Introduction

Digital production technologies have changed practices and possibilities for creatives working in media industries in many ways. But digitization – a process impacting the industries at least since the early 1990s – also introduces profound adjustments to media distribution that have implications for what these industries produce. Capabilities such as personalized, on-demand access are among the affordances of digital technologies that change how viewers/readers/listeners engage with much contemporary media and allow experiences different from previous forms of media making and circulation.

Digitization has also introduced many less obvious adjustments that are related, although not obviously connected to technological change. It also affects revenue models and financing strategies – among many other things – which simultaneously adjust. Changing revenue models and financing strategies matter very much to commercial media production because such adjustments shift definitions of success and alter creative workers’ incentive structures, which, in turn, redefine the parameters of the creative goods that can be produced within a commercial mandate. New distributors such as Netflix and Amazon Video are entering legacy industries and adopting different practices to create a more diverse array of industrial norms.

The implications of internet distribution now affect all media industries, but not in precisely the same ways. Those seeking to work in the media industries today must thus understand the practices already in place, as well as those just emerging to most effectively negotiate workplaces and opportunities.

This chapter illustrates how the differences among various revenue models and financing strategies establish various measures of success that encourage different types of creative goods. It draws from the case of television to illustrate how changing revenue models and financing strategies affect creative possibilities – what is and can be produced.