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 history, 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.
Chapter 1: Introduction: Exploring Discourses of Streaming Television s Exceptionalism.- Chapter 2: Return to the Old Ways: Instituting Broadcast Practices of Programme Dissemination on American Online Television Platforms.- Chapter 3: Properties of Episodicity: Structuring American Television Drama Narratives for SVOD services.- Chapter 4: Digital Pilots from YouTube to Television: Short-Form Comedy and the Persistence of British Broadcasting Practices.- Chapter 5: Beyond Cultural Homogenisation: Korean Television on Netflix and the Endurance of National Identity in Global Streaming.- Chapter 6: Conclusions.
Dr. Anthony N. Smith is a lecturer in television theory at the University of Salford, UK. He is the author of Storytelling Industries (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).
