Reconfiguring Television for a Networked, Produsage Context

Abstract

The rise of user-led content creation and distribution, or produsage, is by now well recognised. User-produced content is providing a well-needed corrective to industrial journalism; user-produced creative work has become a regular component of the standard media diet for many users; and user-led distribution of content through file-sharing networks is now an important means of accessing content, and is cautiously being explored as a means of distribution by mainstream media producers. Such phenomena are beginning to affect the television industry. On the one hand, the user-led distribution of television programming now enables producers to bypass traditional distribution channels altogether; on the other, traditional television channels are already anticipating such moves through an increase in live content and event television. There is also a contrary movement of user-produced material further into the mainstream of the mediasphere. This article outlines a number of the operational models now available to players in the television industry: enlisting file-sharers in the direct distribution of TV shows to audiences; moving further towards a focus on live event television; and embracing user creativity in pursuit of produsage-based television models. It examines these options against a context of continuing convergence and change in the content industries.