Discourses of Distribution. Circuit Models of Television

Occupying the organizational space between television’s culture world of production and its audience, TV distribution serves as the institutional site where the industry implements its strategic transactions of global buying, selling, and transmission. Distribution not only connects the industrial processes of production and consumption to one another: these processes also transform TV texts and their meanings in the process. By clarifying how the site of distribution unveils the “residue” of production and the “anticipation” of consumption in addition to serving as its own unique intermediary function on the circuit, our analysis introduces a conceptual depth, or three-dimensionality, into circuit models by mapping nested discourses of globalization onto circuit models, thereby illuminating vertical as well as circular motion on the circuit. Therefore, subsuming distribution under other circuit processes mistakenly implies that distribution contributes nothing unique to television and its meanings. Ultimately, our introduction of depth/verticality into circuit models provides a new conceptual framework to guide future analyses of the structure and dynamics of the global market. This article is an edited version of Chapter 5 of Global TV (NYU Press, 2008), with a new introduction.