by Cory Barker
The experience of watching Netflix is different to DTV in the sense that “watching what you want when you want it”—or, to be more accurate, watching what you want from the content available on the service—now takes a more accurate meaning; users literally acquire control over the scheduling through on-demand, personalized functions. It is even more emancipatory, giving users freedom in not only what to watch but in how much of it they want to watch. This progression of on-demand viewing and the rise of binge-viewing are the major differences between Netflix and DTV. Nevertheless, while these changes are important, they are not radical; again, as both eras of research show, shifts are gradual.
Interestingly, one of the Sky Digital interviewees envisioned a Netflix-like service back in the early 2000s. When asked to comment on the limitations of Sky Digital and describe his ideal television experience, the discussion progressed as follows:
V.T.: OK. Do you have a picture of what your ideal TV might be?
RESPONDENT: I think it would be, the way I would like to see it working, right? Sky at the moment got all that programs on the day so you get the broadcast now as it happens. Why can’t they record those, put them through the programming and you select what programs you want to watch, the pre-recorded episodes, at the time you want to watch them, when you want to watch them. So why not have a whole week’s programming pre-recorded and you can go in and select what you want.
V.T.: Even more options for you.
RESPONDENT: Yeah. That’s what I want. Choice effectively. Even with digital TV you are still restricted on choice. They still put a lot of repeats on. I want to watch, for example if I wanted to watch Die Hard (1988) that probably wouldn’t come on Sky till 9 o’clock. Why can’t I watch that at 11 o’clock Saturday morning, if I want to watch Die Hard at 11 o’clock on a Saturday morning? Effectively what I have to do is record it myself and then watch it then. Why should I?
Similar points were made by a number of Sky Digital interviewees who, even though they appreciated the channel choice and program variety of the digital service compared to their analog television, still found this supposed emancipation limited in practice. A few dissatisfied users also complained about repeats, signaling that choice after all was controlled and regulated by the broadcaster. Indicatively one male interviewee said: “I think the movie channels and various other channels are very repetitive. Not happy that charges will increase,” while another complained, “too many repeats, not enough new innovative comedy, sci-fi, adventure programs.” Meanwhile, a 38-year-old subscriber was more direct about his and his family dissatisfaction with the viewing options and cost: “We have had Sky Digital for nearly two years now and we think it is overrated, too expensive, there are far too many repeats. After all we pay more than 100 [pounds] per year to watch ordinary TV and that’s all repeats. So why should we pay more each month to watch even more repeats? The only thing not repeated on Sky is the news/weather.”
Even with the introduction of features like PPV and more scheduling control, Sky still provided just a partial freedom from normal broadcasting. Users could select from a list of 25 movies offered by the provider with starting times as frequent as every 15 minutes—but for an additional cost. As one male interviewee noted, “Sky Digital is OK but doesn’t represent very good value for money as the films are repeated too often and you have to pay extra for special sporting events.” Others were even less kind. An unhappy male subscriber commented, “Films, pay as you view, are ridiculously expensive, almost theft. Videos are cheaper. Cannot start to see why they have to charge up to 3 pounds!!! B------s,” while a frustrated female customer called Sky Digital “a very good service which is spoiled by very high monthly subscription costs and Pay-Per-View.”
Perhaps surprisingly, the bundling of channels on Sky Digital did not meet subscribers’ expectations. This system was, in effect, forcing consumers to subscribe to channels they were not interested in just because they were bundled with others that they were—mirroring the cable system in the United States. Of course, this is something that today’s Netflix subscribers certainly have no reason to complain about. As one Sky Digital subscriber told me, “The subscriber should be given the chance of what channels he/she wishes to watch and pay Sky accordingly instead of having to purchase packages the majority of which are of no interest.” Netflix rectifies this problem, giving users that choice so desperately called for by Sky Digital subscribers. Still, these Sky Digital subscribers were generally infatuated by the prospect of more television content of their choice available, bundled or not. Most DTV subscribers appreciated the enhanced choice offered by Sky Digital compared to “old” television content, but still wanted more—more and better of what they already had, and at a better price. Such change came with Netflix, transferring more power from the producer and content provider to the consumer.
