ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses three principal narrative modes on television: the theatrical film, the series program, and the serial program. It includes these three structures and explores the differences and similarities among them. The chapter considers how television's convergence with video-on-demand (VOD) services is necessitating new narrative forms. When television experienced its first growth spurt in the years after World War II, the US motion-picture studios and the television industry antagonized each other. TV, an upstart medium, stole the cinema's customers and undermined the studio system that had dominated North America's narrative market. The serial television form was built on a similar lack of closure, and one could see how soap operas and other serials could benefit from never-ending transmedia storytelling. The serial is another form of storytelling that successfully made the transition from radio to television. The narrative chain of daytime serial television is interrupted more frequently than that of series television.
