Copyright by Kelly Elizabeth Lanier
2017
The Report Committee for Kelly Elizabeth Lanier Certifies that this is the approved version of the following report:
ATX Television Festival: Fans, Industry, and Television in Context
APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE:
Supervisor: Thomas G. Schatz
Alisa Perren
ATX Television Festival: Fans, Industry, and Television in Context
by
Kelly Elizabeth Lanier
Report
Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Arts
The University of Texas at Austin December 2017
Acknowledgements
Completing this paper would not have been possible without the support of my parents, Dave and Dianne Lanier. Their support during graduate school was invaluable and I am forever grateful. I would also like to thank my partner, Jacob Harmon, for letting me share my frustrations, doubts, and victories with him, and for anchoring and comforting me during one of the most trying times in my life. My cohort, the class of spring 2017, helped me keep going when I wanted to quit every single day. I could not have finished this project without the guidance and friendship of Elena Bennett. I would also like to thank my advisors, Dr. Tom Schatz and Dr. Alisa Perren, for their patience and guidance.
iv Abstract
ATX Television Festival: Fans, Industry, and Television in Context
Kelly Elizabeth Lanier, M.A. The University of Texas at Austin, 2017
Supervisor: Thomas G. Schatz
The purpose of this report is to map the relationship between television festivals, film festivals, and pop culture conventions, using the ATX Television Festival as a case study. With television viewing practices changing and more television content available than ever before, this report argues that television festivals provide a unique setting for television fans and producers to celebrate television.
v Table of Contents
List of Tables ...... vii
List of Figures ...... viii
Chapter One: Television Festivals, Comic Con, and Film Festivals: A Survey ...... 1 Report introduction ...... 1 Chapter one introduction...... 7 Film festivals as groundwork ...... 10 Festivals and class ...... 13 Fans, festivals, and the audience ...... 16 Festivals and ties to their industries ...... 21 Chapter one conclusion ...... 23
Chapter Two: Television Festivals and the Television Industry: Fan Convention or Work Conference? ...... 25 Chapter two introduction ...... 25 Product of the post-network era ...... 26 Analysis of ATX history and industry relationships...... 28 Chapter two conclusion...... 36
Chapter Three: At ATX, Fans and Industry Collide ...... 38 Chapter three introduction ...... 38 My experience at ATX...... 39 Schedule and programming analysis ...... 45 Discussing ATX with festival staff ...... 51 Chapter three conclusion...... 59 Report Conclusion ...... 60
Bibliography ...... 63
vi List of Tables
Table 1: Table by Kelly Lanier...... 8
vii List of Figures
Figure 1: Graphic by Kelly Lanier...... 4 Figure 2: Friday schedule from 2015 Festival Program Guide...... 46 Figure 3: Saturday and Sunday schedule from 2015 Festival Program Guide.47
Figure 4: Sample event description page from 2015 Festival Program Guide.49
viii Chapter One: Television Festivals, Comic Con, and Film Festivals: A Survey
REPORT INTRODUCTION
The inspiration for this report came out of my previous experience working for and attending film festivals and my desire to explore work opportunities in the television industry upon graduation. My work with film festivals had stemmed from an appreciation for movies and the realization that I did not enjoy working on film sets, but I still wanted to make sure that new filmmakers were given a chance to screen their films. At some point, I realized that I had started watching more television than movies in my free time. I knew I wanted to incorporate both my newfound interest in television and my work with film festivals for my final project. Luckily, my graduate program took place in Austin,
Texas, the home of the ATX Television Festival (hereafter ATX), which I first attended in 2016. Upon attending the festival, I knew I wanted to research it and ground it in my previous work on film festivals and pop culture conventions in order to begin my comparison. Ultimately, my goal for this project was to learn enough so that I could position myself as a prime candidate for a position in the film festival world or break into the television industry.
My position as a researcher is informed by my experience as a fan of television, a previous attendee of ATX, and a former film festival employee. This marks the second year I have attended ATX. The first year, I attended as a fan. I was able to get a free pass in 2016 through a partnership with ATX and University of Texas at Austin, along with other members of my department. After I attended the 2016 festival, I decided I wanted 1 to write about it for my report. I have an extensive background studying, attending, and working for festivals, and this background also informed my study. During my undergraduate education, I did a research project on festivals of the southeastern United
States. Before I attended graduate school, I worked for Sidewalk Film Festival in
Birmingham, Alabama for four years. Sidewalk was partnered through a pass exchange with other film festivals, such as Cucalorus in Wilmington, North Carolina and Oxford
Film Festival of Oxford, Mississippi. I was also able to attend Sundance Film Festival in
2013, Austin Film Festival in 2015, and SXSW in 2016, in addition to the two years I attended ATX. During my time in graduate school I have conducted other research projects on film festivals as part of class assignments. After attending ATX, I decided I wanted to learn more about ATX and explore how a television festival might work differently than a film festival in terms of festival planning and attendance.
ATX’s popularity is growing during a strange time for television. Due to the rise of streaming platforms and networks’ struggle to adapt, television programming is in a state of flux. On the one hand, “cutting the cord” (or eliminating a subscription to cable television) has become a popular phenomenon among American consumers. This might indicate on a surface level that Americans are not interested in watching television. And, in some ways, this is true. But on the other hand, popular streaming platforms like Netflix know that viewers still want television programming. They just do not want to have to wait a week for each new episode, and instead want to binge the whole season (or series) at one time. They also do not want to sit through commercials. Nielsen reports that viewers aged 18-24 have experienced a significant decline in the amount of time spent 2 watching traditional television (“The State of Traditional TV: Updated with Q1 2017
Nielsen Data”). Additionally, almost half of the time they had spent watching traditional television was still spent watching television programs – just in a different format, such as on streaming platforms (“The State of Traditional TV: Updated with Q1 2017 Nielsen
Data”).