Overall, changes in some media habits and practices co-exist with the endurance and persistence of others—and are usually changes of degree, as the excerpts from respondents imply. The technology surrounding television may be changing quickly, but audience behavior and habits change far slower. Many of today’s digital- or web-based media habits spawn from older forms, tastes, preferences, and practices established around the early digital era of television. Meanwhile, though Netflix viewers can now be more focused, selective, and excessive, these habits are adjusted and modified to fit everyday life and domestic practices—just as all viewing practices have been since the introduction of television.
At the time of the DTV research, it was becoming increasingly common for viewers to watch programs alone, signaling a shift in the standard family television viewing experience. Today, the on-demand nature of DVRs and Netflix enables viewers to watch whenever they are in the mood, and across a litany of devices—from screens big and small. The spatial context of viewing has shifted, the traditional schedule is more flexible than ever, and the television set is changing shape, size, and form. Yet, people still watch television programs—whatever the interface. Television has changed, yet programing and content is still what matters most to most viewers.
More than 15 years after the launch of DTV, television is still a significant part of our lives. In the past years, people have equipped their multimedia houses, rooms, and living rooms, built these around DTV—which is connected to the DVR, the Digital Set Top Box/Decoder, the laptop, Netflix and other digital services, etc.—and kept in their pockets or bags portable converged media such as iPhones, iPads, or e-book readers. Digital technology is so embedded in our lives that it will soon no longer make sense to talk about such distinct media technologies or services, without taking into consideration the converged digital environment of which they are all present. However, it is intriguing how audiovisual content still matters, and the viewing of programs remains central to most people around the world today, no matter from which interfaces they access these programs. This resilience of televisual content, its use for entertainment or information purposes, and, of course, its evolution and advancement in production lines with the enhanced techniques and technology used today are worth studying further. So too is the particular impact and attraction of certain successful Netflix’s programs on viewers as well as the role of customer analytics and big data in the commissioning, creation, and production of such programs.
NOTES
1. Vivi Theodoropoulou, “The Introduction of Digital Television in the UK: A Study of its Early Audience,” dissertation, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, England, 2012, http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/349/.
2. Nathan Rosenberg, Exploring the Black Box: Technology, Economics, and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 9–10.
3. Ofcom, “Infrastructure Report: Ofcom’s Second Full Analysis of the UK’s Communications Infrastructure,” 2014, accessed January 25, 2015, http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/infrastructure/2014/infrastructure-14.pdf.
4. Everett M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations (New York: The Fre
e Press, 1962).
5. Elizabeth Evans and Paul McDonald, “Online Distribution of Film and Television in the UK: Behavior, Taste, and Value,” in Connected Viewing: Selling, Streaming and Sharing Media in the Digital Era, ed. Jennifer Holt and Kevin Sanson (London: Routledge, 2014), 158–180. Having said that and despite the success of online services, it is important to mention that traditional television or “linear broadcasting” as it is now called, remains the most popular way of watching television for most viewers. See Ofcom “Infrastructure Report” and Jennifer Gillan, Television and New Media: Must-Click TV (New York: Routledge, 2011).
6. Jennifer Holt and Kevin Sanson, “Mapping Connections,” in Connected Viewing: Selling, Streaming and Sharing Media in the Digital Era, ed. Jennifer Holt and Kevin Sanson (London: Routledge, 2014), 1–15; Evans and McDonald, “Online Distribution of Film and Television.”
7. Raymond Williams, Television: Technology and Cultural Form (London: Routledge, 2003).
8. Chuck Tryon, “TV Got Better: Netflix’s Original Programming Strategies and Binge Viewing,” Media Industries Journal 2.2 (2015); Lauren Johnson, “Netflix Is Now a ‘Global TV Network’ After Launching in 130 New Countries,” Adweek, January 6, 2016, accessed January 25, 2016, http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/netflix-now-global-tv-network-after-launching-130-new-countries-168862; Jon Lafayette, “Netflix Admits It Faces Challenges,” Broadcasting and Cable, December 11, 2015, accessed December 14, 2015, http://www.broadcastingcable.com/sites/default/files/public/lead-in.pdf.
