WELCOME TO SUMMER 2025

 

"The Masters": Jann Wenner and the articulateness of straight cis white men in music

 

Jann Wenner Defends His Legacy, and His Generation’s

For Jann Wenner: Rock'n Roll Women

After his diss: A dozen rockers (no last names needed) named Rosetta, Aretha, Ronnie, Tina, Bonnie, Linda, Chrissie and more

Jann Wenner’s Blinkered Rock ‘n’ Roll Revolution

He built an empire on the foundations laid by Black musicians—but fails entirely to recognize that. The Nation, Joan Walsh

The above are excerpts of a letter that the great Ellen Willis, one of the key music critics of the 1970s, wrote to Rolling Stone magazine explaining why she was refusing to write for them. Eventually she did end up publishing several pieces in the magazine, including 1975’s “The Trial of Arline Hunt,” a prescient account of a woman who was blamed for her own rape.

Maybe as a result of this kind of push-back by Willis, Rolling Stone partially course-corrected its chauvinism thanks to the work of Marianne Partridge, an important editor of the 70s and, interestingly, founder of the magazine's fact-checking department. Read about that newroom in the article below chronicling that (temporary) change in RS culture.

“It Was Us Against Those Guys”: The Women Who Transformed Rolling Stone in the Mid-70s

Nelson George, author of The Death of Rhythm and Blues, responds

The record corrected:

As Bobby Dylan, Jann's good friend, would say: The times they are a-changing

Jann Wenner’s Rock Hall Reign Lasted Years. It Ended in 20 Minutes.

The day after the Rolling Stone co-founder made remarks widely criticized as racist and sexist in a Times interview, the Hall of Fame called an emergency vote and ousted him.

Welcome to SUMMER 2023

The TV and Media Industry News Resources and Podcasts

TO DO LIST --

Subscribe, sign up or bookmark the following podcasts and newsletters:

The Business 

Hosted by Kim Masters, Saturdays on KCRW

Sign up to Lucas Shaw's industry newsletter, 

SCREENTIME: Where Hollywood and Silicon Valley Collide

Sign up for Joe Adalian's Buffering newsletter

Sign up for Matt Belloni's The Town podcast

Media Business Matters with Amanda Lotz and Alex Intner

(In addition to KCRW's website you can find The Business on iTunes, Spotify and Google Play: Millions of Screens is also on all the podcasting apps, besides Spotify; same goes for Matt Belloni's The Town)

Bookmark the TVAfterTV Twitter Feed

IndieWire's Millions of Screens; Hosted by Libby Hill, Ben Travers & Leo Garcia.
(The episodes from Oct. 30, Nov. 6 and Nov. 13 2020 each deal with one of the streaming services - AppleTV+, HBO Max, Disney+)

nb. Millions of Screens has been off the "air" since October 2021

Bonus Podcast:
On The Media; Hosted by Brooke Gladstone & Bob Garfield, Fridays on WNYC

As we said in class, please subscribe to The Business, The Town and Lucas Shaw's Screentime from Bloomberg newsletter and listen/read to new episodes/newsletters regularly throughout the semester. Episodes are 30 minutes each so easily digestible. In any case definitely do listen to the opening 'News Banter' section in The Business but stay on for the in depth interviews with industry people (producers, showrunners, directors, writers, media executives, etc.). This is  a chance to hear talk about film and television that goes beyond the gossip platitudes or faux-criticism that we usually get about the media. Host Kim Masters asks the right questions in regards to deals, arrangements, financing, etc. and Amanda Lotz and her co-host dig deep into the industrial and infrastructural transformations of the media industries on the Media Business Matters limited podcast.

You are all responsible to listen to the entire 'season' of the LAND OF THE GIANTS: THE NETFLIX EFFECT podcast which you can find on basically all of the podcasting apps and websites. The link above will provide you with all the different links to the various platforms. Otherwise find it on Spotify:

Make sure you listen to these latest yearly round ups from The Business and The Town:

 from The Business:

Megabanter 2025: Hollywood’s unraveling year of crises, consolidation, and AI

Hollywood in 2026: Disney’s next CEO, industry tariffs, and Netflix vs. YouTube

from The Town:

Dec 31 • 33 min 56 sec

Who Won (and Lost) the Year in Streaming?

