Abstract
Australia and New Zealand, like other countries, have unique TV systems and practices that shape the possibilities enabled by emerging technologies, enterprises, behaviors and ideas. This article explores two recent articulations of the concept of television that have motivated ‘end of television’ narratives in the two countries. One is future-oriented – the introduction of online subscription video services from local providers like Fetch TV, Presto, Stan and from March 2015, the international giant Netflix. It draws on a survey of senior people in TV, technology, advertising, production, audience measurement and social media conducted in late 2014 and early 2015. The other is recent history – the switchover from analogue to digital terrestrial television, completed in both countries in December 2013. Digital TV switchover was a global policy implemented in markedly different ways. Television was transformed, though not in the precise ways anticipated. Rather than being in the center of the digital revolution, as the digital TV industry and policy pioneers enthused, broadcast television was, to some extent, overrun by it. The most successful online subscription video service in Australia and New Zealand so far, Netflix, talks up the end of television but serves up a very specific form of it. The article poses a slightly different question to whether or not television is ending: that is, whether, in the post-broadcast, digital era, distinctions between unique TV systems and practices will endure, narrow, dissolve, or morph into new forms of difference.
Highlights
Asked in early 2015 whether, by 2025, there would still be something called television, Fetch TV CEO Scott Lorson replied: “Yes—but I don’t know what it will be called!” Fetch TV is a subscription service available in Australia since 2010 that plans to expand to New Zealand
The emphasis on Netflix highlights the role of drama programming in television’s future; the discussion of digital TV reminds us that drama is just one part of what television has been and might be in the future
Netflix was noticed in Australia and New Zealand as soon as a significant number of customers started signing up to the mail order subscription DVD rental business launched in the United States in September 1999 (Netflix, 2003)
Summary
Asked in early 2015 whether, by 2025, there would still be something called television, Fetch TV CEO Scott Lorson replied: “Yes—but I don’t know what it will be called!” Fetch TV is a subscription service available in Australia since 2010 that plans to expand to New Zealand. While there is plenty in the US phases that is recognizable in Australia’s and New Zealand’s television history, especially the long, gradual shift from network or station control towards increasing viewer choice and a wider range of viewing and using practices, there is plenty that is distinctive, especially about the timing of events that involved government action (the expansion of services and technical changes like colour and digital TV), and the precise combination of factors in play at any time These have given rise to unique TV systems and practices that shape the possibilities enabled by emerging technologies, enterprises, behaviours and ideas. The emphasis on Netflix highlights the role of drama programming in television’s future; the discussion of digital TV reminds us that drama is just one part of what television has been and might be in the future
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