This book examines the extent to which the practices of television's past are shaping its online future. Challenging industry and scholarly claims of digital disruption, it demonstrates how streaming giants like Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video, alongside public service broadcasters like the BBC and Channel 4, maintain deep continuities with television's past, adapting established industry practices online rather than abandoning them. The authors look at how media institutions have applied conventional broadcast television practices around live transmissions, linear scheduling, commercial interruption, and episode release cadences to streaming platforms; how narrative and genre norms continue to underpin American television drama and British TV sitcoms in online contexts; and how globalised streaming services cultivate country specific programming and retain close ties to traditional practices of national broadcasting systems in South Korea.
"Television Goes Back to the Future provides a necessary and insightful counter to persistent claims that digital technologies are revolutionary. Smith and Minor offer an essential exploration of how television is as much about continuity as it is about change."
-Professor Elizabeth Evans, University of Nottingham, UK
This book examines the extent to which the practices of television's past are shaping its online future. Challenging industry and scholarly claims of digital disruption, it demonstrates how streaming giants like Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime Video, alongside public service broadcasters like the BBC and Channel 4, maintain deep continuities with television's past, adapting established industry practices online rather than abandoning them. The authors look at how media institutions have applied conventional broadcast television practices around live transmissions, linear scheduling, commercial interruption, and episode release cadences to streaming platforms; how narrative and genre norms continue to underpin American television drama and British TV sitcoms in online contexts; and how globalised streaming services cultivate country specific programming and retain close ties to traditional practices of national broadcasting systems in South Korea.
Dr. Anthony N. Smith is a lecturer in television theory at the University of Salford, UK. He is the author of Storytelling Industries (Palgrave, 2018), co-author of Transmedia/Genre (2023), and co-editor of Storytelling in the Media Convergence Age (2014).
Dr. Laura Minor is a lecturer in television studies at the University of Salford, UK. She is the author of Reclaiming Female Authorship in UK Television Comedy (2024) and serves as Co-Investigator on the AHRC-funded project 'What's on? Rethinking Class in the TV Industry' (2023-26).