With these ongoing changes in viewer behavior, content availability, and technological devices changing constantly, how has the way viewers watch television changed over time? And how have networks and television producers changed in order to keep up? ATX provides a dynamic solution to this problem. ATX is not designed to celebrate independent television production or new ideas from unknown creators like many film festivals are, nor is it designed to prove that television can be made by anyone.
(For the purposes of my analysis, “independent television” will refer to any television episodes or series that was not made by an initiated member of the television industry, was not picked up by a network, or was made exclusively for platforms like YouTube that do not require an official deal in which both parties capitalize on the series.) ATX is designed to celebrate and further the careers of the initiated, taking few programming risks, with the exception of having to cancel/change things at the last minute. ATX’s connections with the television industry are apparent when you look at how it is discussed in popular press and examine its programming strategy. All of these factors make it an event that industry veterans, creative and otherwise, feel comfortable attending. And the festival’s location in Austin, as opposed to New York or Los Angeles, is part of that. ATX’s Volunteer Coordinator Willita Mahone feels that ATX’s celebrity 3 guests like coming to Austin because they “can be themselves here and that’s the joy of our festival because they can come to the festival and not be accosted by people”
(Mahone). This is certainly the case at other festivals. Actor Bryan Cranston, star of
Breaking Bad, ended up cosplaying as himself, wearing a full latex mask of his own character’s face in order to attend San Diego Comic Con (hereafter Comic Con) without being accosted by fans (Broderick; Breaking Bad). The mingling between fans and cast and creatives that happens at ATX, at least ideally in the event producers’ conception, is much more respectful (at least, after some handy tips on how to behave). Of course,
Mahone said there had been a few instances of volunteers behaving badly and asking to take pictures with celebrities and mingling with them at parties instead of manning their volunteer posts, so no festival is completely immune to displays of excessive fandom, at least from an industry standpoint.
Based on my findings, ATX is both a part of and a facilitator of a larger network between the industry, fans, and the press, as I have attempted to show below.
fans
TV critics industry
ATX
Figure 1: Graphic by Kelly Lanier. 4 All of these parties are related because of television, which I imagine to be at the center of the diagram. In this diagram, fans indicates active fans, or ones that are interested in reading articles online, tweeting about their favorite shows, and purchasing merchandise.
The industry includes streaming platforms, television networks, and television creators.
Critics indicates journalists, bloggers, and any other kind of writer who covers television.
And television is in the middle. The television celebrated at ATX is largely one kind of television – half-hour or hour-long fiction programming, most of which aired beginning in the 1980s. They do not try to showcase reality shows, news programs, variety shows, or children’s programming.
The goal of this report is to map the relationship between festivals, the industry, and television using ATX as a case study. Based on the scholarship and popular press I have read, my experience working with and attending festivals, and interviews with ATX festival staff, I argue that ATX borrows programming forms from film festivals and pop culture conventions and utilizes its connections to the television industry to create a unique event that acknowledges the changing landscape of “content” and aspires to unite fans and industry professionals alike to celebrate television. The television ATX celebrates could be considered “celebrity” television because ATX aligns itself with established members of the industry instead of showcasing creators of independent television. Traditional television viewing practices are associated with a different kind of intimacy – viewers watched in the home, sometimes alone and sometimes with friends or family. Television festivals are an exciting disruption in traditional viewing practices and
5 event organization. This festival provides fans with an opportunity to explore their fandoms (specifically their television fandoms) in a new space.
With that in mind, Chapter 1 will connect television festivals to film festivals and pop culture conventions, such as Comic Con. These festivals provide useful points of comparison and often overlap in scheduling, organization, and demographics. But they differ in taste cultures, demographics, and overall goals. I will discuss the different kinds of festivals, how festivals profit and what that profit means, class and taste cultures, fans and audiences, and festival relationships with the entertainment industry. In Chapter 2 I will examine the current and past relationships of board members and executive directors of ATX to the television and film industries to argue that ATX is tied to the television industry in programming, staff, sponsorship, and attendees. It is these connections that help set it apart from the two other largest television festivals, New York Television
Festival and Denver SeriesFest. By looking at how these executives and board members discuss their positions and objectives (and where specifically members of the press might agree or disagree with them), we can learn more about what ATX means by the term
“television” and how the people affiliated with the festival reinforce that definition. In
Chapter 3 I will utilize my experience attending the festival and interviews with ATX staff to showcase an in-depth evaluation of ATX operations and explore how ATX has become a key facilitator of engagement between the industry, fans, and the press. I will include a breakdown of one year’s schedule and analyze ATX’s programming and financial goals (and assess their achievement of those goals).
6 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
Film festivals have served many cultural, industrial, and aesthetic functions over the past eighty years, both in America and abroad. Within both academic and more popular literature, critical examination of film festivals is growing due to the proliferation in festivals worldwide, the increasing specialization within the festival world, and the upsurge in festival submissions due to greater accessibility of filmmaking technologies and simplified submission practices. For the purposes of this discussion, I will focus primarily on the scholarly discourse surrounding larger, “A” film festivals, such as
Sundance, Cannes, Berlin, and Venice. This focus is mainly the result of the amount of academic research done using these festivals as case studies. Research on television festivals has proven limited, since they are a relatively new and isolated phenomenon. I will also include research on Comic Con (as a case study for a pop culture contention) to provide a groundwork for comparison with television festivals. These kinds of festivals all have different goals, demographics, and personalities, and I hope that by juxtaposing them with one another I will inform new scholarship on fan gatherings and fan behaviors.
So that we can recall the general differences between the different kinds of events
I will be discussing, I have created a chart, pictured below. I will discuss each event in further detail later, but this should help clarify the different kinds of events as we move forward.
