The meaning of digital platforms: Open and closed television infrastructure

•Globally, analog television platforms are in decline, while digital platforms proliferate.•Closed TV platforms are the paradigmatic commercial model of the new media landscape.•The cultural and material openness of the Internet is also creating change in the TV industry.•A network of hybrid platforms, combining closed TV and open Internet logics, is emerging globally.•The “closing” of TV platforms occurs in the face of the “opening” of TV consumption logics.

Globally, analog television platforms are in steady decline, while digital platforms proliferate. This shift has considerable socio-economic and cultural implications that are too often ignored by the existing economic and political economy literatures. This article surveys key patterns in the adoption of digital platforms across Europe, and finds, based on an array of quantitative metrics, apparently contradictory trends. We observe, on one hand, the rise of closed TV platforms as the paradigmatic commercial model of the new media landscape; but on the other, the cultural and material openness of the Internet, which is radically transforming the consumption of television. While hybrid arrangements abound, industry solutions are still awkwardly matched to consumer preferences. Without drawing too sharp a line between technology and culture, the article presents an overview of the many ways the changing meaning of digital platforms continues to shape the global television industry.