Abstract
This chapter discusses television as the ‘hub’ of media convergence in a pre-digital era. In this, it remains focussed on the TV II era by looking at the VCR as technology of control and time-shifting as the practice of ‘controlling television’. The VCR also made it possible to watch programming exclusively designed for it (such as aerobics or how-to videos), meaning the function of the television set could be extended beyond linear television. The chapter further discusses video games as another technology that transformed the television set in the TV II era. The VCR and video games both emerged as technologies that changed the function of the television set from medium that exclusively transmits broadcasting signals to medium that can be used to watch films at home, record and time-shift television programmes or play video games. Thus, ancillary technologies transform the set into central ‘hub’ of media convergence.
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Notes
- 1.
The taping of a programme while watching another one to avoid conflict confirms the view voiced in the last chapter that dissent within household over who controls the remote control may have been more an imagined problem within cultural discourse in the context of anti-feminist backlash than a real issue.
- 2.
The ‘ritual’ of re-watching clearly predated the vast diffusion of VCRs in the US in the 1980s (see Klinger 2006, 135–7).
- 3.
As suggested above in relation to archiving, Klinger also links the practice to male viewers. Though often studied less, the practice of repeat viewing is also common among women, as cult films more associated with female viewers, from Dirty Dancing (Ardolino, 1987) to Clueless to Titanic show.
- 4.
The so-called ‘format war’ was the competition between Betamax and VHS tapes as delivery format for pre-recorded tapes.
- 5.
In the US, the Telecommunications Act of 1996 lifted many restrictions for large corporations to own a range of media companies across sectors. This led to a vast expansion of media companies, both within the US and internationally, referred to as conglomeration.
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Jenner, M. (2018). New Regimes of Control: Television as Convergence Medium. In: Netflix and the Re-invention of Television. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94316-9_4
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