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.

Matthias Leupold, Im Kino / In the Cinema, Part II Berlin GDR, 1983

Baudrillard, "The Masses: The Implosion of the Social in the Media"

Additional Recommended Baudrillard Readings:
Jean Baudrillard, Requiem for the Media
Jean Baudrillard, The Implosion of Meaning in the Media from Simulacra and Simulation

The Foucault Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow.

Please read the section 'Disciplines and Sciences of the Individual' in Part II, particularly the first four segments (from "The Body of the Condemned" to "Panopticism")

Foucault, "The Repressive Hypothesis" from The History of Sexuality, Vol. I

In the clip below the scene discussed in the first pages of Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism.
from Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaròn, US/UK, 2006)





ENJOY POVERTY by RENZO MARTENS 

I will be posting the link for Renzo Martens' Enjoy Poverty on Moodle.

The readings below are not part of the reading requirements but they are helpful in contextualizing and helping you come to terms with Enjoy Poverty. Please take a look at them, particularly the interview with Martens and the Susan Sontag essay on 'looking at war'.

"Enjoy Poverty: Disclosing the Political Impasse of Contemporary Art" in Art Papers

-an interview with Renzo Martens

Paul O'Kane, "Renzo Martens: Episode III" review in Third Text, 2009

T.J. Demos, "Poverty Pornography, Humanitarianism and Neo-Liberal Globalization: Notes on Some Paradoxes in Contemporary Art"

Bonus Interview from the "Africa is a Country Blog" here.

Bonus Reading:

Susan Sontag, "Looking At War/Regarding the Pain of Others"

Faster! Faster! Faster!

#Accelerate: Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics (Srnicek & Williams)

Steven Shaviro, "What is Accelerationism?" from No Speed Limit: Three Essays on Accelerationism

Bonus:

Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation (Laboria Cuboniks)

+

What About 'Today'?

Christian Fuchs, "Participatory Web 2.0 as Ideology" from Foundations of Critical Media and Information Studies

McKenzie Wark, The Hacker Manifesto

"Every single commodity you produce is a piece of your own death"
"Withdrawing in disgust is not the same thing as apathy."

The 'Post' Archipelago: A Brief Intro

Young Jacques Derrida's English Comp Essay
Note the teacher's comments. Do they still apply to Jacques' adult writing? Read 'Différance' below to find out.

Some introductory readings to the various 'posts' that we will be reading in the next weeks. Having concluded our discussion of structuralism, here is some material to bring us towards the post-structuralist theoretical framework. Remember that a good exercise for us is to read the theories in their original form. As you read get a sense of the language, of the rhetorical processes, of the way the argument proceeds. I am including here, in addition to the Roland Barthes essay on "The Death of the Author" also a brief introduction to poststructuralism, postmodernism and postcolonial studies (the pdf has these entries in alphabetical order but please read them in the order above). I've also included Derrida's 'Différance' --this is a bonus reading but I would urge all of you to tackle it in order to get that sense of the language mentioned above so that we may talk about it in class. Enjoy.

"poststructuralism"; "postmodernism"; "postcolonial studies" entries
from A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory; 2nd Ed. (Wiley-Blackwell)

Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author" from Image/Music/Text

David Harvey, "Postmodernism" from The Condition of Postmodernity

Jacques Derrida, Différance

Music Video Auteurs, Music Genres and the End of MTV: Surveillance, Discrete Programming, Reality Shows

Saul Austerlitz, "Visions of a Youth Culture" + "Spike and Michel" from Money For Nothing: A History of the Music Video from The Beatles to The White Stripes (Continuum, 2008)

Roger Beebe, "Paradoxes of Pastiche: Spike Jonze, Hype Williams, and the Race of the Postmodern Auteur" from Beebe & Middleton (eds), Medium Cool: Music Videos from Soundies to Cellphones (Duke, 2007)

You can find a treasure trove of AUTEUR based organized video playlists here.

Individual auteurs are linked below. The "Spike and Michel" of Saul Austerlitz's chapter above are Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry.

Spike Jonze
Michel Gondry
Chris Cunningham

Hype Williams 
Paul Hunter

The TV Show That Ate Times Square

How the original Total Request Live created the boy-band boom, saved MTV (for a while), and filled midtown with screaming teenagers.

"Inside Total Request Live: MTV's Hottest Program for Teens" from PBS Frontline, 2001

For Those About To Rock: Return of the Aura

Frank Zappa & Captain Beefheart

"I mean, man, whither goest thou? Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?"

-Jack Kerouac

-Keightley, "Reconsidering Rock"

Here are a couple of articles to integrate Keightley's Reconsidering Rock article. The first Frith article is required; the second article is a highly recommended read. Enjoy the Lester Bangs reviews from Creem. Reebee Garofalo's article on Soul ("Popular Music and the Civil Rights Movement") is required.

Simon Frith - "Rock and Popular Culture"
Simon Frith - "The Magic The Can Set You Free": The Ideology of Folk and the Myth of the Rock Community
Paul Clarke - "'A Magic Science': Rock Music as a Recording Art"
Lester Bangs - Various Record Reviews from Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung
Reebee Garofalo - Popular Music and the Civil Rights Movement

Also, here is Andrew Chester's "For A Rock Aesthetic", Richard Merton's response, "Comments" and Chester's response to the response, "Second Thoughts on a Rock Aesthetic: The Band". It's all from the Jan/Feb1970 #59 issue of New Left Review.

Please read in 'Rocking Out' up to and including Chapter 8.

Playlists and clips on Moodle.

AC/DC, Let There Be Rock (1977) 

Reverend Bon tells you all about it. As you can see the 'aura' is back around Angus' head.