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Industrial discourses surrounding subscription video on demand (SVOD) services are deeply embedded in the rhetoric of viewer choice and control. However, these discourses are often misleading, with viewers given only nominal amounts of agency in their viewing experience, most often circumscribed by the limited affordances of the service’s interface. This article takes online TV interfaces as its object of study and interrogates to what ends SVODs use them. In particular, it examines how the interface can operate as a part of an SVOD’s larger branding campaign. Using Netflix as a case study, the article argues that the interface is discursively positioned as empowering viewers to easily find what they want to watch, yet the actual operation and affordances of the interface significantly delimit viewer agency. Instead, the interface works to guide viewers to Netflix original content to strengthen the core brand values of abundance, personalization, and exclusivity.
Mike Van Esler (2020) studied this question.