Communication Theory Media, Technology and Society

and consumption of information are typically separated in context and in

time, a separation which can be unlimited in its degree of abstractness. On

the Internet, the six kinds of interaction described by Barr (2000) in the

previous chapter (see p. 79) nearly all involve asynchronous forms of

mediated connection.

However, the Internet is unique in its ability to combine possibilities

of synchronous and asynchronous engagement – by extending the prop-

erties of speech, writing and the image in combination. The Internet is

itself a storage network as well as an interactive environment. Electronic

mail may be dyadic and reciprocal, circular within discussion groups, of

a broadcast nature broadcasting information, with any particular user

transmitting to the many. Powerful search processes are able to retrieve

information stored and collated in databanks. The only difference between

television and the Internet on these points is that the ‘retrieval’ of content

from their respective archives is performed by different people: by media

workers on behalf of an audience (in the case of television), or directly by

the consumer (in the case of the Internet).

The economic interrelationship

A fourth continuity between the broadcast and network architectures is

the way their economic logics presuppose each other. Economically, net-

work media are accompanied by a form of commodification which, as we

shall see, constitutes a parasitic reversal of the kind of commodification

which typifies broadcast. The form of commodification which is peculiar

to a first media age is intertwined with the ever-expanding dimensions of

advertising.^6 As Smythe (1981) shows, television, and any kind of broad-

cast media, do not so much sell products as sell the concentration spans

of audiences to advertisers. In this relationship the circulation of the sign

becomes fused with the circulation of commodities:

1 Advertisers sell material commodities to the consumer.

2 Broadcasters sell audiences (consumer consciousness) to advertisers

(measured by ratings).

3 Television programming is marketed by broadcasters to consumers.

4 Consumers are also workers who sell their labour-power to corpora-

tions in return for the means to purchase commodities.

5 The cost of advertising is reflected in the price of the commodity.

For step 2 to occur, broadcasters have to be able to offer high numbers

of media consumers and high-quality ‘concentration’, which is achieved

during ‘prime time’ when higher prices for advertisements are charged.^7

This simply cannot be achieved in any medium other than broadcast,

which is why, as I have outlined elsewhere (Holmes, 1997), advertising

will never be successful, in a ‘stand-alone’ way, on the Internet as it is in

The Interrelation between Broadcast and Network Communication 95

Holmes-04.qxd 2/15/2005 1:00 PM Page 95