Description
Book SynopsisTaking into account technologies, industries, economies, aesthetics, and various production, user, and audience practices, this collection of essays rethinks television and the future of television studies in the digital era.
Trade Review“This is a terrific collection that opens up exciting ways to think about relations between old TV and new digital culture without reifying either of those terms.”—
Lynn Spigel, co-editor of
Television after TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition“This original collection reframes contemporary debates about new digital media technologies, media convergence, and modes of cultural regulation, production, and consumption.”—
David Morley, author of
Media, Modernity, and Technology“Television as Digital Media is an important and timely collection. Offering strategies for mapping a fast-changing digital terrain, it is poised to stimulate an important conversation between television studies and the television industry.”—
William Uricchio, Director, MIT Comparative Media Studies
“
Television as Digital Media will be beneficial to media scholars and students alike…. [D]espite the huge challenge of negotiating the perpetually moving object of digital television, this book provides a useful and eclectic vocabulary for starting to make sense of these shifts.” -- Chuck Tryon * Screen *
“[T]his is a great collection of reflections on the relation of social behavior, technology, and cultural form. It is a must-read for all those who are interested in what digitalization means.” -- Huub Wijfjes * Technology and Culture *
“
Television as Digital Media presents itself as an enjoyable and informative read, dealing with a variety of aspects that come as a result of the advancements that are shaping the future of digital television.” -- Laura Burlacu * Masters of Media *
“
Television as Digital Media is a valuable snapshot of current theorizing and critical thinking in this time of technical convergence and social media innovation.” -- Vincent O'Donnell * Cultural Studies Review *
“Taken as a whole, I found
Television as Digital Media to be consistently excellent…. richly and deliberately engaged with the substantial changes being wrought by adjustments in the technologies, distribution practices, and economics—among many other industrial and cultural facets—that characterize television today.” -- Amanda D. Lotz * Cinema Journal *
“
Television as Digital Media makes an important intervention within discussions of television’s relationship to digital culture…. This collection demonstrates that television studies is well equipped to analyze these new objects, providing television scholars in particular, and media studies scholars more broadly, with an important set of tools with which to understand digital media culture.” -- Karen Petruska * Popular Communication *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction: Television as Digital Media / James Bennett 1
Part 1
Switchover: Historicizing the Digital Revolution
Convergence and Divergence: The International Experience of Digital Television / Graeme Turner 31
When Digital Was New: The Advanced Television Technologies of the 1970s and the Control of Content / Julian Thomas 52
"Is It TV Yet?": The Dislocated Screens of Television in a Mobile Digital Culture / William Boddy 76
Part 2
Production Strategies in the Digital Landscape
Cult Television as Digital Television's Cutting Edge / Roberta Pearson 105
Multiplatforming Public Service: The BBC's "Bundled Project" / Niki Strange 132
Little Kids' TV: Downloading, Sampling, and Multiplatforming the Preschool TV Experiences of the Digital Era / Jeanette Steemers 158
Part 3
The Aesthetics of Convergence
The "Basis for Mutual Contempt": The Loss of the Contingent in Digital Television / Karen Lury 181
Television's Aesthetic of Efficiency: Convergence Television and the Digital Short / Max Dawson 204
Scripted Spaces: Television Interfaces and the Non-Places of Asynchronous Entertainment / Daniel Chamberlain 230
Television, Interrupted: Pollution or Aesthetic? / Jason Jacobs 255
Part 4
User-Generated Content: Producing Digital Audiences
Worker Blowback: User-Generated, Worker-Generated, and Producer-Generated Content within Collapsing Production Workflows / John T. Caldwell 283
User-Created Content and Everyday Cultural Practice: Lessons from YouTube / Jean Burgess 311
Architectures of Participation: Fame, Television, and Web 2.0 / James Bennett 332
Bibliography 359
Contributors 373
Index 377
