ABSTRACT
By the early 2000s, it was difficult to be unaware of the massive changes overhauling television in the United States and many parts of the world. Evidence of changes surrounded you no matter what your relationship with the medium. Young people and commuters could be seen watching “television” on tiny screens that were notably smaller than the Walkmans that they carried a decade or so earlier, and the functions of personal technology rapidly converged until a single device could be used to make a phone call, send an email, listen to music, or watch videos. As audience members, we’d become accustomed to websites plastered on all types of goods and media just in time for our television networks to begin calling for to us to go online to see “more” of our favorite shows. The nation’s television and technology writers repeatedly proclaimed that we were on the verge of the “end of television,” and it was difficult to distinguish these apparent threats from something called the “digital transition” that would supposedly render our working analog sets useless. It was entirely unclear whether these shifts were related and who or what might be causing them, but it was obvious that television was changing.
