Digital Transmissions: Thinking Historically About Broadcasting and Electronic Sell-Through in the Digital Era
Eleanor Patterson / Auburn University

Figure 1: Advertisement for the 5th generation iPod in fall 2005, the first to have video playback capabilities and push Apple to make deals with broadcast networks ABC and NBC.

In her book, The Television Will be Revolutionized, Amanda Lotz points to the sale of television on iTunes in October, 2005 as the moment that, for her, “if pushed to identify the beginning of the post-network era, this is the event I would likely propose.”[1] Lotz goes on to argue that “Apple’s announcement was important because it attached a particular economic value to an episode of television and the beginning of a repository of television shows available for purchase.”[2] For Lotz, selling episodes of television on iTunes established “a fairly unprecedented ‘transactional’ model for paying for television” that led the television industry “to begin letting go of network-era practice … [and] thus anxiously began its free fall into new norms of distribution that allow viewers their desired access to content anytime and anywhere, doing its best to limit content availability and whenever possible exact a fee.”[3]

For those of us with a background in radio studies, we have become all too accustomed to the refrain that “radio did it first.” However, to take the long view of selling broadcast episodes singularly for a fee in a retail transaction, the practice goes at least as far back as Decca’s 1948 release of Suspense’s “Sorry Wrong Number.” And, as I discuss in my book, the desire to use storage technology to capture, control and replay broadcast content has been an audience practice that dates back to the birth of radio in the 1920s.[4] The earliest record of establishing a transactional model for selling an episode of broadcast content that I have found is a 1938 Variety report of industry insiders smuggling transcription discs out of the broadcast networks and selling bootlegged discs of popular radio episodes, such as The Mercury Theatre on the Air’s “War of the Worlds,” for $10.[5]

Figure 2: Early examples of transactional distribution of single broadcast episodes from the radio network era: heading from a Variety expose on radio bootlegging in 1938; the cover of the 1948 Decca release of Suspense’s “Sorry, Wrong Number.”

It may, perhaps, seem silly to reference these early examples of singular broadcast commodities valued at a price per episode over seventy years ago. I am not claiming that we were in a post–network era of broadcasting before television was even a dominant form of domestic entertainment. My point is that there is a historical precedent for making broadcast programming into a singular, portable commodity sold in a transaction at a fixed specific price point that allowed audiences to access that radio content anywhere, anytime. Provided, as with an iPod in 2005, you bring your portable playback apparatus with you. Experimentation selling radio program recordings did not become a dominant form of broadcast consumption in the 1940s, nor did it disappear, you can still buy recordings of radio programs in a variety of formats, one such outlet is Radio Spirits. Similarly, while iTunes has been selling television for almost twenty years, alongside Amazon and other digital vendors, legacy television remains the dominant form of audience consumption.[6]

My current research project examines how the broadcast television networks have adapted to this post–network era and integrated digital strategies into their distribution practices, while also influencing the broader digital television ecosystem. If we go back to 2005 and dig deeper into the iTunes sale of TV episodes for $1.99, it is evident that this process was not only shaped by the schedules and programming practices of the television networks but would be a watershed moment for how the networks translated broadcast distribution into digital platforms.

The first television programs sold on iTunes were Lost and Desperate Housewives, as part of Apple’s October 2005 licensing deal with Disney. Steve Jobs pursued this arrangement, no doubt aided by his position as a Pixar shareholder, in advance of Apple’s release of the 5^th generation iPod, the first iPod to playback video content through its 2.5-inch-wide screen in the upper half of its 4.1-inch body. In the photo below you can see Steve Jobs holding up a 5^th generation iPod as it plays an episode of Desperate Housewives from the October 12, 2005, ABC deal announcement in Silicon Valley with an expression that I assume is excitement. Though I can’t be sure.[7] Maybe he was concerned about Susan (played by Teri Hatcher) and her life choices in this episode.

