Key Agents of Mediation That Define, Create, and Maintain TV Fandom
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Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University Communication Theses Department of Communication Fall 12-20-2012 Abracadabra: Key Agents of Mediation that Define, Create, and Maintain TV Fandom David H. Gardner Georgia State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/communication_theses Recommended Citation Gardner, David H., "Abracadabra: Key Agents of Mediation that Define, Create, and Maintain TV Fandom." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2012. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/communication_theses/95 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Communication at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Communication Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ABRACADABRA: KEY AGENTS OF MEDIATION THAT DEFINE, CREATE, AND MAINTAIN TV FANDOM by DAVID H. GARDNER Under the Direction of Dr. Alisa Perren ABSTRACT From a media industries, fan studies, and emerging socio-cultural public relations perspective, this project pulls back the Hollywood curtain to explore two questions: 1) How do TV public relations practitioners and key tastemaker/gatekeeper media define, create, build, and maintain fandom?; and 2) How do they make meaning of fandom and their agency/role in fan creation from their position of industrial producers, cultural intermediaries, members of the audience, and as fans themselves? This project brings five influential, working public relations and media professionals into a conversation about two case studies from the 2010-2011 television season – broadcast network CBS’ Hawaii Five-0 and basic cable network AMC’s The Walking Dead. Each of these shows speaks to fandom in particular ways and are representative of the industry’s current approaches in luring specific audiences to TV. This study shows that the relationship between entertainment publicists and media is dynamic, intertwined, complex, and historically hidden. INDEX WORDS: Public relations, Television, Media, Multimedia, Audience, Fandom, AMC, CBS ABRACADABRA: KEY AGENTS OF MEDIATION THAT DEFINE, CREATE, AND MAINTAIN TV FANDOM by DAVID H. GARDNER A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2012 Copyright by David H. Gardner 2012 ABRACADABRA: KEY AGENTS OF MEDIATION THAT DEFINE, CREATE, AND MAINTAIN TV FANDOM by DAVID H. GARDNER Committee Chair: Dr. Alisa Perren Committee: Dr. Kathryn Fuller-Seeley Dr. Natalie Tindall Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University August 2012 DEDICATION I dedicate this Master’s thesis to my parents, Barry and Norma Gardner, along with my brother Michael, my sister Allison, Brett, Alex, and Anna. Thank you for giving me the love, comfort, support, and tools to move forward in life. Love always. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS As a fusion my professional work and academic interests, this project would not have been possible without the following teachers, mentors, colleagues, and friends. I want to thank Dr. David Cheshier and Dr. Mary Stuckey for giving me the opportunity to finally complete a longtime goal and allowing me to teach. Thank you to my thesis advisor Dr. Alisa Perren and panelists Dr. Kathryn Fuller-Seeley and Dr. Natalie Tindall for their inspiration, championship, and friendship throughout. You have become a significant and defining part of my life. My warmest regards and thanks go out to Jeff Jensen, Mo Ryan, and the trio of colleagues who donated their time to this project and allowed me to share their honest insights here. I also want to thank mentors and friends Ronnie Gunnerson, Jeff Matteson, Sue Binford, Marci Williams, Ellen Cooper, John Solberg, Chris Ender, Arthur Sando, Joanna Massey, Paul Hewitt, Liza Rindge-Petersen, Wendy Luckenbill, Deborah Thomas, Rebecca Marks, and all of my professional partners, colleagues, and peers in public relations and media. I look forward to working with you again. In addition, thank you to all of my professors at GSU, including the Communication Department’s Dr. Nathan Atkinson, Dr. Shawn Powers, Dr. Marian Meyers, Dr. Svetlanta Kulikova, Dr. Davin Grindstaff, and the Anthropology Department’s Dr. Faidra Papavasiliou. Finally, this project was supported by the love and encouragement of best friends Stan Shipley, Adam Hagen, Tradd Sanderson, Chris Wharton, and Angela Wong; Atlanta’s Davis Kirby and Lee Bryan, Sondra Stowers, Joseph Brown, David Lee and Bryon Brown, June Beckwith Bryan and Josh Bryan, Jim Crawford, Kristina Grabbe, Scott Webb, JamieLynne Weiss, John Pazera, Devon Sinclair, Ted Bruner, and Gil Hammond; and classmates Aron Christian, Maria Boyd, Katharine Zakos, and Vanessa Ament-Gjenvick. