User:SOTO/Forum Archive/Help!/@comment-2129131-20140623073254/@comment-5918438-20160117230700

Woah, you just convinced me of my own stance. I was wondering yesterday whether it might be a good idea to call anything released directly to home media (VHS, DVD, iTunes, YouTube) video stories even if they are produced by a television crew as pieces of television. But, no. You brought up some very good examples, and so I think it would be stupid on our part to make a senseless distinction between equivalent stories which are all expansions to episodes of TV.

I think the primary mode of release is irrelevant to the classification of stories. Audio stories released on radio are just audio stories, as much as there's no real distinction between digital downloads and CD orders. Short stories released as e-books or online are still just short stories. Online comics are just as much comic stories as those which are printed. And so, likewise, television is still television, whether it's been broadcast on TV, broadcast online, released directly to home media like DVD or iTunes, or even if it's first released theatrically, as with the prequel to series 9 this past year. And any video-based story which is not a piece of television is a video story.

As for prefixes, though, ultimately TV has gotta go. (TV story) should remain a thing, but let's remember that (novel)s, (novella)s, (short story)s and (novelisation)s are all simply PROSE. VID will be the prefix to replace all of TV, WC and HOMEVID.

WC is a stupid one anyway, because people seem to use it for online video as well as for any other online content like comics or short stories. All of that should go. The only things we can truly can "webcasts" were those TV stories released before 2005.

By the way, if it's commissioned by the BBC or in any way ordered by the executive producers/head writer of Doctor Who, it's almost certainly television, with very few exceptions, if any, I'd expect. Those videos which are not television are usually made independant from the BBC, by companies such as Big Finish and BBV Productions. If it's not connected to a TV series, or at least an attempted pilot of one, it's very likely not television.