NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY TV Repair: New Media “Solutions” to Old Media Problems A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Field of Screen Cultures By Bret Maxwell Dawson EVANSTON, ILLINOIS DECEMBER 2008 2 © Copyright by Bret Maxwell Dawson 2008 All rights reserved 3 ABSTRACT TV Repair: New Media “Solutions” to Old Media Problems Bret Maxwell Dawson Television’s history has at numerous points been punctuated by pronouncements that technological innovations will improve its programming, empower its audiences, and heal the injuries it has inflicted on American society. This enduring faith in the inevitability and imminence of television’s technological salvation is the subject of this dissertation. TV Repair offers a series of case studies of the promotion and reception of four new media technologies, each of which was at the moment of its introduction touted by members of various constituencies as a technological fix for television’s problems, as well as for the problems television’s critics have accused it of causing. At each of these moments of innovation, I explore the questions, fantasies, fears, and power struggles provoked by television’s convergence with new media, as well as the social, cultural, and economic contexts within which these mergers take place. Taken together, these case studies broaden our understanding of television’s technological history, and contribute to an ongoing dialogue about television’s place within studies of “new media.” In many contexts, television acts as a convenient shorthand for “old media,” connoting the passivity, centralization, and rigidity that new media promise to deliver us from. TV Repair invites a reconsideration of this easy equivalency, calling attention to the ways that television itself “becomes new” through convergence. In this dissertation, I argue 4 that “becoming new” is a matter of social redefinition, carried out in advertisements, sales brochures, instruction manuals, media reports, and everyday talk. These acts of social redefinition exploit television’s latent instability to reopen debates about what television is and might become. At these moments, television once again seems to possess a glimmer of the potential typically identified with new media. In addition to offering a cultural history of the idea that new media will repair television, then, this dissertation is also about how television reclaims a sense of “novelty” during these instances. It is, in other words, a history of television as a new medium. 5 Acknowledgements First and foremost, thanks is due to the members of my dissertation committee, Lynn Spigel, Jennifer Light, and Jeffrey Sconce. Lynn, Jen, and Jeff all demonstrated a remarkable degree of understanding and patience in the face of the many calamities that befell me during my time at Northwestern. Between having my apartment burglarized (and my computer stolen) as I slept on the night before my qualifying exams to learning that the home I had just purchased in Bloomington was contaminated with asbestos on the verge of submitting my dissertation’s final draft, on more than a few occasions during the last four years I came to the conclusion I was somehow jinxed. In retrospect, I realize that the opposite was true, and I now recognize how fortunate I am to have had the opportunity to work with individuals who, in addition to being brilliant scholars and generous mentors, are also wonderful, caring people. In particular, I must express my deepest gratitude to Lynn Spigel for her invaluable editorial insight, her professional guidance, and, most of all, her friendship. Many friends and colleagues have also made immeasurable contributions to this dissertation and, more broadly, to my development as a scholar. Amber Watts has been both a friend and a mentor since my first year at Northwestern; not a Tribal Council goes by that I don’t miss living in the same city as her and her partner, Ron. On many occasions, my classmate Margo Miller provided me with feedback on the papers and articles that would eventually become this dissertation’s chapters. Perhaps even more importantly, Margo was always 6 available for spur of the moment trips to Hot Doug’s, where we passed many hours that we should have spent writing stuffing our faces and obsessing about the minutiae of academic life. James Bennett and Daniel Chamberlain have become close friends over the course of our many collaborations, and Chris Meir has consistently brightened my spirits with his stories. Charlotte Brunsdon, Helen Wheatley, Rachel Mosley, David Morley, John Caldwell, Vicky Johnson, Martin Roberts, Jon Gray, and my new colleagues Chris Anderson, Barbara Klinger, and Josh Malitsky have all generously offered me their guidance and encouragement, and for this I thank them. But the individual to whom both I and this dissertation owe the greatest debt is my wife and best friend, Caitlin O’Connor. It is Caitlin’s love that has sustained me and given me strength and happiness, not only throughout the miserable period during which it seemed that all I did was work on this dissertation, but also for the last fourteen years. And that is why, as with everything, this dissertation is for Caitlin. 