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v LIST OF TABLES ix LIST OF FIGURES x 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Literature Review 14 1.1.1 Post-Network Era Theory 15 1.1.2 Circuit of Culture and Bourdieuian Cultural Consumption 19 1.1.3 Public Relations Theory and Practice 24 1.1.3.1 Publicists’ Labor and Role as Cultural Intermediaries 29 1.1.3.2 Television Publicity Employment 34 1.1.4 Television Journalism Practice and Employment 37 1.1.5 Television Gatekeepers 41 1.1.6 Fan Studies 44 1.2 Method 54 1.2.1 Content Analysis 55 vi 1.2.2 Ethnographic Interviews with Industry Professionals 57 1.2.3 Interview Procedures 59 1.2.4 Researcher Reflexivity 60 1.3 Research Questions and Hypotheses 62 2 CASE STUDY #1 – CBS’ HAWAII FIVE-0 66 2.1 Ain’t It Cool News (AICN) 79 2.2 Television Without Pity (TWoP) 82 2.3 Entertainment Weekly/EW.com 85 2.4 The New York Times 92 3 CASE STUDY #2 – AMC’s THE WALKING DEAD 101 3.1 Zombie 101 107 3.2 AMC 112 3.3 Ain’t It Cool News (AICN) 116 3.4 Television Without Pity (TWoP) 118 3.5 Entertainment Weekly/EW.com 120 vii 3.6 The New York Times 123 4 THEMATIC INTERVIEWS 128 4.1 Trust Remains the Foundation 129 4.2 Traditional TV Publicist and Media Roles Are Changing 135 4.3 Multiple Tribes: Fan Definitions Are Diverse 140 4.4 The Hidden Majority: Don’t Underestimate Procedural Fans 145 4.5 Procedurals Face an Uphill Battle with Critics and Fans 147 5 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH RECOMMENDATIONS 150 REFERENCES 160 APPENDICES 180 Appendix A/Sample Interview Questions 180 Appendix B/Informed Consent 182 viii LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1 TWoP Writers in 2012 (TWoP, 2012; Wikipedia, 2012) 83 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1 Circuit of Culture (du Gay, Hall, et al., 1997) 20 Figure 2.1 Entertainment Weekly’s “Fall TV Preview” issue cover (2010) 87 Figure 2.2 EW.com’s Hawaii Five-0 bingo game (2011) 91 Figure 2.3 “TV’s Social Disparity” chart (Fast Company, 2012, September) 98 Figure 3.1 Entertainment Weekly’s first season The Walking Dead cover (2010) 122 Figure 5.1 Circuit of Culture expansion model (Friedman, 2006; 2005) 156 Figure 5.2 Public Relations in Circuit of Culture expansion model (Gardner, 2012) 157 x 1. INTRODUCTION From ancient Greek amphitheaters to traveling vaudeville troupes to today’s Hollywood, entertainment workers and companies have historically and institutionally hidden all sorts of mediated labor “off-stage” in order to infuse magic, mystique, and ultimately, value into actors, directors, productions, properties, brands, franchises, and more (Adams, 1997; Caldwell, 2008). Through intensive emotional, physical, and technological labor, modern entertainment publicists and media personnel earn privileged industrial and cultural positions within vertically integrated, transnational conglomerates, and enjoy vast national and international influence. Fusing my academic, professional TV publicist, and fan perspective and experience with that of five television publicists and journalists, this investigation into the mechanics of modern press coverage and criticism of television hopes to pull the curtain back on the industrial side of current TV fan construction, attraction, support, and maintenance (Caldwell, 2008; Hayes, 2008); Mayer, Banks, & Caldwell, 2009; Ortner, 2010). More specifically, this study investigates a little-researched industrial mediated step towards the creation of actively engaged, emotionally invested, participatory niche audiences, consumptive tribes, and segmented activist publics collectively known as “fandom,” and increasingly branded as “superfans,” “superviewers,” and “superusers” by industry, media, and academia (Jenkins, 1992; M. Ryan, personal communication, June 5, 2012; Sternbergh, 2012, March 14; Vardeman-Winter & Tindall, 2011). The dynamic, hidden mediation between a handful of influential entertainment industry public relations practitioners and key tastemaker critics, reporters, and editors in the U.S. results in most – if not all – the mainstream Hollywood news coverage and criticism consumed today across media platforms. This behind-the- 1 scenes mediation initiated by TV publicists’ strategic communication has a direct, measurable effect on current industrial and academic concepts of fandom, as this study’s comparative case studies of the first seasons of broadcast network CBS’ “re-imagined” procedural cop drama Hawaii Five-0 (uses a zero in place of the letter “O” in the original 1968-1980 title) and basic cable network AMC’s Emmy-nominated horror drama The Walking Dead will reveal. Concluding themes drawn from interviews with five influential, working TV publicists and journalists further bolster the comparison results from case study content