Lotz, A. D. and Potter, A. (2022). “Effective Cultural Policy in the 21st Century: Challenges and Strategies from Australian Television” International Journal of Cultural Policy.
This article uses Australia to illustrate the need for more ambitious cultural policy measures in response to industrial reconfiguration wrought by digital distribution and other industry change. In many countries, cultural policy is challenged by industrial shifts that have further escalated the internationalisation of the television industry in ways that directly challenge policy mechanisms designed to ensure the achievement of cultural objectives. In Australia, cultural policy has also been diminished by politically popular industry-sector supports that have subordinated cultural policy to economic objectives such as job creation. With increased market pressure to produce ‘stories that travel’, criteria such as creative talents’ citizenship and location of production do little to guarantee the achievement of television that reflects the ‘identity, character and cultural diversity’ of the country. The article identifies how contemporary market conditions require more extensive criteria – such as a culture test – to meet the aims of 21st-century cultural policy.
Fioroni, S., Lotz, A.D., Hiaeshutter-Rice, D., and Soroka, S. (2021). “Political Sorting in US Entertainment Media.” Popular Communication.
Analysis of public opinion, news consumption, and social media has examined increasing political polarization and/or partisan sorting; however, few have explored the potential connection between entertainment programming and political sorting. This paper examines viewership of U.S. television entertainment from 2001 to 2016 and finds increasing differentiation in the shows watched in primarily Democratic versus primarily Republican markets. Notably, these years coincide with partisan sorting in news consumption and enhanced fracturing of the U.S. television landscape. The article confirms growing differences in the most-watched shows in heavily Democratic versus Republican regions, a finding that provides uncommon evidence of suspected differentiation by political view and of the need to adapt theories of the “mass” media function of entertainment television to a context of greater fragmentation and choice.
Lobato, R and Lotz, A. D. (2021). “Beyond Streaming Wars: Rethinking Competition in Video Services” Media Industries Journal. 8.1.
Internet-distributed video services have attracted exceptional attention in recent years for their novelty and growth. Business and trade discussions frequently excerpt internet-distributed video services from the broader field of video and narrowly construct their relationship as one of direct competition (e.g., streaming wars). However, there are several distinguishing characteristics of these services that make their relationship more complex. This article explores the multifaceted distinctions and markets within internet-distributed video, including differences in programming, geography, audience, business model, and market position. We also consider what is at stake in different imaginings of video markets for media industry scholarship and policy.
Potter, A. and Lotz, A. D. (2021). “The First Stage of Australian’s Digital Transition and Its Implications for Australian Television Drama.” Media International Australia.
This article analyses how digitisation and screen policy reform altered the production of domestic drama and children’s programmes in Australia. Focusing on dynamics that developed before widespread use of streaming services, it maps the disruptions and evolution that digital ‘multi-channels’ caused and how they challenged audiovisual policy frameworks intended to safeguard local television including drama on advertiser-funded broadcasters. The article reveals how the effects of fragmentation undermined commercial television’s business model and eroded investment in scripted content. Shifting policy priorities also brought new support mechanisms for local programmes and led to adjustments to the ABC’s drama funding practices, with significant effects on the form, content, and cultural visibility of Australian drama. This initial stage of digital disruption – spanning roughly 2001–2014 – is often overlooked but is crucial for appreciating the challenges facing Australian television drama production in the 2020s.
Lotz, A. D., Potter, A., and Johnson, C. (2021). “Understanding the Changing Television Market: A Comparison of the Macroeconomy of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia,” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies.
The business of television has been transformed by digital distribution and internationalisation. The implications of these changes vary based on a range of structural dynamics such as national scale, language and pre-existing norms tied to particular macroeconomic conditions, of which, the balance of funding is key. This article looks beyond the general sense of crisis tied to digital disruption to investigate the macroeconomic conditions that shape how national television industries are able to adapt and respond to the disruption. Although disruption is universal, different macroeconomic conditions enable different industrial impacts and possible policy solutions. The article uses comparative analysis of three English language countries with very distinctive television ecologies to reveal the under-acknowledged role macroeconomic features – particularly the advent of new tools for advertising – play in shaping the options and opportunities for national industries going forward.
Lotz, A. D. and Sanson, K. (2021). “Foreign Ownership of Production Companies as a New Mechanism of Internationalizing Television: The Case of Australian Scripted Television,” Television & New Media.
This article explores the rise in foreign television production company ownership at the beginning of the twenty-first century as a new mechanism of internationalization. It joins mechanisms such as foreign program sales and transnational satellite channels in shifting television further from its domestic origins. To date, examination of television’s internationalization has focused on programs and programming. Foreign ownership may be a less obvious “cultural” form of business internationalization, but it nevertheless affects the television culture made available in many places and poses consequences for cultures of consumption. Foreign ownership also opens up new avenues of inquiry for global television scholars to question the shifting geographies of power in the field of television production.
Lotz, A. D. (2021) “Unpopularity and Cultural Power in the Age of Netflix: New Questions for Cultural Studies’ Approaches to Television Texts,” European Journal of Cultural Studies.
Although Internet-distributed television bears much in common with the television long studied and theorized using cultural studies-based approaches to analysis, several of its features profoundly deviate from earlier television norms and require reassessment and adaptation of theoretical frames. This article focuses on the issue of textual popularity in relation to these services and identifies key challenges to using the same frames of cultural power that have been used for studying television in the past. The underlying problem of audience fragmentation does not originate with streaming services, but this profound contextual change, in concert with industrial aspects that further distinguish internet-distributed television from television’s past norms, must be addressed. The article concludes by identifying several ways the cultural power of streaming services can be investigated despite the challenges that emerging norms of Internet-distributed video provide.
Lotz, A. D. (2020). In Between the Global and the Local: Mapping the Geographies of Netflix as a Multinational Service. International Journal of Cultural Studies
The different technological affordances and revenue models of subscriber-funded, internet- distributed video streaming services have altered the competitive environments of audiovisual services. One category of these services, multinational SVODs (subscription video on demand), are changing the dynamics of transnational video distribution. Although having subscribers and offices, and commissioning content from many countries, are obvious measures of these services’ multinational status, the extent to which the distinct affordances of these services diminish the national lens through which all other international television trade occurs may be the most profound measure. The article explores how this too becomes a distinguishing competitive tool for Netflix that enables uncommon content strategies, such as the ability to program for tastes and sensibilities too small to effectively form a viable market for services limited by national reach.
Hesmondhalgh, David and Lotz, Amanda D. (2020). Video screen interfaces as new sites of media circulation power. International Journal of Communication, 14.
Abstract: This article examines the screen interfaces that have become central to the experience of television, film, and video content in an era when Internet-distributed video coexists with older technologies. We outline how these interfaces represent new sites of media circulation power in their ability to direct audiences toward certain kinds of experience and content, and therefore away from others, power that we contextualize in the longer term history of media industries. We identify multiple levels of video interface: those provided by various video devices, those offered by video services, those of marketplaces that sell services, and aggregated interfaces that blend all of these activities. We identify mechanisms of circulation power that can be applied to all of these interface types, including interface placement, recommendation, search and other functions, and metric display power. We conclude by outlining some ways in which policy and regulation might respond to these emerging forms of media circulation power, and the implications for research on streaming services and other developments in the media industries. Keywords interfaces, video, television, film, circulation, search, algorithmic recommendation
Lotz, Amanda D. (2019) Teasing apart television industry disruption: Consequences of meso-level financing practices before and after the US multiplatform era. Media, Culture & Society, 41(7), pp. 923-938.
