Rubinkowski 1 The Invisible Backbone: Networking, Advertising, and Making Alternative Content Possible [This presentation was made on 25 March 2015 at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It was featured on the panel B22, "Just Stream It: Delivering Alternative Content in the Digital Era." For further information, please contact me at lrubinko@gmail.com.] In 2011, the American film industry hit what David Bordwell has called the "tipping point" for digital cinema. Major production houses and distributors agreed that if hard- drives were not yet perfect substitutes for reels, the difference in quality was virtually non- existent for most commercial moviegoers, whose options for analog projection experiences dwindled by the day. At year's-end, some 26,000 US screens—two-thirds of the market—were digital-ready, with more scheduled to make the shift. 1 As industry parties, popular observers, and scholars have consistently explained, proliferation throughout the exhibition industry, more than acceptance within production and distribution circles, accomplished the digital conversion. Even so, that proliferation occurred at the behest and guidance of Hollywood production and distribution interests. Rather than leading the charge to fundamentally alter its operations, exhibition seemed to follow from the rear. In light of this dynamic, it's natural that discussion of the digital transition and its consequences should focus on the business that drove transition in the first place: Hollywood's feature film industry. Today, though, I will demonstrate the incompleteness of such analyses by assuming an alternative object of inquiry: the contemporary alternative content industry. Loosely applied, the term "alternative content" refers to any of a growing set of programming options available to theatrical exhibitors that are not feature films released for