Abstract
In this article, we present the case study of Stream.cz, East-Central Europe's largest web television portal dedicated to original short-form programming. By situating Stream in the local screen industry ecology, we explain the success of its advertisement-supported video on demand (AVOD), short-form, web television business model.
This is followed by a description of Stream's hybrid "production culture," which borrows from both broadcasting and the internet, and a dissection of selected categories that make up Stream's "industry lore," consisting of its key agents' conceptions of web television, strategies and business models, day-to-day creative processes, audience behavior and tastes, and the general market trends they use to rationalize decisions and promote the core values of their output. The goal of our production analysis is to show whether and how short-form web programming can complement traditional public-service media in fulfilling a public-service mission.