Description
Book SynopsisHow fan passion and technology merged into a new subculture Long before internet archives and the anytime, anywhere convenience of streaming, people collected, traded, and shared radio and television content via informal networks that crisscrossed transnational boundaries.
Eleanor Patterson’s fascinating cultural history explores the distribution of radio and TV tapes from the 1960s through the 1980s. Looking at bootlegging against the backdrop of mass media’s formative years, Patterson delves into some of the major subcultures of the era. Old-time radio aficionados felt the impact of inexpensive audio recording equipment and the controversies surrounding programs like Amos ‘n’ Andy. Bootlegging communities devoted to buddy cop TV shows like Starsky and Hutch allowed women to articulate female pleasure and sexuality while Star Trek videos in Australia inspired a grassroots subculture built around community viewings of episo
Trade Review
“A highly valuable contribution to media and cultural history. Patterson goes in-depth about important and eclectic bootlegging practices, and in particular highlights how people have utilized these technologies and systems to generate their own cultures around the objects of their fandom and interests.”--Derek Kompare, coeditor of Making Media Work: Cultures of Management in the Entertainment Industries
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction Hacking Broadcast History
- Homemade Entertainment: The Prehistory of Bootlegging Radio
- Hello Again: The Old-time Radio Informal Economy
- Freeze Framing Queerness: Tape Trading in Buddy Cop Fan Cultures
- We Had to Do It the Hard Way: Bootlegging Star Trek in Australia
- Enough of that Garbage: Wrestling Observer and the Intelligent Wrestling Fan Community
Conclusion Bootlegging After the Airwaves
Notes
Index