9. Elizabeth Evans, Transmedia Television: Audiences, New Media and Daily Life (London: Routledge, 2011); Amanda D. Lotz, The Television Will Be Revolutionized (New York: New York University Press, 2007); Yu-Kei Tse, “Television’s Changing Role in Social Togetherness in the Personalized Online Consumption of Foreign TV,” New Media & Society 18.8 (2016): 1547–1562; William Uricchio, “TV as Time Machine: Television’s Changing Heterochronic Regimes and the Production of History,” in Relocating Television: Television in the Digital Context, ed. Jostein Gripsrud (London: Routledge, 2010), 27–40; Ofcom, “Infrastructure Report,” 2014.
10. Lotz, The Television Will Be Revolutionized; William Uricchio, “The Future of a Medium Once Known as Television,” in The YouTube Reader, ed. Pelle Snickars and Patrick Vonderau (Stockholm: National Library of Sweden, 2009), 24–29; Jenna Bennett, “Introduction: Television as Digital Media,” in Television as Digital Media, ed. Jenna Bennett and Niki Strange (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011), 1–27.
11. Evans, Transmedia Television.
12. As I state elsewhere, “In the late 90s and early years of 2000s, DTV was introduced in the United Kingdom given the planned switch-off of analog television and Europe-wide policies for a total transition to digital broadcasting. It was also launched as an attempt to converge the functions of television with those of the computer, and to potentially bridge digital divides and offer internet-like services and access across the population. In the early days of DTV services, the United Kingdom was considered the most developed market in the world.” See Vivi Theodoropoulou, “Convergent Television and ‘Audience Participation’: The Early Days of Interactive Digital Television in the UK,” VIEW Journal of European Television History and Culture 3.6 (2014): 69–77.
13. PPV was providing a choice of up to 25 films per night with a frequency/starting time of every 15 minutes.
14. The survey research was conducted using a simple random sample of 1986 Sky digital subscribers. It achieved a response rate of 35.25 percent and a total of 700 responses.
15. Theodoropoulou, “Convergent Television.” See also Theodoropoulou, “The Introduction of Digital Television” and Theodoropoulou, “Consumer Convergence: Digital Television and the Early Interactive Audience in the UK,” in Broadcasting and Convergence: New Articulations of the Public Service Remit, ed. Taisto Hujanen and Gregory F. Lowe (Gothenburg: Nordicom, 2003), 285–297.
16. Theodoropoulou, “Convergent Television.”
17. Theodoropoulou, “The Introduction of Digital Television in the UK”; Theodoropoulou, “Consumer Convergence.”
18. Ibid.
19. By the end of 2001, the United Kingdom saw the fastest DTV penetration in the world, with an overall take-up of 37 percent. See Theodoropoulou “Convergent Television,” Theodoropoulou, “The Introduction of Digital Television in the UK,” and Theodoropoulou, “Consumer Convergence.”
20. Anonymity was ensured for all participants in the research. In the Netflix interview excerpts that follow, the names used are pseudonyms. In the quotes used from the research on DTV, the gender and/or age of the interviewee is provided, in the text, as an identification mark instead. I would like to thank all the interviewees, participating in both the Netflix and DTV research for their help and valuable insight.
21. Roger Silverstone and Leslie Haddon, “Design and Domestication of Information and Communication Technologies: Technical Change and Everyday Life,” in Communication by Design: The Politics of Information and Communication Technologies, ed. Robin Mansell and Roger Silverstone (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1996), 44–74.
22. Evans and McDonald, “Online Distribution of Film and Television in the UK.”
23. Philip M. Napoli, Audience Evolution: New Technologies and the Transformation of Media Audiences (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 62.
24. Hye Jin Lee & Mark Andrejevic, “Second-Screen Theory: From the Democratic Surround to the Digital Enclosure,” in Connected Viewing: Selling, Streaming and Sharing Media in the Digital Era, ed. Jennifer Holt and Kevin Sanson (London: Routledge, 2014), 40–61.
