Reposted from Linked In (supporting launch of Critical Studies in Television article) March 17, 2025
If you want to get nerdy... a new academic journal article linked here develops in greater detail the idea used in After Mass Media: Storytelling for Microaudiences in the Twenty-First Century (avail April 15) that one way to make sense of the range of screen stories now common is by recognizing that we now have multiple, coexisting ‘modes of industrial practice.’
Throughout most of the 20th century, one mode dominated in most countries (an industrial-grade mode driven by commercial aims in the US in contrast to a public service one in the UK). These modes were our first experience with television, and we came to see them as ‘normal’ or how ‘television’ worked. But they weren’t normal. They resulted from the technological capabilities of broadcasting that well suited ad and government funding (because broadcast signals can’t exclude those who don’t pay).
I discuss three newer modes: international, spectacular, and character study that deviate from the industrial-grade mode that dominated 20th-century US television. The mode encompasses the mandate (commercial/non), economic features, and technological conditions to yield variation in prioritized textual features. All this is set in a context, typically national, that shapes what can be done based on cultural and regulatory features.
Timing of change varies by country; in the US, the dominant industrial-grade mode of practice – a way of operating that prioritized the efficiency of long-running series with 20+ episodes per seasons – faced alternatives by the early 2000s. Cable originals drew some support from subscribers to adjust the economic features and correspondingly prioritized different kinds of stories.
By the 2020s, an international mode of industrial practice that creates titles foremost for an international viewership is clearly identifiable. This is different than making titles for a domestic market and then selling them abroad. And given the growing role of multi-territory streamer commissions in overall output, we need to understand these titles as developing from a particular industrial context that sets the priorities for their storytelling features.
An inordinate amount of press attention focuses on titles that derive from a spectacular mode of industrial practice. These titles have budgets – for production and promotion – that are more like Hollywood movies than television. Expectations and metrics for these series are unlike other series and only multi-territory streamers commission them.
Finally we have a character study mode of industrial practice that also makes titles that were impossible in the past, at least for US industrial-grade norms. These titles tell ‘small’ stories about characters with many layers.
The thinking behind these modes came from the need for a solution to the difficulty of saying anything about ‘series’ by the 2020s – there was too much variation to make any claim. By linking story features to the conditions of production, we have a tool that is stronger than something like genre (which has a lot of internal variation) or making distinction by commissioning distribution technology. We came to see quickly that Netflix commissioned a lot of different kinds of series, so that history of distinguishing ‘broadcast’ and ‘cable’ series wouldn’t work. There may be other modes – these are just the ones that well captured the greatest variation in my mind.
Maybe these distinctions seem like naval gazing, but they are intended to better help us have conversations about ‘series’ when considerable variation in kinds of stories and budgets, distribution technologies, and metrics of success exists.
