In Plain Sight: Online TV Interfaces as Branding

Abstract

Industrial discourses surrounding subscription video on demand (SVOD) services are deeply embedded in the rhetoric of viewer choice and control. However, these discourses are often misleading, with viewers given only nominal amounts of agency in their viewing experience, most often circumscribed by the limited affordances of the service’s interface. This article takes online TV interfaces as its object of study and interrogates to what ends SVODs use them. In particular, it examines how the interface can operate as a part of an SVOD’s larger branding campaign. Using Netflix as a case study, the article argues that the interface is discursively positioned as empowering viewers to easily find what they want to watch, yet the actual operation and affordances of the interface significantly delimit viewer agency. Instead, the interface works to guide viewers to Netflix original content to strengthen the core brand values of abundance, personalization, and exclusivity.

Conceptualizing the Experiential Affordances of Watching Online TV

“…Wariness with how content is organized relates to a sense of being steered toward a fraction of available content, corroborating Van Esler’s (2020, 7) portrayal of online TV interfaces as shepherding viewers in certain directions. Metaphorically, most parts of the library are gated off in low-level and hard-to-reach bunkers.…”

“…Williams’ notion of flow holds a prominent position in television studies, including how flow is reconceptualized to account for online TV (Cox 2018; Gray and Lotz 2019). Yet whether agency has shifted toward viewers is a disputed claim (Van Esler 2020), and as argued by Gray and Lotz (2019, 132), “the structuring forces Williams gestured towards persist.” That is, we should direct our attention toward how interfaces, algorithms, and menus work to create streaming flows, replacing the sequenced scheduling-flow of linear television. Likewise, but more radically, Johnson (2019) and Cox (2018) position user agency more as an illusion than a reality.…”

“Shudder” and the Aesthetics and Platform Logics of Genre-Specific SVOD services

“…In essence, this is the power to direct audiences toward certain kinds of experience and content, and therefore away from others” (Hesmondhalgh and Lotz 2020, 387). Hesmondhalgh and Lotz, along with other scholars who have deployed interface analysis to understand the strategic practices of SVODs, have emphasized the political economy of interfaces, as well as their technical affordances and how they relate to the overarching branding strategies of SVODs (Van Esler 2020; Wayne 2018). However, as Balanzategui (2020) has previously noted in the context of children’s streaming video genres, the aesthetics of these interfaces are also a crucial consideration when it comes to understanding how SVODs strategically acquire, position, and organize content, as is understanding of how these aesthetics seek to influence user interactions with and interpretations of both the content and the platform’s distributive logics, as our analysis of Shudder demonstrates.…”

“…We highlight how genre-specific SVOD services like Shudder curate content in ways that differ markedly from major services like Netflix, which prioritize a broad catalog delivered to audiences via algorithms that recommend content in alignment with the user’s personal taste. As Van Esler (2020) points out, “one of the main appeals of services like Netflix are the algorithmically derived, personalized recommendations, whereby one’s viewing habits are fed into a vast matrix of data from all other users to determine which content a viewer might most enjoy” (p. 2). In this way, “Netflix portrays its brand as one of users easily enjoying total control over a limitless amount of content” (Van Esler 2020, 2).…”

“…As Van Esler (2020) points out, “one of the main appeals of services like Netflix are the algorithmically derived, personalized recommendations, whereby one’s viewing habits are fed into a vast matrix of data from all other users to determine which content a viewer might most enjoy” (p. 2). In this way, “Netflix portrays its brand as one of users easily enjoying total control over a limitless amount of content” (Van Esler 2020, 2). Yet niche services like Shudder do not appeal to users via personalized algorithmic recommendation of titles from a seemingly “limitless” catalog: instead, these services are branded around the pleasures of and fan cultures surrounding specific genres.…”