7 Television festivals Comic Con Film festivals
Goal -to celebrate indie TV -to celebrate -to sell films and (besides generating production fandoms generate buzz revenue) -to celebrate -to generate buzz -to reproduce established television for video games, existing taste producers (ATX) comics, television, cultures and films, and other cultural showcased hierarchies properties -now, to celebrate indie film Key players Denver SeriesFest, Comic Con Sundance, Cannes, New York Television Tribeca, Toronto Festival, ATX Events Meet and greets, Meet and greets, Meet-and-greets, panels, screenings, panels, screenings, panels, screenings, script contests demos script contests Organization Mix of non-profits For-profit Mix of non-profits and for-profits and for-profit Scheduling/Duration 2-5 days 5 days 3-11 days Host Cities Denver, NYC, Austin San Diego (mid- Park City, Cannes, (major cities) size city) Toronto, NYC (not all major cities but all desirable sites for elites) Age Newest (PaleyFest Older (since 1970) Oldest (since since 1984, ATX 1932) since 2011) Size ATX ~2500 people 100,000 + in a 300,000+ (largest) NYTVF 18,000 over single year ten years Demographic White middle-class White middle-class White middle females; millennials males, millennials class males/upper and Gen Xers class males and females Connected to a Mostly independent Part of a group of Part of an group or mostly pop culture established independent? conventions network
Table 1: Table by Kelly Lanier. 8 It is worth remembering that although these events are beloved by fans and generate a lot of buzz, the primary goal of hosting events like these is generating revenue. Although many of the organizations that host these events are nonprofits (something I will discuss more later), the continued survival of the shows, films, and video games that are the focus of these events is inextricably linked with their economic performance. In the chart above, I indicate the importance of revenue as an aside, but ultimately it is the reason that these events can continue to exist and the pop culture material that these events aim to celebrate depend on that added revenue as well.
Before I begin, I want to provide some basic statistics about these festivals so you can see how different they all are, despite their similarities. Comic Con, SeriesFest, New
York Television Festival, PaleyFest, and ATX all have different durations and attendance levels. SeriesFest takes place over the course of five days and they do not list any attendance numbers on their website (SeriesFest). Comic Con, definitely the largest of these events, also takes place over five days but occupies a huge convention center plus satellite venues with hundreds of events each year with over 130,000 attendees (“About
Comic Con International”). PaleyFest does not have a clear duration listed for either of its locations, probably because they try to host as many events as possible and the events that were listed do not take place over consecutive days (“PaleyFest Fall TV Previews
2017 Announcement"). New York Television Festival will take place over five days in
October 2017, expanding from its previous duration of four days. They list 118,000+ attendees but it seems like that number is cumulative over all twelve years it has existed
(NYTVF News). ATX always takes place over four days during one of the first weekends 9 in June (2014 Festival Guide, 2015 Festival Guide, 2016 Festival Guide). Festivals like
Sundance takes place over ten days and has over 40,000 attendees (Latenser). Toronto
International Film Festival had 340,000 attendees in 2016 (“By The Numbers”). Using these numbers, we can get a sense of the scale of these festivals. Later I will go into more detail about the kinds of events held at each of them, their demographics, their goals, and the methods they use to achieve those goals.
FILM FESTIVALS AS GROUNDWORK
I want to start with some basics about how film festivals work so that later in my analysis we can see how television festivals align with or differ from film festivals in their purpose and structure. Most film festivals share similar standard operating procedures: filmmakers submit their films by a certain deadline, the festival might seek other films from distributors to fill gaps in programming and/or to try to attract some famous guests to boost attendance, and the festival shows several overlapping programs over a short period of time. Larger, more prestigious film festivals like Toronto and
Sundance serve as a market for film distributors looking to purchase films from independent filmmakers and also offer an opportunity for celebrity-helmed projects to generate press ahead of the film’s public premiere. Getting a film accepted into a festival like Sundance is, however, its own reward. Acceptance into Sundance assigns a level of credibility to filmmakers that helps them get bigger budgets for projects down the road, even if their film is not picked up by a distributor. Smaller film festivals, such as New
10 Orleans Film Festival or Capital City Black Film Festival, often occupy niches, showcase primarily local films, or function as community events.
Many of the most prestigious film festivals take place in metropolitan areas or at least areas that primarily wealthier populations have access to (Cannes, Park City, etc.).
Denver SeriesFest, ATX, and Comic Con do not take place in cities of the same socioeconomic status but still require their attendees to maintain some level of wealth in order to afford passes. New York Television Festival’s passes run for $750, SeriesFest’s passes are about $330, PaleyFest tickets are about $75 (but do not afford attendees the same level of access that the passes for other festivals do), and Comic Con’s badges are
$285 for an adult for the entire weekend (“NYTVF Box Office;” “Festival Passes On
Sale NOW!;” “Ticket Info & Directions;” “Purchase Badges”). This makes sense considering that television festivals and film festivals appeal to vastly different taste cultures. Film festivals, at least the larger ones, try very hard to appear as cosmopolitan influencers and/or reinforcers of taste, whereas television festivals try harder just to continue existing and showcasing television series and their creators. Television festivals still benefit from high profile guests and shows, but television festivals are not necessarily attempting to define what “good taste” in television means.
Many fan gatherings such as film festivals, television festivals, and pop culture conventions are anchored by “tentpole” events, which usually take place on opening and closing night. The tentpole events are expected to have higher attendance than the other events featured at the festivals and often take place in the largest venue available.
Tentpole events may differ between different kinds of festivals. A tentpole event at 11 Sundance might be the world premiere of a highly anticipated film from a famous director. The goal of this kind of event would be for Sundance to publicly align itself with a high-profile talent and to generate as much buzz around this film as possible (and to set the expectations high for the rest of Sundance’s lineup). A tentpole event at a television festival, like ATX, might be a reunion of the cast of a beloved television show and a screening of a fan-favorite episode. The goal of this kind of event is to unite as many fans of a particular show as possible in a way that indicates the staff at ATX love the show too, and will prove it by giving the event as many places for fans to participate as possible. By aligning themselves with a fan-favorite show, the ATX programming staff gains more credibility by positioning themselves as “fellow fans” and therefore the attendees are more likely to trust their recommendations of new shows included in the programming. At a pop culture convention, a tentpole event might be a gathering of famous comic book writers discussing the industry and previewing new material. This kind of event unites comic book fans, generates buzz in the press and on social media around the new material, and sets the bar for the rest of the festival’s lineup.