Figure 3: Steve Jobs demonstrating the iPod 5th generation’s video playback capabilities with an episode of Desperate Housewives, one of the two ABC shows licensed for purchase through the iTunes store October 12, 2005.

Lost and Desperate Housewives would come to be mentioned repeatedly in newspaper articles and trade journal pieces touting the iPod’s video feature in the fall of 2005.[8] It seems extremely significant that a moment that supposedly ushered us into the post–network era was defined by a tech company’s business deal to offer two of the highest-rated network television programs to iTunes users the day after their initial broadcast. Essentially, on a fixed-point weekly schedule determined by ABC’s linear distribution model. NBC would be the next network to sign a deal with Apple to distribute some of the network’s television programs in December 2005.[9] However, these initial deals did not mark the capitulation of the U.S. television networks to the tech giants of Silicon Valley. Two years later, Jeffrey Zucker, then NBC President, would famously coin the phrase “analog dollars into digital pennies” to describe what he saw as iTunes’ failure to be as profitable as traditional advertising revenue.[10] Of course, it is no coincidence that Zucker made his grievance tour against Apple through the trade press in the fall of 2007.[11] NBC’s joint-venture Hulu went live that October, not long before Zucker began publicly lambasting Apple and then finalized NBC’s pullout of iTunes in early December 2007.[12] As I wrote in a previous Flow post,

Hulu was originally conceived of to adapt broadcast distribution logics into streaming distribution, to circumvent both YouTube and iTunes as third-party gatekeepers, and control the online advertising ecosystem.[13]

Disney would later come on board as a shareholder in Hulu with NBC and FOX in 2009, and we can see how these networks’ experience with iTunes in 2005 through 2006 was significant. Not only did this decision represent the industrial attempt at selling television episodes as individual digital commodities, but it would become the catalyst for designing a distribution platform that would remediate the network television advertising-based distribution model in the online environment.

Episode release schedule for ‘HOUSE OF THE DRAGON’ Season 2 🐉

HBO Sundays are officially back! 🔥 pic.twitter.com/7w2Cg2la37

— westerosies (@westerosies) June 12, 2024

Figure 4: HBO’s House of the Dragon episodes are released on the Max streaming platform on a weekly, fixed-point schedule.

This year, Hulu was rolled into the Disney+ platform after Comcast’s final licensing agreement expired, allowing Disney to centralize their direct-to-consumer subscription service in one platform. Designing and building streaming video on-demand (svod) that provided a conglomerate’s full content library exclusively became a powerful industry logic in 2018, and Paramount+, Peacock, and Disney+ now offer content from their network television library on their svods. Paramount+ and Peacock also offer live streaming of their local affiliate feed to subscribers, and I assume that this is in Disney’s plan. Disney+ already offers several livestreams of other channels, such as ABC News. While free ad-supported television comprises one of the most profitable segments of the internet-television business, most svods now offer an ad-based tier. Indeed, as we attempt to make sense of the contemporary digital television industries, it is worth taking a historical view. Many of the practices that define “on-demand” viewing are reconfigurations of logics we can trace back to broadcasting: the release of episodes on a weekly, fix point schedule, such as Max’s release of House of Dragon episodes every Sunday at precisely 9 p.m.; the design of svod platforms to auto-play an ongoing flow of content; the syndication and licensing of programs from a diverse range of companies; and the use of big data ratings to monetize advertising sales. The various aspects that influence television, such as technologies, industrial practices and corporate ownership, have always been in flux. Indeed, television broadcasters were not static during what is often periodized as the classic network era, approximately 1965 to 1985. One need only compare a television viewing schedule from 1965 to one from 1975 or 1980 or any year to be reminded of how programming reflected the shifting terrain of audience research, government regulation or technological standards.  I could perhaps write ten Flow posts on the problematic nature of periodizing television history. Maybe one day I will. However, until then, I hope this discussion of both the practice of selling broadcast episodes in the network era, and the practice of timing streaming television releases along what is essentially a broadcast schedule in the post-network era, has persuaded you that our current moment is rife with historical continuities with broadcasting’s past. The broadcast networks have been transmitting content out into the ether for almost a hundred years, and it is likely they will continue to for the foreseeable future. Indeed, if you dig into the television operations of any of the major conglomerates, you will find that it is still the broadcast, ad-based sectors that are the most profitable and it is also the broadcast networks who are, in large part, subsidizing the unprofitable (as yet) direct-to-consumer streaming platforms their parent companies have been developing in the so-called “streaming era.” However, even as network broadcasting continues to be a significant part of the broader television industries and everyday life of audiences, they will also continue to change and be reconfigured within shifting socio-technical contexts.

