The Web as Television Reimagined? Online Networks and the Pursuit of Legacy Media

Bibliographic Data

ID7500657
AuthorsAymar Jean Christian (0000-0003-1953-0266, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume36
Issue4
Pages340-356
Publication date2012-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Communication Inquiry (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0196-8599 • E-ISSN: 1552-4612
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0196859912462604
OpenAlexW2138038949
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited21

Television’s perceived weakness at the turn of the century opened a rhetorical and economic space for entrepreneurs eager to curate and distribute web programs. These companies introduced various forms of experimentation they associated with the advantages of digital technologies, but they also maintained continuity with television’s business practices. This dialectic between old and new, continuity and change, insiders and outsiders, reflected the instability of television as a concept and the promise of the web as an alternative. Using articles in the trade press, this essay explores the history of episodic web programming—variously called web series, webisodes, bitcoms, web television and, in its earliest form, cybersoaps—as new media network executives hoped to replicate but also differentiate themselves from legacy media

Advertising · Art · Business · Dialectic · Literature · Media studies · Rhetorical question · Sociology · Television studies · Computer Science · Media Studies and Communication · Radio, Podcasts, and Digital Media · Social Media and Politics

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