1) Over 6 years after their last console release, Sony announced their latest gaming console, the PlayStation 4. While they did not reveal what it would look like, they did detail its functioning, new controller, hardware specs, and user interface. The system will include iOS and android apps to enhance the gaming experience.

2) The Academy Awards, or rather the Oscars, took place on February 24th. Six of the films nominated for Best Picture had earned over $100 million at the box office, making it the most commercially successful group of nominees to date. In the documentary short category, Inocente became the first Kickstarter-funded film to win an Oscar. The big news of the night became Seth MacFarlane’s hosting, which elicited a lot of criticism and sparked discussions about Hollywood’s potential sexism and racism. The Academy stood behind MacFarlane’s performance, and in fact this year’s Oscar ceremony showed increased viewership, especially in key younger audiences (which had been a concern for the producers). MacFarlane was not the only one in trouble on Oscar night, as The Onion faced an intense reaction towards a tweet, for which they offered a rare apology (And for anyone who is wondering how Ted came to life at the Oscars, here’s how!). The Independent Spirit Awards, which honor independent films, also took place last weekend.  Silver Linings Playbook came away the big winner, irking some people because the film’s $21-million budget technically put it outside of the classification for “indie film.”

3) Although they won an Oscar for visual effects for their work on Life of Pi, Rhythm & Hues filed for bankruptcy last week. They were cut off from discussing the plight of the industry in their acceptance speech, which upset many visual effects workers. Visual effects artists are protesting the layoffs and bankruptcies their industry is facing using any outlet they can, including social media and open letters (including a second one to Ang Lee).

4) New copyright alert system is launched by the film, TV, and music industries. The warning system gives people six strikes before they begin enforcing consequences. Sony has also developed a patent that would be able to distinguish between piracy activities and legal downloads. Internationally, France is also looking at increasing their (already very strict) anti-piracy laws. Thinking of piracy, how much does “free” music actually cost to artists involved?

5) For the first time in 12 years, music sales grow a small but symbolically important amount. In other music news, Billboard is beginning to include YouTube plays of a song in their formulation of their “Hot 100 List.” This change will allow YouTube hits like “Harlem Shake” to boost their stats. Most of YouTube’s top channels are music-based, suggesting the importance of this connection. Google is considering getting into the streaming music business. Pandora has put a limit on free listening, citing increased royalty fees as the reason, and Spotify is meeting with the record industry to ask for price breaks on royalties.

6) The 2013 box office totals are off to a slow start, 13% behind last year, and Jack the Giant Slayer opened to a disappointing $20-30 million. After taking a big loss on Rise of the Guardians, DreamWorks is forced to lay off 350 employees. The news is not all bad though, as Oz the Great and Powerful debuted with $75 million and The Hobbit closes in on $1 billion worldwide. In other movie news, Hollywood plans to cut back on sex and violence? And Regal Entertainment gets even bigger by buying Hollywood theaters.

7) In the publishing world, New York Times plans to sell Boston Globe. Variety announced they are making big changes–dropping their daily print editions, eliminating their paywall, and adding three new editors in chief.  Tim O’Brien, The Huffington Post‘s executive editor, has decided to leave.  Reader’s Digest files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. And are digital book signings the way of the future?

8) Numerous companies are reporting hackers entering their systems, including Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, NBC.com, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook (no user data was taken; but if it is compromised in the future, how would Facebook recover?).

9) In TV news, it’s pilot season! ABC is developing a miniseries How to Survive a Plague, based on the Academy Award-nominated documentary about the continuing AIDS crisis. A&E hit a record number of viewers for their reality series Duck Dynasty. Nielsen ratings are changing to reflect the new ways that people access television. Kaley Cuoco of CBS’s The Big Bang Theory tweets positively about Dish Network’s Hopper, though CBS is in the process of suing them. AMC fought with Dish about licensing fees, and AMC’s fourth quarter profits took a hit as a result. The FCC is being pushed to modify the current standards of TV product disclosure to create more transparency with regard to show sponsorship. Cablevision, with the support of Time Warner Cable and DirecTV, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Viacom, claiming that they practice illegal block booking of stations (an accusation that Viacom leveled at John Malone 20 years ago).  The lawsuit could lead to people being able to more selectively sign up for channels, only paying for the ones they want.

10) In other miscellaneous news: Clive Davis comes out as bisexual. Girls Gone Wild files for bankruptcy. And future technologies–the iWatch? Transparent Smartphones? A computer that never crashes? Or what about touchscreen T-shirts?