Matt is joined by Puck media correspondent Julia Alexander to recap the year in streaming, and hand out awards for Streamer of the Year, Most Disappointing Streamer, Show of the Year, Biggest Surprise Hit, and highlight the most interesting trends in streaming (01:48). Matt finishes the show with a prediction about the 'Stranger Things' finale […]

Dec 17 • 33 min 4 sec

A Warner Bros. Antitrust Debate With Senator Elizabeth Warren, and the Oscars Go to… YouTube

Matt is joined by United States Senator Elizabeth Warren to discuss what should happen to Warner Bros., why it should not go to Netflix or Paramount Skydance, whether Democrats and Republicans could unite to block this sale, and how Hollywood should fight to survive in the era of big tech consolidation (02:08). Matt finishes the […]

Some Megabanters from previous years:

Megabanter 2024: Hollywood’s chaotic year of succession races, sports duels, and mergers

+ Hollywood predictions 2024: studios, streamers, and agencies

Important recent episode: 

Netflix reveals viewing data for the first time. What now?

Megabanter 2023: A look back at Hollywood’s rollercoaster year

Megabanter 2022: Wall St. ditches streaming, Disney undergoes a shakeup

Megabanter 2021: Streaming wars get real, legacy studios at risk

Looking ahead to Hollywood in 2022

+ Listen to these two megabanters from Jan. 7 and Jan. 14 2022. The cover HBO Max and Disney+ strategies in the so-called 'streaming wars:

on HBO Max

on Disney+

Mega Banter Year in Review 2020 (from Dec. 28, 2020)

+

2021 Looking Ahead Banter (from Jan. 1, 2021)

In 2020 The Business had a news banter on the Nielsen 2020 Minutes Streamed Report details (articles below; it's old numbers but they're indicative of what the industry is interested in) --which is better than what the streamers themselves report on their most watched programs. As you can imagine a lot is riding on these numbers. 

The 2020 Nielsen streaming numbers are out and ‘The Office’ takes top spot

These are some articles as background to that discussion:
TOPS OF 2020: NIELSEN STREAMING UNWRAPPED
TOPS OF 2020: TELEVISION  
+ 
Hollywood Reporter analysis of the numbers: Here, Here and Here. And here AS well.

If you're interested in labor relations and labor conflict inside the industry (ie- the writers and directors and actors on strike --particularly in relation to the effects of AI give a listen to this podcast that covered the strikes as they were ongoing. Find that here.

On Media Business Matters listen to the Media Business Year in Review 2019 episode as well as the episodes on:
-Open TV and the Creative Possibilities of Internet-Distributed Television
-The Business of YouTube and Social Media Entertainment
plus the in-depth interview with Amanda Lotz herself about her new book We Now Disrupt This Broadcast.

Ep 47 Author Interview: We Now Disrupt This Broadcast

Alex Intner and Amanda Lotz

Download

from The Spin-Off:
Summer 2015's TCA's: Streaming Media Boom & Networks as Brands (from Aug. 13, 2015)
Fall TV Fails to Excite; New Faces in Late Night (from Oct. 1, 2015)
TV Development Trends and Behind-the-Scenes Drama (from Oct. 28, 2015)

The Evolution of Streaming and a Late Night Check-In (from Nov. 17, 2015)
The Year That Was Peak TV, Tackling Tough Social Issues (from Dec. 23, 2015)
Cord Cobblers and What TV Can Learn from 'Making a Murderer' (from Jan. 20, 2016)
The Year in Television (from Dec. 21, 2016).

As a bonus check out some of the bloggers mentioned in this Complex article:
The 25 Best TV Bloggers.

Welcome To Spring 2023: Theory, Music Video, Pop Music, TV

  

Music Videos Trapped in the Network: A New Aesthetic and Function?

