The Brink: Has the rumored death of broadcast television at the hands of streaming been greatly exaggerated?

Howell: I do think it’s been exaggerated. It’s less of a death and maybe more of an assimilation.

Broadcasting still plays a vital role in the media ecosystem, especially of the large conglomerates, because it is the one place that can reach more people than those who are cable subscribers or who have broadband internet. YouTube might be close, but you still need broadband internet to see that. Whereas [with] broadcast TV, you still only need a television set and a digital antenna. 

It’s also about exposure. If [shows] can have an episode following the Super Bowl, that’s a long-standing strategy for bringing in the biggest audience in television. That’s still where broadcasting plays a significant role. Yes, there are simulcasts, but if you didn’t have a cable subscription or Paramount+ subscription, CBS was the only [place] you could watch [the Super Bowl]. Sports are going to keep national network systems running, because sports require liveness; liveness feeds advertising, and the networks don’t have to produce an expensive, scripted series for 20 episodes a season.

Cable, as a system of television distribution, is where my worries about viability going forward are more directed. Sports was one of the main ways for many years that cable systems would get their revenue, maintain subscribers. In the last couple of years, a lot of the regional sports networks are disappearing or declaring bankruptcy. So we could lose cable at some point, especially because free, ad-based streaming services, like Pluto TV, are gaining popularity. So much of cable is being replicated in streaming services.

The Brink: Does it matter at the end of the day? Are the production companies making the same shows that we would be watching on that old TV, and now we’re just watching them on a different box?

Howell: It has [changed] in some respects. There’s been more experimentation. There are Netflix shows with 15-minute episodes, and we have shorter, six- or eight-episode seasons. 

It’s an oligopoly, [which is] of a couple of companies really dominating. The danger here is not that systems will go away, it’s that the illusion of choice will continue in terms of programming. If a creator has this interesting idea for a TV show, when there’s more competition in the marketplace, you might be able to find space for a pushing-the-boundary-type show that doesn’t fit the algorithmically dictated format. Notoriously, Seinfeld was almost canceled on NBC early on, but it was given time to find its legs and became one of the biggest hits. The Office didn’t really hit too much in the first season, but found its legs in the second season.
 
But now, the window for success is so much smaller. My students are like, why does Netflix keep canceling shows after only one or two seasons? And the point is that money speaks, and one season often doesn’t hit well enough.

The Brink: If you’re streaming, it seems you generally don’t gather the family around the TV at certain times to watch these shows. Are viewing behaviors changing because of this?

Howell: Absolutely. Even a lot of my students say that they feel like they’ve lost something. Maybe they want the communal experience of watching something together, and it sometimes is reflected in their assignments. It’s like there’s a nostalgia for a time that they barely remember in their younger days, or what they have seen represented in television, of appointment-based TV viewing. Everybody in the friend group or family gathers together and watches a show together.