traditional form. It’s very much still an “event,” friends still have “watch parties” and look forward to new releases on the platform. Finally, the content is largely identical to the content of “traditional” television, which begs the question “what’s really so different?” Is it possible to be consuming TV shows, without “watching television?”

Netflix is fundamentally different from traditional television in three respects. Firstly, Agency on the platform is unparalleled in comparison to any other medium. Not only can you search for a specific show and watch it any time you like, you also get to enjoy it uninterrupted by ads. Second, while primarily a consumption platform, Netflix has also begun producing original content in a way that questions the longstanding roles established in the industry. It’s the equivalent of a Samsung starting a studio, or Kitchen-Aide starting a meal prep service. Even writing these examples, they seem frankly quite probable, where even 10 years ago it would be absurd. You see this breakdown of established roles in the music industry as well, where another streaming platform – Spotify – is also beginning to produce original work and alter the content → consumption pipeline. Finally, the last major difference between traditional TV and Netflix can be found in temporal limitations. Despite all these notable achievements of the platform, it does lack one thing that traditional television still provides: live coverage.

News coverage and sporting events are two niches that Netflix – for now at least – can’t accommodate. There are other streaming platforms, largely network-provided, that do provide these services, but network news and sporting events are the final holdouts for traditional television as we understand it. However, as more streaming platforms emerge, it will only be a matter of time before these content niches are absorbed in a similar fashion as network television. We’re still in a state of flux, navigating much of the same content through an entirely new form, but using perhaps antiquated terminology from that historic form to describe our experience. With the rate of technological innovation, it won’t be long before Television refers simply to the technology – a physical TV screen – rather than the experience of the medium.

It might seem strange, but I enjoy watching a fair amount of television geared towards younger audiences, however, I only seem to enjoy older shows like Arthur, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Curious George, etc. In large part this is due to nostalgia, but I also feel that there might be something more tangible in these older productions that’s lacking from contemporary childrens television.

Arthur and Star Trek in particular are notable for their willingness to address contemporary issues, and wrap them up in a readily consumable package for a younger audience. Star Trek is perhaps less “on-the-nose” as they frequently can “abstract” these issues through the lens of a futuristic society in a seemingly endless universe. Arthur however also manages to tackle these issues in a slightly more direct way, while still abstracting to a degree (after all, it is a show about a collection of anthropomorphized animals). But what makes these shows feel genuine where todays telivision feels…. perhaps contrived?

On a formal level, the switch from hand-drawn to computer-animated characters has a large impact on my reception of the show. You can feel the care and attention to detail in a show like Arthur, where every frame was meticulously hand-drawn by an artistic team. In contrast, something like “paw patrol” (which apparently is huge for kids right now) feels… cheap, engineered, inauthentic. But children still enjoy it! Producers and independant content creators took note of childrens enthusiasm for these animated characters, which has lead to a bizzare new world of cheap animated shorts on YouTube.

This highlights the biggest shift in childrens telivision in the past decade – the transition from telivision to simply entertainment. This shift has occured for adult audiences as well, as we move away from the TV set instead opting for netflix or youtube, however children and childrens entertainment are much more perilous and perhaps impactful than their adult counterparts. This shift away from television has decentralized any sort of accountability for what children are watching. Before the internet, the solution to making sure your kids weren’t watching “adult” television while you were gone was hiding the remote, but even then the worst thing they could stumnle across was garbage reality TV. Now, there’s an entire world of content online, none of it has to be approved to be shown like on television, no single company is responsible for most of the content on youtube, they ultimately care about getting views, and have no incentive for deep meaningful or even ethical productions.

There are countless youtube channels that make terrible knockoff cartoons, plagarizing existing shows and capitalizing on the “trust” built by the original program. This is concerning because many parents don’t even know the difference, they just let their children passively consume content from these channels on youtube, believing them to the official streams of shows like Peppa Pig or Paw Patrol, when in reality they’re rushed shorts that – beyond lacking the production quality or “weight” of the real show – are often traumatizing to children that watch them.

Even the youtube channels geared towards childrens entertainment that aren’t just ripping off already-established shows, have problematic structures that lead to concerns of ethics and intent. The recent trend of “surprise eggs” for instance demonstrates just how impressionable children are, and frankly how little stimulus is needed to get them hooked. “Surprise Egg” videos make use of intermittant reward cycles, much like a casino, to keep children engaged, dying to see the big reveal, then begging their parents to go spent $40 on one for themseslves. There’s a reason why children aren’t allowed in casinos. There are countless adults with fully developed brains who just can’t leave the table, how is a child with an underdeveloped brain (particularly the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for executive functioning, self regulation, and logic) supposed to understand the nuances of gambling and reward?

Recently the EU moved to ban microtransactions and “loot boxes” in childrens video games, because time after time it’s been demonstrated that children don’t understand the cost/reward. It’s quite literally gambling with their parents money.

This is getting a little off topic, but I hope I’ve started to address some key shifts in childrens television and entertainment that I’ve noticed in these past couple years. Of course it’s hard to be objective in this situation, and I’m sure that my parents felt much the same way about me, and my grandparents felt the same way about them. How much of this is just new conventions, new technology, the start of a new era in childrens media? It’s hard to say… but with the shift away from TV itself, I feel that there is a large enough transition that it needs to be addressed, it can’t just be seen as another new phase of entertainment, it’s an entirely new system, and we need to have some safeguards in place. The first step frankly, is educating parents and making sure they’re tech-literate.