US television’s expanding modes of industrial practice

Abstract

The multifaceted change in series production and distribution since the turn of the century has diversified industrial structures and, correspondingly, expanded the scope of commercially viable storytelling. This expansion has introduced variation that has made it difficult to make claims of television series to the extent once possible. This article identifies ‘modes of industrial practice’ as a heuristic for subcategorizing series based on differentiated industrial conditions that better enables the identification of consistent subfields of series.