Abstract: The emergence of Internet-distributed television services such as Netflix has led viewers and legacy television companies to rethink the norms of television. Internet distribution is often presumed as the source of Netflix’s market differentiation, but the contemporary competitive field has simultaneously been adjusted by shifts in revenue model and ownership regulations. This article examines the multiple shifts in the US television industry to illustrate how adjustments in the underlying financing practices of series production and revenue sources also structure the multiplatform environment. Distribution technology is not reshaping the boundaries and norms of television texts and industries alone, but adjustments to industrial practices such as financing must also be examined. Comparison of the financing practices of subscriber-funded, linear, HBO, and nonlinear Netflix ground the analysis.
Herbert, Daniel, Lotz, Amanda D., & Marshall, Lee (2019) Approaching media industries comparatively: A case study of streaming. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 22(3), pp. 349-366.
Abstract: Although ‘streaming’ media has become increasingly common across multiple media industries, significant differences underpin the industrial practices that allow this behavior and explain discrepant experiences of internet distribution across industries. This article uses collaborative comparative media industry analysis to investigate the commonalities and variations among streaming in the US music, film, and television industries to assess the viability of theorizing the cultural implications of streaming as a consistent phenomenon across media industries. The article explores the consistencies and divergences of streaming among consumer experience, business practices, and textual implications to compare how established uses, production practices, and media content have been affected by internet distribution. Such detailed industry comparison is a novel approach, and the article also considers the methodological value of rigorous collaboration among scholars expert in different media industries. The analysis is based on industry data and practices obtained through trade press, industry reports, and interviews with media workers consistent with a critical media industries approach.
Lotz, Amanda D. (2019) The multifaceted policy challenges of transnational Internet-distributed television. International Journal of Digital Television, 10(1), pp. 27-31.
Abstract: As services such as Netflix and Amazon Video have overcome the business challenges that long stymied the technological potential of Internet-distributed television, they have also introduced a range of policy challenges. Not only do these services lack governance by a clear regulatory regime in many countries, but their entrance to the competitive field of audio-visual service providers refigures the policy established for broadcast, cable and satellite industries. These challenges are simultaneously opportunities, as Internet-distributed television also provides tools that might effectively achieve policy goals.
Lotz, Amanda D., Lobato, Ramon, & Thomas, Julian (2018) Internet-distributed television research: A provocation. Media Industries, 5(2), pp. 35-47.
Abstract: From Netflix and Hulu to iPlayer and iQiyi, the rapid growth of internet-distributed television services worldwide presents both opportunities and challenges for media industry scholars. Which business models are succeeding in different countries, and why? What frameworks help us explain and talk about television amid such a variety of industrial practices? This article provides a critical overview of the emerging research landscape and suggests future lines of inquiry. We offer seven provocations regarding specific issues in internet-distributed television research—theory, comparison, market definition, historiography, regulation, user experience, and industry transformation.
Lotz, Amanda D. (2018) Evolution or revolution? Television in transformation. Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal of Television Studies, 13(4), pp. 491-494.
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?
Lotz, A. D. (2017). “Linking Industrial and Creative Change in 21st Century U.S. Television.” In Special Edition: TV Now, edited by Sue Turnbull, Marion McCutcheon, and Amanda D. Lotz, Media International Australia 161(1): 10-20. DOI: 10.1177/1329878X17707066
Abstract: The US television industry began experiencing profound change in the early 21st century, change that likewise manifest in the programs of the era. This article explores how and why scripted US television series evolved so profoundly at the dawn of the 21st century and what this might tell us about the continued disruption introduced by Internet-distributed television. The article identifies the industrial practices that propelled and challenged this change and examines how the conditions of creative workers adjusted alongside textual possibilities. Drawn from interviews and archival research, the article relies on case studies of the production histories of milestone series in this evolution to assess the shifting competitive norms and the consequences of textual innovation for creative workers, commercial media industries, and audiences.
