Abstract
This paper examines a set of ‘new television’ projects and their relationship to existing understandings of the object of television. The rise of online video-sharing has been surrounded by discourse about the decline of broadcast television's role for content delivery and advertising revenue. Amidst discussions of ‘piracy’ and debates about new audience measurement techniques and user-generated content, official and unofficial platforms for the distribution of television content have emerged. Some of these sites — like ‘internet TV’ projects such as the Participatory Culture Foundation's Miro TV player — have positioned themselves directly in opposition to television itself, orienting themselves as alternatives or replacements for the broadcast-and-cable-delivered-to-your-set experience. Others — such as CBS's Innertube — attempt to reapply network logics to the online space. Interrogating how the term ‘television’ succeeds or fails to describe these services helps to contextualise the object of television itself, as well as exploring the insights new services provide into audiencehood, national broadcasting and the community-forming roles television has traditionally played.
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