Michele Hilmes

Part I History 99781405163415_4_001.indd781405163415_4_001.indd 1177 99/23/2008/23/2008 11:35:59:35:59 PPMM 99781405163415_4_001.indd781405163415_4_001.indd 1188 99/23/2008/23/2008 11:35:59:35:59 PPMM Editors’ Introduction The essays in this section serve two main purposes: expansive subject that is “media industry studies.” to present readers with background on the history of She discusses how media industries scholarship has different media industries and explore historio- tended to be structured partly on the basis of man- graphical considerations in relation to their study. ageability and partly according to categories famil- While the rest of this book focuses primarily on iar to scholars coming out of the humanities. This present-day media and thus conceptualizes these often has meant an emphasis on texts, genres, and industries as integrated and interrelated, the empha- authors, despite the fact that the serialized character sis in this section is largely on their individual and of many texts and the collaborative nature of indus- unique histories. We believe this background is trial production complicate these organizational important because historically, they have operated schemes. Hilmes also indicates three prominent relatively independently of one another in terms of tensions – object, nation, and quality – that are pro- business models, modes of production, construc- ductive arenas for more extensive exploration. tions of audiences, and narrative strategies. The Speaking from her vantage point as director of the essays in this section underscore the fact that – Texas Archive of the Moving Image, Caroline Frick despite various points of intersection in the past and argues for the vital yet under-examined role that convergence in the present – these histories are quite archivists play in relation to media industry history. distinct. They also illustrate how industry scholar- In addition to illustrating how archivists are a com- ship has tended to be medium-specif ic, with a hand- ponent of the media industries themselves, she shows ful of notable exceptions. Providing perspective on how they have had an increasingly prominent role in contemporary industry discourse, the essays here shaping our understanding of media history. Frick discuss media separately and historicize their forms, explains that a number of economic, cultural, and businesses, and industrial traditions. Further, they organizational factors have led preservationists to establish a foundation for future scholarship, while emphasize Hollywood’s history over other more offering provocative ideas and innovative avenues local or regionally based histories both inside and for such endeavors. outside the US. She illustrates how decisions Michele Hilmes begins the book by tracing how made about preservation or access might factor into and why industry histories developed in the manner the emergence of alternative industry histories in the they did. She identifies prominent ways in which future. Ultimately, she calls for archivists to more humanities-based scholars have made sense of the aggressively favor open access policies for the public. 99781405163415_4_001.indd781405163415_4_001.indd 1199 99/23/2008/23/2008 11:35:59:35:59 PPMM 20 part i Whereas Frick indicates the alternative media sponsorship in electronic media. In her essay, Meyers industry histories yet to be written, Thomas Schatz surveys the complex web of relationships between supplies a fresh perspective on the oft-explored topic broadcasters, networks, and the advertising industry of Hollywood history. Presenting a model for what from early radio through the digital era. Her resist- he describes as a “film industry studies approach,” ance to conventional categorizations is one of many Schatz offers a way for historians to more fully essays in this book advocating more integrated dis- address the convergences and divergences between cussions of media industries. Meyers argues for a his- film and other media industries at both macro- and toricization of the advertising industry that is both micro-industrial levels. Schatz’s model addresses informed by and explored alongside histories of other concerns that have long been of interest to film media. This perspective complicates our understand- studies scholars, including matters of style, author- ing of the historical dynamics of culture and com- ship, and mode of production. In addition, his survey merce at work. Addressing various transitions of Hollywood past and present gives readers direc- throughout radio and TV history, Meyers explains tion for how such an approach to media industry just how imbricated advertising is in television’s studies might be conducted. forms. The links she makes between early sponsor- Victoria E. Johnson turns our attention to ship models and present-day television-Internet American television with a nuanced discussion of branding practices reinforce the value of a historically how broadcast and cable have been historicized. She informed perspective in media industry studies. sees the media industries as sites of struggle and P. David Marshall picks up where Meyers leaves encourages readers to think about broadcast and off in her discussion of new media, asking precisely cable history as a series of clashes between national what is “new” about it. The rise of the Internet and and local interests, varying regulatory frameworks, other contemporary digital technologies has affected and divergent notions of the public. In order to assess both the media industries as well as culture at large. television’s place in a conglomerated media land- Not only are existing business models in transition, scape, Johnson argues that scholars must investigate but the industry’s construction of – and interaction TV as a cultural practice, which she does through an with – audience-users is fundamentally changing as examination of cable and the concept of “niche.” well. Marshall outlines an emerging industry ethos Her case study on ESPN and its appropriation of hip centered on specific modes of interactivity and asks hop yields a rich analysis of the simultaneous separa- whether these new media forms signal the increased tion and interdependence of the broadcast and cable blurring between media (industries) and communi- industries. Through the lens of television sports, she cation (industries). His essay reflects the challenges examines the television industry’s valuations of the facing those trying to place the contemporary audience and corporate branding strategies as well moment in historical context. In spite of such chal- as the competing dynamics of broadcasting and lenges, he demonstrates how worthwhile the act of narrowcasting at work. looking at “old” media through the lens of new Johnson’s discussion of the industry’s shift from media can be as a means of questioning our assump- mass to niche audiences intersects with Cynthia tions about the practices and products of media B. Meyers’ chronicle of the history of advertising and industries. 99781405163415_4_001.indd781405163415_4_001.indd 2200 99/23/2008/23/2008 11:35:59:35:59 PPMM 1 Nailing Mercury The Problem of Media Industry Historiography Michele Hilmes Terminology is important, but like mercury, it’s and anti-individual, fodder for sociologists rather slippery. The term “media industry” covers a huge than critics or historians.2 slice of territory ranging over print, sound, screen, Over the last half of the twentieth century, and digital bits in space, in venues as various as however, the admission of these technologically corporate communications, advertising, websites, driven, industrially based, mass-produced expres- novels, films, recordings, and music being shared sive forms to the purviews of academic study has person to person on the Internet. Its academic sites called into being a radically different conception of of study are just as various; media industry scholars the entire process of creative production and recep- can be found in departments of journalism, mass tion. Scholarly study of media industries required a communications, film, English, art, theater, busi- re-theorization of the task of the humanities scholar ness, law, cultural studies, area and ethnic studies, and a rethinking of the ways that we understand and music, anthropology, and many more. But, in the analyze culture more generally in the postmodern United States, the most extended and well-established world. A media industries focus points directly to body of work examining the function of the media those aspects of cultural production in the twentieth industry in its most popular and widely disseminated century and beyond that most trouble the humanities- forms has arisen around the “sound and screen” oriented categories of coherence and analysis so media: radio, television, and film, now extending to central to our understanding of culture itself: new digital venues such as the web, DVDs, and dig- the author, the text, the reader. These categories, ital production.1 This is a relatively new and indeter- exploded by Foucault and other postmodern theo- minate field marked more by what it excludes (or by rists some 30 years ago, linger on in our modes of what has been excluded) than by grounded inclu- analysis even as we recognize their extreme fragility sions. Typically it refers to those texts and practices in the way that culture is produced and consumed. that are not included in the study of literature, art, The media of radio, popular music, television, and music, and drama as they

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