Over time, film festival lineups have shifted to showcase indie films hoping to secure distribution. But how do you embody the spirit of indie cinema and make money doing it without contradicting yourself? Newman points out that independent filmmaking, when undertaken “for profit under the auspices of the global media empires,” produces films that exist in the complicated place between alternative media and mass product (21). He does say that indie films that generate a lot of revenue do not inherently lose their “indie” credibility, but instead use their status as a profit-generating 12 product to more effectively challenge dominant narratives produced by Hollywood filmmaking. This observation poses interesting questions about whether film festivals should exist for commercial purposes or not – many festivals are nonprofits, with exceptions such as South by Southwest (hereafter SXSW) and ATX, though some for- profit festivals do have non-profit divisions. Is a film festival that exists for profit, even if it is championing indie cinema, somehow aligned more with mainstream Hollywood filmmaking and therefore are its objectives undermined? Newman believes that indie cinema “has been helped enormously in its arrival as a parallel to Hollywood by the validation of its films at festivals and of certain fests themselves,” which indicates that one way of thinking does not find anything incongruous about festivals championing independent film doing so for a profit (55).
FESTIVALS AND CLASS
Cindy Hing-yuk Wong makes sure to point out that festivals are sometimes high- brow and exclusive (such as Cannes), but other times that their attempts to distance themselves from cinema for the masses allows for greater aesthetic and narrative innovation (165). Television festivals and pop culture conventions are for different fan groups (with some overlap, of course), but they both require some level of evaluation of programming (where fans decide whether or not they are interested in attending the festival, what events are interesting to them, etc.) that do lead to a kind of exclusivity inherent in the festival that can both reproduce existing class and gender hierarchies and create new hierarchies inside a community of fans. As Jason Mittell puts it, “evaluation 13 creates distinctions that elevate one social sphere by belittling others” (213). This belittling he speaks of is inherent in every decision made by attendees in choosing what events to go to and which ones to skip.
This belittling that takes place on behalf of fans can replicate external hierarchies and creates new hierarchies within the group of festival organizers and attendees. Wong asks, “whose ideas are articulated in film festivals and by whom? Who uses film festivals as an arena to express specific viewpoints?” (165). The ideas articulated at film and television festivals are often those of a liberal creative class. Comic Con is so oversaturated with different elements that the ideas and viewpoints expressed by it, while symbolic of current tastes, often result in only the most expensive ideas gaining traction in popular press (such as new trailers for Marvel movies, for example). So not only are the audiences for these festivals inherently classed just in terms of programming offered and cost of attendance, but additional class hierarchies can apply to those who attend the festival as well. Gender and race hierarchies are different among these different kinds of festivals as well. Comic Con is a known haven for video game developers to premiere new games, and the gender politics among gamers (especially in recent years) have been notoriously fraught. ATX is run entirely by women, and the shows they choose to program are often geared towards younger women in their 20s and 30s.
Andre Bazin asked similar questions of festivals and class in his 1955 article in
Cahiers du cinema on experiencing film festivals. He says that film festivals seem
“worldly” from the outside, but they are in fact the opposite—they exist as a “religious order,” occupied by the cosmopolitan elite. He chooses not to name the members of the 14 order as the cosmopolitan elite, but it is difficult not to imagine them when he mentions the “strict dress code” and his assertion that “clothes don’t make the man” (Bazin 15-17).
His description indicates that the festival in question is for the press, the jury, and the stars—an inherently exclusive group of people by nature but, I imagine, when you belong in the group it may be more difficult to empathize for anyone outside the group (17).
Granted, Bazin is talking about Cannes sixty years ago, so it is arguable that his assessment is dated. However, depending on their prestige, many festivals are prohibitively expensive for those outside the liberal elite class and its hangers-on, especially for people who lack industry ties. In contrast, New York Television Festival,
Denver SeriesFest, and ATX are much less expensive than the biggest film festivals like
Sundance and Cannes, and therefore cater to a different audience.
In popular press covering the entry of television into the most prestigious film festivals, phrases like “identity crisis” and words such as “straying” are used a lot. In a
2015 article on Sundance’s foray into television, one journalist asserts that the festival only bothered to include television because “[Sundance] is trying to remain relevant”
(Barnes). Film festivals will often have blocks of “episodic” programming as part of the lineup, but the larger festivals like Cannes and Sundance have been exceptionally slow to accept television as a part of their programming. Even when it is accepted, it is often presented as “separate” from the rest of the festival. Tribeca Film Festival recently just launched a separate television festival. And Chow, instead of saying that the festival was welcoming new kinds of television programming, celebrated the fact that the festival was starting a new, television-only festival. Part of this may stem from trying to streamline 15 competition regulations (after all, filmmakers and television creators work within very different time constraints, so it would be difficult and unfair to evaluate both kinds of content under the same criteria), but it feels like this separation also comes from the vastly different taste cultures between film and television and the inherently classist undertones among them. Television’s inclusion is not celebrated, it is only grudgingly allowed. Animals was executive produced by the Duplass Brothers, who are Sundance veterans (Animals; Barnes). The show was being shopped around for distribution just like the films were (the series eventually went to HBO). Because of its high-profile executive producers, it is difficult to imagine Animals not getting picked up by a distributor regardless of its appearance at Sundance. Earlier this year, Cannes screened two episodes of the new iteration of Twin Peaks and the full miniseries Top of the Lake: China Girl.