25. Roger Silverstone, Eric Hirsch, and David Morley, “Information and Communication Technologies and the Moral Economy of the Household,” in Consuming Technologies: Media and Information in Domestic Spaces, ed. Roger Silverstone and Eric Hirsch (London: Routledge, 1992), 15–31.
26. Uricchio, “TV as Time Machine,” 35.
27. Tse, “Television’s Changing Role in Social Togetherness,” 1550.
28. But, apart from the audience’s or consumption side, this goes, more perhaps, for the development and design of new media technologies and offerings as well. Meikle and Young note how new convergent media are based on longer historical trajectories. See Graham Meikle and Sherman Young, Media Convergence: Networked Digital Media in Everyday Life (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
29. Wendy Van den Broeck, Jo Pierson, and Bram Lievens, “Video-on-Demand: Towards New Viewing Practices,” Observatorio Journal 3 (2007): 39.
30. Lisa Gitelman, Always Already New: Media, History, and the Data of Culture (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006), 6.
31. Philip Palmgreen and Jay D. Rayburn, “An Expectancy-Value Approach to Media Gratification,” in Media Gratifications Research: Current Perspectives, ed. Karl E. Rosengren, Lawrence A. Wenner, and Philip Palmgreen (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1985), 61–72; Terje Rasmussen, “New Media Change: Sociological Approaches to the Study of New Media,” in Interactive Television: TV of the Future or the Future of TV? ed. Jens F. Jensen and Cathy Toscan (Aalborg: Aalborg University Press, 1999), 161.
32. Tryon, “TV Got Better”; Evans and McDonald, “Online Distribution of Film and Television in the UK”; Holt and Sanson, “Mapping Connections”; Napoli, Audience Evolution; and Debra Ramsay, “Confessions of a Binge Watcher,” Critical Studies on Television, October 4, 2013, accessed July 23, 2015, http://cstonline.tv/confessions-of-a-binge-watcher; William Proctor, “It’s Not TV, It’s Netflix,” Critical Studies on Television, November 29, 2013, accessed July 23, 2015, http://cstonline.tv/netflix.
33. Ramsay, “Confessions of a Binge Watcher.”
34. Tryon, “TV Got Better,” 106.
35. Ramsay, “Confessions of a Binge Watcher.”
36. Tryon, “TV Got Better,” 112.
37. Theodoropoulou, “Consumer Convergence,” 295.
38. Theodoropoulou, “Convergent Television”; Phillip Swann, TV Dot Com: The Future of Interactive Television (New York: T
V Books, 2000); Michael A. Noll, “TV Over the Internet: Technological Challenges,” in Internet Television, ed. Jo Groebel and Darcy Gerbarg (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004), 19–29.
39. Theodoropoulou, “Convergent Television,” 74.
40. Lotz, The Television Will Be Revolutionized.
Digital Delivery in Mexico
A Global Newcomer Stirs the Local Giants
ELIA MARGARITA CORNELIO-MARí
When Netflix launched in Mexico in September 2011, it seemed like a mere curiosity—attractive to a minority of premium users who had access to broadband Internet at home, and those few that were willing to pay for media content instead of downloading illegally. At the outset, the library offerings were so limited (e.g., old Hollywood movies, even older second-rate local films, some Latin American telenovelas) that many early adopters chose not to continue with the service after the one-month free trial. Eventually, the availability on diverse video game and mobile platforms, new offers in recent content as well as the integration with Facebook, contributed to Netflix’s growing popularity in Mexico. During its first four years of expansion, Netflix has become a popular option for films and television series catered to the tastes of the local audiences that have access to broadband, to the point that in June 2015 it holds 55.7 percent (out of four million users) of the over-the-top (OTT) market.1 Nevertheless, the company’s market share has been rapidly slipping—down from 70 percent in 2014—because local media companies have been observing closely, copying its business model, and employing their strongest resources in order to compete with the streaming video giant.2
