Evolution or revolution? Television in transformation

Abstract

Exceptional changes have transpired in the last decade related to the screen technologies we use to view television and the technologies of distribution through which we receive it. These changes have raised several questions – including the most basic and ontological query of what is television? Although our experience of television has quickly transitioned to adopt new ways of viewing, the previous screen and distribution technologies also persist. Valuable scholarship exists to frame changes in television (Spigel, 2004), distribution technologies (Jenkins, 2006) and the pluriformity of the current environment (Uricchio, 2009), and elsewhere I’ve drawn on all of the above to propose a way to understand the 21st-century television distribution ecosystem (Lotz, 2017)...