However, I propose a change in our blanket definition of what “Save Our Show” means. While “Our” has typically stood for the collective of fans hopeful to see their favorite show continue, the expanding options for distribution in the post-network era have reordered the dynamic of these campaigns. As DirecTV, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon emerge as players in content distribution, we are seeing evidence of active campaigning not only by fans of particular programs, but also by production studios seeking a new home for their canceled shows; while this search mostly takes place behind closed doors, recent developments suggest it has moved into a more public discourse.

Last week, TVLine’s Michael Ausiello reported that DirecTV and Netflix were in talks to rescue The Killing, which was canceled by AMC earlier this summer after dwindling ratings and a marked decrease in critical attention in its second season. However, there has been no significant fan campaign organized around the show’s renewal, with a petition at SaveTheKilling.com drawing under 500 signatures. Although Ausiello’s post directly addresses the show’s viewers through a poll asking if they would watch a third season through these outlets, the story speaks to an imagined community of The Killing fans as opposed to an organized constituency.

Traditionally, we have seen this kind of reporting as a “next step” in fan campaigns, with reporters like Ausiello and critics like Alan Sepinwall lending credibility to fans by giving them more mainstream visibility compared to the message boards or blogs where they originated. Recently, however, this kind of reporting has emerged regardless of the existence of grassroots efforts, with Amazon potentially picking up ABC’s Pan Am and Netflix considering resurrecting FOX’s Terra Nova despite a distinct lack of pilot wings and dinosaur eggs being sent to involved parties.

It is possible to view these stories as a reflection of the expanding influence of streaming services and other emerging distribution models, with new options for shows that were already canceled (Arrested Development’s return on Netflix) or compromises that may allow a show to stay on the air longer (like DirecTV’s adoption of Friday Night Lights). However, while the existence of these networks and these precedents provide the conditions necessary for these stories to emerge, the stories instead reflect the increased agency and the increased activity of production studios within this new television economy: as opposed to fans seeking legitimation through news coverage, it is now studios working to gain visibility through their relationship with journalists.

Fox Television Studios was clear from the beginning that they intended on finding a new home for The Killing. After AMC canceled the series, they sent reporters a press release to announce they would “proceed to try to find another home for the show.” Ausiello’s report has largely been received as a sign of Fox TV Studios’ success in their efforts, with most entertainment news outlets picking up the story, but I find this reading unconvincing: although Ausiello refers to multiple sources, “early talks” could mean a brief phone conversation, while Netflix offered no comment and DirecTV only suggested “we do take a look at everything available.” While I don’t doubt that the parties have had conversations about a potential renewal, nothing here suggests anything more than the earliest stage of the search Fox TV Studios embarked upon.

While acknowledging this depends on a degree of educated speculation, I want to instead read the report as a calculated effort by Fox TV Studios to influence nascent negotiations with Netflix and DirecTV by drawing media attention and audience support. In the absence of any real grassroots campaign, leaking the potential for the show’s return provides substantial visibility and could even inspire more organized fan activity, which could in turn offer them greater leverage in conversations with new distribution partners.

The studios even seem to have collaborated on who to leak the information to: the previous three examples of this type of reporting all originated with Nellie Andreeva at TVLine’s sister site Deadline Hollywood. All three exclusive reports refer to “talks” in the same vague terms, and all three even seem to form an argument in favor of the deal in question: Andreeva outlines ratings data—including Live+7 DVR numbers—for Terra Nova and The River to highlight the potential audience not reflected by traditional Nielsen metrics, while she makes an even more elaborate case for Pan Am, outlining how, “because it ran on ABC only for a brief time and because Amazon already airs Pan Am‘s produced episodes, the streaming service can embrace the series and brand it as its own.”[1]

If my speculation is correct, and these reports are the direct result of leaks from production studios to journalists at Deadline/TVLine, it raises questions about the sites’ willingness to facilitate litmus tests for ongoing negotiations—however, as it is only speculation, those questions shall remain hypothetical.

However, regardless of the circumstances involved, I highlight the role of production studios here to work against the perception that these stories indicate increased interest in canceled series among new distribution outlets. While precedents exist, DirecTV has suggested they would rather focus on original programming than on acquisitions, while I would argue Netflix’s resurrection of the beloved Arrested Development is not comparable to picking up another network’s “sloppy seconds” soon after cancellation. What these precedents offer, however, is a new distribution culture for production studios to leverage, leverage they appear to be searching for in the same space where fans have sought similar legitimation in the past.