Both series are directed by former Palme d’Or winners David Lynch and Jane Campion, respectively (Roxborough). The more prestigious film festivals are finally allowing television programming to appear on the same stage as film programming, but that does not necessarily mean that those holding or attending the festival view them as holding equal artistic value in taste-making.
FANS, FESTIVALS, AND THE AUDIENCE
In order to capture what attending a festival feels like, Marijke de Valck borrows
Victor Turner’s concept of communitas. Communitas refers to a liminal state where a person can suspend their typical environment to exist within a new, temporary space. To quote de Valck’s evaluation: 16 The idea of a necessary suspension by means of ritualistic performance to mark a transition is relevant to the study of the film festival network because it explains why festival events are indispensable in the creation of symbolic value; each festival is an extended cultural performance during which “other” rules of engagement count and the commercial market rules of the film world outside are suspended (37).
While I disagree that all commercial market rules are suspended during a film festival, I do think her explanation of how we can apply Turner’s theory is especially salient here.
Hypothetically, festivals’ goals to exhibit accepted films could also be achieved by sending ticketholders links that they could watch at home all at the same time. While this seems unlikely to occur, I think it is important to imagine how festivals might change as streaming services become more ubiquitous. Fans who attend these events in order to interact with (or often just to be in the same room with) the creators, affiliated celebrities, and fellow fans of the same cultural artifact are often completely consumed by their awareness of where they are and who else is there. It creates a sense of community that does not exist outside of the event and that follows different rules while there. Her analysis also applies to television festivals and Comic Con, even if some festivals do not primarily operate on a submission model (like ATX does not, and it also celebrates both new and old content instead of just new shows). Thomas Elsaesser’s conception of the film festival network provides a larger, more macrocosmic example of the kind of community that exists in the independent film world. Television festivals are not necessarily a part of that same kind of network that film festivals are, since television festivals are less culturally established and there are also fewer of them. ATX has cultivated relationships with the University of Texas at Austin (only through offering free
17 passes for students), Austin Film Festival, and Alamo Drafthouse, but not necessarily other television festivals.
Television programming from years ago relied on the fact that there were only a few networks competing for airtime, so the audience for these shows was broken up into much larger segments than it is now with so many different channels and shows available. It was much more important for viewers to watch a show as it first aired, since streaming platforms and DVRs were not available to enable viewers to watch at their leisure or record their programs for them. There were fewer shows to discuss and a more regulated schedule of when viewers would typically watch these shows, so the imagined audiences for shows of the broadcast era looked very different from those of shows from today. This helped the networks because audience measurement practices were much simpler then. Ien Ang describes the relationship between audiences, ratings institutions, and the television industry in this way:
The system performs a double objectification of actual audiences: by turning “television audience” into an object of knowledge, ratings discourse simultaneously enables the making of “television audience” as an object of economic exchange. This makes audience measurement a clear instance of what Foucault (1980b) has called a technology of power, in which the wish to exert control over people is connected to and articulated in the institutionalized production of knowledge about them (57).
Ang makes sure to point out that there are really two audiences: the audience as discursive construct and the audience as social world (13). When audiences flock to a television festival for a reunion panel or a screening of their favorite show, the audience stops being a discursive construct and becomes a social world.
18 ATX insists in popular press, marketing materials, and in interviews that its audience is made of television fans. As Henry Jenkins characterizes fandom in his seminal work Textual Poachers, fandoms have five defining characteristics: 1) they utilize a different mode of reception of media, 2) they critique and interpret things differently than the average person, 3) fandom provides a strong groundwork for
“consumer activism,” 4) they maintain their own methods of practicing fandom and aesthetic norms, and 5) they belong to an alternative social community (Jenkins 756-
762). Fans of any kind of pop culture often demonstrate their fandom through their behavior, such as liking the Facebook page for a particular show or engaging with other fans online. Although fan communities help the fans celebrate their interests, the festivals and conventions marketed to these fans take place to generate interest and therefore revenue. Philip Napoli argues that the media industry views audiences as a “product,” or something that they are working to create (19). The only meaningful conception of audiences and fans in the eyes of the industry is that of potential revenue generators.
The festivals, conventions, and events that I list here all have different missions, systems of organization, and kinds of events (discussed further later on). Thus it makes sense that the events also have their own modes of fandom. Comic Con is a haven for gamers, comic fans, and people who love to cosplay, or dressing up as their favorite characters from their favorite shows, video games, movies, or comics (Anderson 17).
These costumes are often incredibly intricate and time consuming to create, and the wearer may choose to attend the convention in character. This kind of behavior probably would not happen at any of the other festivals I have mentioned here. SeriesFest and New 19 York Television Festival focus primarily on independent television, so there is not necessarily a shared lexicon that would be applicable to celebrate at those events. The kinds of television PaleyFest showcases do not necessarily have characters that would be ideal for cosplay purposes as cosplay seeks to realize fantasy and has its own set of best practices and assumptions. It would be strange for someone to cosplay as Sofia Vergara from Modern Family, for example. It would be less strange for someone to cosplay as a superhero. I am not suggesting that the majority of attendees at Comic Con cosplay or that Comic Con’s success depends on fans who cosplay, I simply include this here to illustrate that these festivals attract different kinds of fans who demonstrate their fandom in different ways. ATX does showcase some of the kinds of shows that cosplayers might pull their character inspirations from (such as Battlestar Galactica), but I did not notice a lot of cosplayers in either of the years that I attended ATX. I speculate that this is due to its explicit attempts to allow fans and industry people to mingle freely. Comic Con allows fans and industry to mingle but in a much more structured way, and it is characterized more as an event where extreme acts of fandom are welcomed.
Much of the literature I encountered on fan studies encountered cited the importance of women in different fan spaces, despite the fact that certain fan spaces and events like Comic Con are often presented as dominantly male. ATX is run entirely by women and is largely marketed to women. Jenkins argues that the media industry is not acknowledging the role of women in fandoms as they should be (34). Instead, they cling to an outdated conception of who fans can be (white males) and market to them. Napoli also says that women consume more media (in his case he means television) than men 20 (288). Clearly ATX’s connections to the television industry have been working for them, and this is at least in part because they are not accepting the industry’s outdated conception of audience composition. To be fair, much progress has been made since
Textual Poachers was published in terms of female showrunners and shows explicitly marketed to women that portray strong female characters, but ATX features shows from various decades, indicating that they were aware of women’s fandom before the television industry had developed enough to accept it. Based on this conception, ATX is both an audience-centered festival (according to Wong’s criteria, as mentioned earlier) and as close to an A festival as a television festival can get so early in television festival history.
FESTIVALS AND TIES TO THEIR INDUSTRIES
As I mentioned earlier, a festival is only as good as its connections with the industry it aims to represent. The staff and boards of New York Television Festival and
Denver SeriesFest have some industry connections – Terrence Gray, executive director of
New York Television Festival, was once a writer and producer on Who Wants To Be A
Millionaire? (“SPONSORSHIP”; Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?). Additionally, the
COO of SeriesFest acted in Gilmore Girls (SeriesFest; Gilmore Girls). But because these festivals accept submissions from independent producers, their links to the industry are not displayed in programming in the same way that ATX outwardly displays its links to the industry.
21 ATX and PaleyFest are the two most prominent television-oriented festivals with visible ties to the industry, making them the closest festivals to having received an official “sanction” by the industry. PaleyFest is the equivalent of an institutionally sanctioned festival that is related to television, if there can be such a thing for television.
It also helps that the institution that exists to “sanction” PaleyFest is its parent institution, the William S. Paley Center for Media. PaleyFest hosts events in the fall and spring showcasing primarily new television, whereas ATX approaches programming in a different way (this will be discussed further in Chapter 3). Austin Film Festival is the only film festival officially sanctioned by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences, which I recognize is not an exact equivalent, but it is interesting to think about the parallels between the two. I introduce this point because the film festivals I mentioned earlier serve as informal markets and are often springboards for awards-vehicle films. I wondered whether ATX and Paleyfest would be equivalents to this for the television industry, but it does not seem that an appearance at either of these festivals makes it more likely for a particular show to win any awards. And PaleyFest does not require people who work in the industry and fans to travel outside of the industry’s “cultural capitals” to attend, since its events take place in Los Angeles and New York City (“PaleyFest Fall TV
Previews 2017 Announcement"). That said, people do travel to both Los Angeles and
New York City for these kinds of events.
Comic Con, however, does require fans and industry talent to make a sort of pilgrimage each year to San Diego. Comic Con obviously does not only focus on television, but focuses on a wide variety of pop culture including films, television, 22 comics, video games, tech, and more. Especially as crossover between comics, film, and television increases, more television-related events have been added to Comic Con’s lineup. Comic Con founder Shel Dorf hoped to see San Diego “gain it’s rightful place in the world of fandom” (sic) (qtd. in Hanna 40). SeriesFest takes place in Denver because cable television originated in Denver (SeriesFest). Cable television did not actually originate in Denver, but Denver was home to TCI, one of the largest cable companies in
America (“Tele-Communications, Inc.”). The fact that the festival is positioning itself as integrated with the industry clearly indicates that proximity to the industry is a selling point for potential attendees and professionals submitting their work. SeriesFest invites industry talent to attend the festival and moderate panels, or assist in other official capacities, but it seems to be designed to attract fans and producers of independent television as primary attendees (SeriesFest).
CHAPTER ONE CONCLUSION
In this chapter I have utilized work on film festivals, Comic Con, and fans to explore how different kinds of festivals orient themselves within the festival network, who holds a stake in the success of these festivals, and how these festivals reinforce existing social and cultural hierarchies and create new ones within the festivals’ environments. I have connected film festivals to television festivals and pop culture conventions in order to delineate different kinds of fan gatherings. Although these gatherings do have some common goals, they often have different approaches to achieving those goals and different kinds of relationships with their connected industries 23 and audiences. Television festivals, film festivals, and pop culture conventions cater to very different taste cultures, and therefore sexist, classist hierarchies are reinforced in the art world. These festivals’ connections to their respective industries are critical, and indicate how successful the art forms these festivals celebrate will be over time. As fan behaviors continue to evolve, the entertainment industries must grapple with both waning control (at least, compared to the network era) and increasing specialization of audiences
(plus, it is easier to track what outcomes everyday fans want with platforms such as
Twitter as opposed to exclusively relying on ratings). Although television festivals may borrow from film festivals in format and pop culture conventions in dependence on industry connections, they talk directly to the industry and their audience. As the industry is gradually beginning to change their conception of the audience, ATX is helping to remedy that by allowing the industry and the audience to be in direct conversation with one another at the event. In my next chapter, I will describe ATX’s ties to the television industry in greater detail.
24 Chapter Two: Television Festivals and the Television Industry: Fan Convention or Work Conference?
CHAPTER TWO INTRODUCTION
In the previous chapter, I examined film festivals, pop culture conventions, and fans in order to describe and analyze television festivals and position them in relation to other kinds of fan gatherings. I argued that television festivals cater to their own audiences to certain kinds of fans, and strive to facilitate more streamlined communication between the television industry and television fans. This chapter analyzes the relationship between television festivals and the television industry by examining the
ATX Television Festival through popular and trade press coverage as well as the ATX website. By the television industry, I mean the talent creating shows, the networks airing shows, and the platforms where viewers can stream shows. I will analyze the current and past relationships of board members and executive directors of the festival to the television and film industries to argue that ATX is tied to the television industry in programming, staff, sponsorship, and attendees. It is these connections that help set it apart from the two other largest television festivals, New York Television Festival and
Denver SeriesFest. By looking at how these executives and board members discuss their positions and objectives (and where specifically members of the press might agree or disagree with them), we can learn more about what ATX means by the term “television” and how the people affiliated with the festival reinforce that definition.
25
PRODUCT OF THE POST-NETWORK ERA
As Amanda Lotz asserts in her book, The Television Will Be Revolutionized, we are in a “new era of television experience,” or what she refers to as the post-network era
(19). With more kinds of programming to watch than ever before—and more platforms and devices on which to watch them—the experience of watching television now represents many different variations of the same activity. We can now binge watch an entire season of a television show (or even the entire series) in one night if we so choose, as opposed to watching each episode as it airs. It is often hard to tell what the word
“television” should signify – after all, if most people watch television programming on their computers and not on an actual television, is it even still television? In addition to the deluge of programming available now, television is no longer characterized as so lowbrow that it does not merit serious attention or criticism, as it was in the network era.
Scholars have consistently been producing work that gives television programs, networks, audiences, and markets a bit more credit artistically, politically, and economically since the 1970s. Michael Newman and Elana Levine, in their book
Legitimating Television, insist that “the new conception of TV as a good cultural object rejects every characteristic of the pre-convergence era medium, and new technologies and textualities are seen as progressing beyond and improving upon this past” (7). ATX is a product of the post-network era in a way that film festivals are not, since film festivals came out of a different cultural and industrial context and exist to solve different 26 problems. It is both a place where fans can meet industry people and discuss their favorite shows, but it is also a marketplace designed to generate revenue that ATX relies on in order to keep the festival going.
But television festivals are not the only event in which television content is available to festival attendees. Film festivals, such as Sundance, have added new programming in recent years in order to accommodate television content (usually referred to as “episodic programming”) (McNary). Essentially these festivals will add one or more segments, such as a script competition, a table read, or block of programming where several pilot episodes of different series will be shown back to back. Some festivals offer a combination of these kinds of programming. Sundance’s offerings vary – they will show hits like OJ: Made in America (Edelman) in their Special Events program but show independent television as part of their Indie Episodic program. Additionally, Toronto added an episodic program two years ago, including shows like Transparent and Black
Mirror (Transparent; Black Mirror). Michael Lerman, Primetime Programmer and
Acting Head of Programming for Toronto, said, “this peak era of television has ushered in a gold mine of prime, movie-quality, small-screen projects from a growing spectrum of diverse voices and original content creators” (“TIFF Tunes In To Primetime). It is important to note again that the use of the term “episodic programming” is intentionally designed to allow the inclusion of content designed for traditional television and independent web series in many cases, so the submission criteria can be a bit hazy since web series do not have to fit into 30-minute or hour-long time blocks. This also reinforces the disparity in taste cultures that film festivals and television festivals operate in. For the 27 sake of this paper, I will only focus on television festivals and not festivals designed to showcase web series (ones on platforms like YouTube, series that were released directly onto streaming platforms are included in my analysis) or episodic programming within film festivals.
ANALYSIS OF ATX HISTORY AND INDUSTRY RELATIONSHIPS
To begin my analysis, I want to start with a brief overview of ATX’s history. At this writing, ATX is in its seventh year, having been founded by Caitlin McFarland and
Emily Gipson in 2011. Both spent years working in the film and television industries before starting ATX (“Who We Are”). They worked for networks, studios, and festivals like Tribeca, which means they clearly felt confident they had the industry connections and operations knowledge to pull off a festival like this (“Story of the Fest”). Thanks to
McFarland’s experience working at festivals like Sundance and Tribeca, she brings a level of film festival expertise and connection to the table. The festival website describes
ATX as a festival that is “50% for the biggest television fans and 50% for those who are working or wanting to work in the industry” (“Story of the Fest”). The event is designed to function like a film festival but it also serves as a sort of social event for people in the industry. The festival’s cofounders have also launched a production company, No
Mondays Productions, in order to help produce new television programming. Most film festivals are non-profit and rely heavily on corporate sponsorship and volunteer labor to exist. ATX’s status as a for- or non-profit organization is not listed on their website. I later learned they are for-profit but have a non-profit arm (discussed further in Chapter 3) 28 but they still rely on volunteer labor (in exchange for passes, of course) during the festival and corporate sponsorship for events and programming. Besides the two cofounders, ATX has ten paid staff members, all women. This is a key departure from film festivals, a space which is notoriously staffed by mostly white males. Women are a key demographic for ATX, so it makes sense that the staff members making key organizational decisions would be women. Most of the roles are related to the festival itself, such as Festival Coordinator or Travel Coordinator. There are only a few roles that seem to apply to the festival’s year-round activities, such as the Director of Operations and Social Media Coordinator (“Team”).
One of the primary aspects of ATX that sets it apart from other festivals (film festivals and television festivals) is its approach to programming. Even the most prestigious and selective film festivals accept outside submissions. ATX, however, does not. Its goal is not really to showcase independent television (though with their new production company affiliate, it appears they are working to include that goal in the festival in some way). What also sets it apart from Denver SeriesFest and New York
Television Festival is its focus on reunion programming, such as the widely popular
Gilmore Girls reunion from a few years ago. Each year ATX showcases at least one reunion of one or two prominent television shows, either because of a significant anniversary or because of staff connections. For all intents and purposes, what ATX considers to be television is generally fiction programming; reality shows like The
Bachelor, comedy sketch shows like Saturday Night Live, and nonfiction programming like Dateline are not really what they tend to highlight (Saturday Night Live; Dateline). 29 ATX includes original programming from the various streaming services in addition to shows that are available on both streaming services and cable television.
I will provide an example of how ATX’s industry relationships are connected to programming decisions. Actress Arielle Kebbel has served on the advisory board for
ATX since the festival’s inception. She played Dean’s first wife, Lindsay, in Gilmore
Girls. For the 2015 festival, ATX organized a reunion panel of the cast of Gilmore Girls.
