![]() ![]() In this paper, we analyze Netflix’s strategic expansion and meteoric growth in Canada, and focus on a landmark event in Canadian broadcasting policymaking: the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s (CRTC) “Let’s Talk TV” hearings of 2013-2014. The rapid encroachment of over-the-top (OTT) content distribution raises policy issues concerning jurisdiction, access, pricing, consolidation of ownership, and source diversity, while undermining many of the traditional policy instruments. ![]() This practice often rejects the restrictions and stipulations of digital broadcasting in favor of a globetrotting, station-hopping exercise of content hunting. Yet, amidst this emerging model of digital broadcasting lie the problems of digital geography and the cultural practice of a streaming culture within the conditions of post-convergence. Large transnational media corporations, typically the holders of popular sporting rights, attempt to bend digital sports content consumption to the broadcast models that they have historically employed. We argue that the streaming of sports content, then, should be understood and analyzed as an enforcement of corporate media strategies and reflection of telecommunication policy, as well as a cultural practice and tactic. Importantly, the geographic fluidity of the Internet often allows users to do this legally-producing meaningful ruptures in the logic that seeks to replicate the structures of mediation central to the television broadcast model within the space of the Internet. This article examines the recent move by many television sports broadcasters of streaming their content online behind geographically restricted “geofences.” Despite the increasing use of this distribution method, we argue that Internet users are increasingly bypassing geofences that center sports consumption within a nationalized television broadcasting framework through the use of VPN (virtual private network) technologies. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |