What's new in Amanda Lotz and Timothy Havens' Understanding Media Industries 2?
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Author Archive
What’s New in Media Industries? A Revised Edition of Understanding Media Industries
Original or Exclusive? Shifts in Television Financing and Distribution Shift Meanings
In addition to increasing the possible objects of study, broadband-distributed television services have introduced new challenges to grounding the television shows we study in their industrial milieu.
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The End of “This Year’s Best in Television”
With changes in how television is distributed and viewed, do we need to reconsider the annual "best of" TV lists?
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Reflections on the “Tinker-verse”
Disney's “Tinker-verse” presents both compelling and troublesome aspects for a feminist media scholar-mom.
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Binging Isn’t Quite the Word
"Binging" and "marathoning" don't cut it -- we need a word in addition to binging to describe emerging viewing behaviors.
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Television that I Love: A Valentine to Unpredictable Melodrama
Sometimes love surprises us; I never thought I’d love Sons of Anarchy.
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The Cumulative Narrative of the Cumulative Narrative of Television Studies
A reflection, upon Horace Newcomb's retirement as Director of the Peabody Awards, on his contributions to television studies.
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To XFinity and Beyond… The Missing Smart Living Room TV Interface
I demand a moratorium on breathless distribution announcements from cable companies until they upgrade the user interface. We all know the technology exists.
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End of Men on US Television?
Trend pieces positing a "mancession" on network television schedules this fall overestimated the phenomenon.
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Of Motorcycles and Melodrama
Sons of Anarchy has often been described as Hamlet on Harleys for good reason. But my readings of late have me thinking that the show actually offers some really different inflections on Modleski’s Loving with a Vengeance.
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In Thanks: To The Documentary Group for America In Primetime
The four part look at US television, America in Primetime, has been extraordinary, offered me new ideas, and left me reminded of the possibilities of the medium and with renewed thanks that I earn a living studying it.
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End of an Era: NBC Post-Zucker?
Zucker never managed to balance a love for the potential of television with a love for the bottom line. Indeed, his job description only expected the latter, but the great ones have managed to do both.
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A New Stage in the Evolution of Original Cable Programming?
This summer’s crop of original cable series leaves me wondering if we’ve entered a new era, as I increasingly find less innovation and distinction among many of cable’s originals.
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Holding My Breath: Women, Work, and Parenthood
To the series’ credit, it often “goes there”—into those contentious waters of clearly gendered dilemmas about women’s work, motherhood, and guilt that were a mainstay of a lot of 1980s and 1990s drama.
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Some Thoughts on the Upfronts
It is not that I harbor ill will toward the television industry—far from it. Rather, I’d hoped that some of the desperation of recent years might be enough to create the momentum needed for some real change. This remains a seriously strange way to allocate billions of dollars.
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