New Logics of Convergence: Film through Online Television

Abstract

The clamour in the early years of new media studies to coin neologisms such as ‘viewser’ (viewer and user) or ‘prosumer’ (producer and consumer) to describe the supposedly new, supposedly empowered consumer of digital content attests to the excitement felt at the new possibilities for media consumption that digital forms provided. A consensus emerged that the arrival of web-based platforms would fundamentally change the way in which television and cinema were experienced. Among the zeal for these new forms, though, lurked considerable anxiety, particularly for pro-PSB scholars who found that arguments for public broadcasting, especially those based around spectrum scarcity and of broadcasting as a limited public good, were increasingly untenable. The widespread assumption started to be made that as audiences become ‘viewsers’, institutional control over audience experience is lost, and the purpose — and legitimacy — of the PSB slowly evaporates. However, others were more optimistic, noting that the long-term survival of public broadcasting under increasingly unsympathetic political regimes was evidence of the evolutionary strength of PSBs, as Jeanette Steemers argues:

Public service broadcasters have survived to date by reinventing themselves to meet the challenges of new technology, competition and regulatory change. These companies are past and present masters of justifying the grounds for their further existence.¹