Lotz, A. D. (2016) “The Paradigmatic Evolution of U.S. Television and the Emergence of Internet-Distributed Television” Icono 14 Journal of Communication and Emergent Technologies, volume 14 (2), pp. 122-142. doi: 10.7195/ri14.v14i1.993
Abstract: Television industries around the world have weathered profound change as technologies advanced and services developed to allow internet-distributed television to compete alongside broadcast and cable-distributed television. This article, drawn from the context of the U.S., explores the emergence of internet-distributed television as a mechanism that provides the affordance of nonlinear distribution. It assesses the preliminary organization of internet-distributed television by portals and explores the similarities and differences between portals and networks/channels with an eye toward conceptualizing emerging business practices and strategies.
UNDER CONSTRUCTION--SELECTED ARTICLES WITH LINKS
Gray, J. and Lotz, A. D. (2013). “A Robust and Dynamic Field.” Media, Culture & Society, 35.8: 1019-1022.
Lotz, A. D. (2013). Review Essay: “Television 2013.” Cinema Journal 52.3: 190-7.
Lotz, A. D. (2013). “What Old Media Can Teach New Media,” in online support materials for Spreadable Media, by Henry Jenkins, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green (New York: New York University Press).
Draper, J. and A. D. Lotz, (2012). “Making Sense of Homophobia in Rescue Me: ‘Working Through’ as Ideological Strategy” Television and New Media 13(6): 520-34.
Lotz, A. D. (2011). “Television Studies?” Critical Studies in Television 6.1: 110-11.
Lotz, A. D. (2010). “US Television and the Recession: Impetus for Change?” Popular Communication: International Journal of Media and Culture 8.3: 186-9.
Havens, T., A. D. Lotz, and S. Tinic. (2009). “Critical Media Industry Studies: A Research Approach.” Communication, Culture and Critique 2: 234-53.
Lotz, A. D. (2009). “Interactive TV Too Early: The False Start of QUBE.” The Velvet Light Trap 64: 106-7.
Lotz, A. D. (2009). “What is U.S. Television Now.” Special Issue, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science: End of Television?: Its Impact on the World (So Far), eds. Elihu Katz and Paddy Scannell.
Lotz, A. D. (2008). “On “Television Criticism”: The Pursuit of the Critical Examination of a Popular Art.” Popular Communication: International Journal of Media and Culture 6.1: 20-36.
Lotz, A. D. (2008). “New Media Policy?” Journal of E-Media Studies 1.1.
Lotz, A. D. (2007). “How to Spend $9.3 Billion in Three Days: Examining the Upfront Buying Process in the Production of US Television Culture.” Media, Culture and Society 29.4: 549-67.
Lotz, A. D. (2007). “The Promotional Role of the Network Upfront Presentations in the Production of Culture.” Television & New Media 8.1: 3-24.
Lotz, A. D. (2005). “Seventeen Days In July at Hollywood and Highland: Examining the Television Critics Association Tour.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 33.1: 22-28 .
Lotz, A. D. (2004). “Using ‘Network’ Theory in the Post-Network Era: Fictional 9/11 U.S. Television Discourse as a ‘Cultural Forum.’” Screen 45.4: 423-439.
Lotz, A. D. (2004). “Textual (Im)Possibilities in the U.S. Post-Network Era: Negotiating Production and Promotion Processes on Lifetime’s Any Day Now.” Critical Studies in Media Communication21.1: 22-43. Reprinted in Television: The Critical View, 7th ed. edited by Horace Newcomb (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 223-44.
Lotz, A. D. and S. M. Ross. (2004). “Bridging Media Specific Approaches: The Value of Feminist Television Criticism.” Feminist Media Studies 4.2: 187-204.
Lotz, A. D. and S. M. Ross. (2004). “Toward Ethical Cyberspace Audience Research: Strategies for Using the Internet for Television Audience Studies.” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media48.3: 501-13.
Lotz, A. D. (2003). “Communicating Third-Wave Feminism and New Social Movements: Challenges for the Next Century of Feminist Endeavor.” Women and Language 26.1: 2-9.