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Image Credits:

1. Advertisement for the 5th generation iPod in fall 2005, the first to have video playback capabilities and push Apple to make deals with broadcast networks ABC and NBC (retrieved from Flickr).
2. Early examples of transactional distribution of single broadcast episodes from the radio network era: heading from a Variety expose on radio bootlegging in 1938; the cover of the 1948 Decca release of Suspense’s “Sorry, Wrong Number” (retrieved from Discogs listing page).
3. Steve Jobs demonstrating the iPod 5th generation’s video playback capabilities with an episode of Desperate Housewives, one of the two ABC shows licensed for purchase through the iTunes store October 12, 2005.
4. HBO’s House of the Dragon episodes are released on the Max streaming platform on a weekly, fixed-point schedule.

References:

1. Amanda Lotz, The Television Will Be Revolutionized, 2nd ed., (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 279. [↩]
2. Lotz, The Television Will Be Revolutionized, 69. [↩]
3. Lotz, The Television Will Be Revolutionized, 135. [↩]
4. Eleanor Patterson, Bootlegging the Airwaves: Alternative Histories of Radio & Television Distribution (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2024). [↩]
5. “Recordings of Topical Events,” Variety, November 30, 1938, 27. [↩]
6. “Social Video vs. Paid Streaming: A Report on the Race to Replace TV,” Variety VIP+, July 1, 2024, https://variety.com/vip-special-reports/social-video-paid-streaming-race-to-replace-tv-special-report-1236042698/. [↩]
7. May Wong, “Apple’s Jobs unveils video iPod, TV deals,” The Telegram, October 13, 2005, https://www.telegram.com/story/news/local/north/2005/10/13/apple-s-jobs-unveils-video/53169433007/. [↩]
8. Alvin Lai, “It’s prime-time for iPod video; Apple’s latest offering gives instant gratification to fans of top American TV shows,” The Straits Times (Singapore), October 23, 2005; Johnnie L. Roberts, “Small TV, Big War; Apple-Disney is only the beginning,” Newsweek, October 24, 2005. [↩]
9. May Wong, “Apple, NBC ink deal to offer TV shows on iTunes,” The East Bay Times, December 6, 2005, https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2005/12/06/nbc-apple-ink-itunes-deal-on-tv-shows/. [↩]
10. Terrence Russell, “NBC Exec Voices More Beef With iTunes Pricing,” Wired, October 30, 2007, https://www.wired.com/2007/10/nbc-exec-voices/. [↩]
11. Alex Woodson and Paul J. Gough, “NBC Uni sours on ‘Apple monster,’” The Hollywood Reporter, December 4, 2007, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/nbc-uni-sours-apple-monster-156300/. [↩]
12. Alex Woodson and Paul J. Gough, “NBC Uni finalizes iTunes pullout,” The Hollywood Reporter, December 4, 2007, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/nbc-uni-finalizes-itunes-pullout-156315/. [↩]
13. Eleanor Patterson, “From Network Syndicator to Adult Disney: A Brief History of Hulu,” Flow, June 3, 2021, https://www.flowjournal.org/2021/06/brief-history-hulu/. [↩]