“Audience fragmentation” was the industry term for what the new cable networks were molding themselves to, and it was of a piece with the idea of appealing to clusters through PRIZM. Of course it was never entirely clear whether “fragment” was being used more as a verb or a noun: Were the networks reacting to fragmented audiences, or were they in fact fragmenting them? In retrospect, they were doing both.

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 617