 

Gina Arnold, "Why Psy? Music Video and the Global Market"
Daniel Cookney, "Vimeo Killed The Radio Star: Burial and the User-Generated Music Video"
Carol Vernallis, "YouTube Aesthetics"

More resources:
Carol Vernallis, "Music Video's Second Aesthetic?"
Carol Vernallis, "Reconfiguring Music Video: Beyonce's 'Video Phone'"

Extra Reading:
Carol Vernallis, "Viral Web Media and the Obama Campaign"

How To Watch Television Articles

Here is the link to the articles from the 2nd edition of Mittell & Thompson's How To Watch Television.

Here you will find the readings from the 1st edition that were not included in this new one. There are still some quite useful readings.

Look at the 2nd Edition's Table of Contents here.

If you want to take a look at any of the other articles from How To Watch Television find them at this link.

Complex TV and the Future of Narratives

Complex TV Basics

from Jason Mittell's Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling
--Chapter 1: Complexity in Context

Aymar Jean Christian, "High Maintenance and The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl: Indie TV"
from Ethan Thompson & Jason Mittell (eds), How To Watch Television; 2nd Ed. (NYU, 2020)

I will be posting episodes of The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, Insecure, Atlanta, Master of None, The Show About The Show, High Maintenance (Vimeo), High Maintenance (HBO), Baskets, Horace and Pete, SKAM (Norway/Italy/US) in addition to the links below.


Article on the original SKAM that aired in Norway on public broadcaster and on social media NRK TV here.


(Blocked Trailer here.)

Find the clips from Season 4 of SKAM here. 

(nb. Final episodes are at the top of the page so you should scroll down to find earlier ones)

Below you can find the Pilot, "Why Did We Greenlight This?", for Caveh Zahedi's The Show About The Show which 'aired' on the BricTV network on YouTube. Relate this to the concept of Complex TV. We will be watching more of this show during the week.

Some career advice from Baskets College below.

Complex TV and the Future of Narratives

Post-Rock, Subcultures Gender & Sexuality: The End of Discourses of Authenticity

At this point you should be moving forward towards completing the Garofalo textbook, here are the reading assignments for the final weeks:

On 'co-optation':
Thomas Frank's "Commodify Your Dissent" here.

On Jamaican Music:
from Dick Hebdige, Cut'n'Mix here.



On Gender:
Simon Frith and Angela McRobbie, "Rock and Sexuality"
Simon Frith, "Afterthoughts"
"Richard Dyer, "In Defense of Disco"
Find these articles here as a single PDF file.

Lindsay Zoladz, "Joni Mitchell: Fear of a Female Genius"


On 'sub-cultures':
Here are the Dick Hebdige chapters from Subculture: The Meaning of Style.
Refer back to the Punk: Attitude film screening.

On sampling, music videos, remix culture and the 'postmodern turn':
Andrew Goodwin, "Sample and Hold"
E Ann Kaplan, "A Postmodern Play of the Signifier?"

Also, to clarify (or further obscure) 'postmodernism' please help yourself --in case you have not encountered it in your other studies-- to Fredric Jameson's "Postmodernism and Consumer Society"

TV After TV: Global Media Trade, Formats and Channel Branding

Brennan, "A Political Economy of Formatted Pleasures"
Torre, "Reversal of Fortune?: Hollywood Faces New Competition in Global Media Trade"
from Oren & Shahaf (eds), Global Television Formats: Understanding Television Across Borders (Routledge, 2012)

Chap.1: "Deregulation, Differentiation and Niche Targeting: The Emergence of Branding in the Cable/Satellite Era"
Chap.2: "From Channel Brands to Service Brands: US Television Enters the Digital Era"
from Catherine Johnson, Branding Television (Routledge, 2012)



Also, if you are interested in the intersection of technology, creativity, production practices and televisual style make sure you follow Ben Consoli's GO Creative Podcast (and Blog). You'll find episodes in the artchive where Consoli interviews the DP for House of Cards, has an in depth conversation with Shane Reynolds, a true one-man band/jack of all trades who produces, shoots and edits his work all on his own for the Travel Network, Nat Geo and others and also speaks with Chris Manley, the cinematographer and DP for Mad Men. Great insights on how network pressures and studio concerns with the bottom line all line up with technological possibilities and stylistic choices.