7 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: Television Repair: New Media “Solutions” to Old Media Problems 8 Chapter One Close Quarters, Remote Control 44 Chapter Two Home Video: Repairing “The TV Problem” 113 Chapter Three Rationalizing Television 188 Chapter Four Television’s Placeless Mobile Future 261 Conclusion 328 8 Introduction Television Repair: New Media “Solutions” to Old Media Problems During a panel on “The Impact of Web 2.0” at the 2007 Davos World Economic Forum, then Microsoft CEO Bill Gates confidently predicted that within five years the Internet would revolutionize television. “I’m stunned how people aren’t seeing that with TV, in five years from now, people will laugh at what we’ve had,” Gates told the audience of diplomats, business leaders, journalists, bloggers, and assorted celebrities and rock stars.1 Gates’ remarks at Davos did elicit laughter, but they were mainly at his, and not television’s, expense. Also on stage with Gates that day was Chad Hurley, CEO of the video sharing website YouTube.com. Only months before Google had purchased YouTube.com for $1.65 billion, outbidding Microsoft and a number of other companies. As Internet insta-pundits were quick to point out, Hurley’s presence on the rostrum suggested a very different timetable for television’s transformation, one in which 1 Ben Hirschler, “Internet to revolutionize TV in 5 years: Gates” URL (Accessed March 13, 2007): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2007/01/27/ AR2007012700589.html/. 9 Gates was well behind the curve.2 In a flurry of blog posts and message board comments, the digerati heaped snark on Gates for being oblivious to the fact that the revolution he forecast had already transpired, leaving Microsoft (not to mention its founder and chief executive) in the dust. “Bill Gates looked deep into his crystal ball and prognosticated that in 5 years, TV will be a lame duck and watching video on the internet will be all the rage,” observed the website DownloadSquad.com. “A little late to the dance, Billy?”3 Adding insult to injury, footage from “The Impact of Web 2.0” panel was uploaded to YouTube.com, preserving Gates ignominious remarks for posterity on the Microsoft competitor’s website.4 In many respects, those who skewered Gates in the aftermath of Davos had a point: predictions that the Internet will revolutionize television were old news by 2007, having a lineage that stretched back at least as far as the 1990s writings of such prominent cyberenthusiasts as George Gilder, Nicholas Negroponte, and … Bill Gates.5 Gates himself had suggested in his 1995 book The Road Ahead that television’s destiny was to be reinvented in the image of 2 Jackson West, “Gates: TV Is Doomed,” URL (Accessed June 12, 2007): http://newteevee.com/2007/01/29/gates-tv-is-doomed/; see also Philip Swann, “Bill Gates: TV Is Terrible” URL (Accessed June 12, 2007): http://www.tvpredictions.com/ gates012807.htm/. 3 “Gates Says TV Is Doomed, Internet Where It’s At” URL (Accessed May 18, 2007): http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/01/27/gates-says-tv-is-doomed- internet-where-its-at/. 4 URL (Accessed July 25, 2008): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xXlZK5rCls/. 5 George Gilder, Life After Television: The Coming Transformation of Media and American Life (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1994); Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital (New York: Vintage, 1995). 10 the networked personal computer.6 Like many others in this period, Gates insisted that computers would make television more democratic, interactive, and edifying, redeeming a medium that for more than fifty years had failed to live up to its potentials. But even by that point, forecasts of television’s impending technological rebirth were anything but new. Television’s history has at numerous points been punctuated by pronouncements like Gates’ that technological innovations would improve its programming, empower its audiences, and heal the injuries it has inflicted on American society. Considered in this light, Gates’ statements at Davos are perhaps not quite as “laughable” as the digerati made them out to be at the time. Quite the contrary, they reiterated a longstanding faith in the inevitability and imminence of television’s technological salvation, apparently a faith that many of those who lambasted Gates shared. This enduring faith in the power of new media technologies to rehabilitate television is the subject of this dissertation. TV Repair offers a series of case studies of the promotion and reception of four new media technologies, each of which was at the moment of its introduction touted by members of various constituencies as a technological fix for television’s problems, as well as for the problems television’s critics have accused it of causing.