Another board member, David Hudgins, worked on Parenthood, which Lauren Graham starred in after Gilmore Girls had wrapped (Bryant; Parenthood). Precisely how the
Gilmore Girls panel came to be is not necessarily important, but this provides a good example of how ATX’s programming decisions are related to their advisory board members. Kebbel has been at the festival since the first year, so it seems she and the co- founders had a prior relationship.
Another aspect of ATX’s programming worth noting is that they seek out particular kinds of shows to showcase. The trajectory of their programming became clear in a Reddit AMA (short for “ask me anything”) with Gipson and McFarland. They say that the programming process varies from year to year, and insinuate that each year is its own experiment. Programming decisions are made in equal measure based on what talent
(creatives and actors) and executives can attend the festival, what the sponsoring networks would like to showcase, and what shows might generate excitement (and revenue) in a reunion panel. For example, in the festival’s fifth iteration (affectionately called “seasons”), the cast of fan favorite and locally-filmed hit Friday Night Lights reunited for a screening of a beloved episode – and the event took place on Panther Field, 30 one of the filming locations for the show that happens to be right outside of Austin
(Friday Night Lights). Attendees could tour the Panther “field house,” which was still mostly intact. Friday Night Lights was, and still is, a show with a cult-like following, which made for an unforgettable event. This particular event took advantage of the festival’s location in Austin. In 2017, the show The Son was part of a program and part of that show was also filmed in Texas (though not in Austin, specifically) (The Son). This shows the programmers are willing to use the festival’s location to their advantage when applicable.
ATX seeks to highlight shows with large and/or rabid fan bases – they want the attendees to be as excited for the events as possible. Film festivals choose not to use the word fandom and prefer to utilize cinephilia as a marketing tactic. Gipson and McFarland mentioned in their AMA that they also like to book surprise guests for this purpose.. In
Legitimating Television, Michael Newman and Elana Levine elaborate (by way of Matt
Hills) on these cult-like fandoms and the television shows that inspire them: “cult TV is
‘a form of “anti-mainstream” distinction, where cult status is about finding quality in unexpected places and revaluing otherwise devalued/popular texts’… television is legitimated when it no longer resembles television; instances of television achieve prominence when they take on the traits of a more culturally validated form” (Newman and Levine, 28-29). Fandom as deployed by film festivals is slightly different, since most film festivals are programming exclusively new content and not screening older films.
But they are similar in that the showrunner, or a favorite director or actor is enough to convince a fan to watch something they have never heard of. But film festivals hardly 31 ever use the word fan or fandom to market an event or attract people to the festival. The word “fandom” (similar to the word “television”) is almost a dirty word to film festivals
– fandom is not something one should aspire to participate in, much less celebrate. The best analogy for “fandom” in terms of film festivals would be “cinephilia,” since it is medium-specific and presented as somehow being more dignified or more established than fandom. This difference is one manifestation of the different taste cultures of television festivals and film festivals and how fan behaviors and marketing differs among these kinds of events.
The kinds of shows that get tossed around as their “dream shows” (ones that the festival founders would love to bring back for a reunion panel but for one reason or another have never made it happen) could be described as what Jason Mittell deems
“complex TV” (18). One example they include in the AMA are Buffy the Vampire Slayer
(Buffy the Vampire Slayer). The shows highlighted at ATX are almost all fictional 30- minute or hour-long shows designed with primetime or binges on streaming services in mind. Little attention is placed on any kind of news, documentary, variety, children’s, or reality programs. They also tend not to program any shows that are too old, either (after all, the festival is geared towards younger people). In an interview, Gipson and
McFarland said that this was because the older a show is, the harder it is for them to plan a reunion panel (and most of the programming they do that is older is to facilitate such a panel) (Alter). The “television” that ATX strives to celebrate in practice is only really one of many kinds of television. Additionally, I imagine that the programmers, as fans of television themselves, have a hard time saying no to their personal favorite shows or 32 might work a little harder in order to get those kinds of shows onto the schedule than they would another show that they do not like as much.
Reunion programming and screenings of current or upcoming pilots, while certainly the centerpieces of ATX’s programming, are not the only events ATX plans.
Indeed, their series programming has shifted from mostly current, in 2014 and 2015, to having more premieres in 2016 (2014 Program Guide 16-30; 2015 Program Guide 15-31;
2016 Program Guide 19-33). They also offer a pitch competition that is designed to help a writer with a new project rework it and shop it around to networks under the advisory of members of the board. Screenplay competitions are a hallmark of traditional film festivals. However, most screenplay competitions at film festivals come with a cash prize, a physical award (such as a trophy or certificate), and/or any supplemental materials provided by festival sponsors. Sometimes the winners will receive additional mentorship or a meeting with executives, but most often this is not the case. Last year’s winner of the pitch competition had already won a few other awards and had been recognized for his work, so it seems as though this is meant as a pipeline for writers who have clearly demonstrated their talent but need a leg up in the industry (N’Duka). And even if the writer does get a “meeting,” there is no guarantee that meeting would be anything more than a courtesy as part of a sponsorship agreement, not a guarantee to seriously consider the script that wins. This is often the case with film festival screenplay competitions as well. It is worth considering whether winning such a pitch competition would make all that much of a difference if the winner’s show did get picked up by a network. With films, the more festival laurels the better, but with television it does not 33 seem to matter all that much for shows that are already owned by the networks. For television that is truly independently produced, acceptance into a television festival (and winning awards if applicable) could serve as an end goal in itself for the producers.
Now I want to return to the advisory board. I mentioned earlier that the programmers like to include new or current shows that their affiliated networks hope to showcase. The advisory board for ATX primarily consists of writers, directors, producers, and actors. But there are network executives sprinkled in as well: Kathleen
McCaffrey works for HBO as VP of Programming, Bryan Seabury works for CBS as
Senior Vice President of Drama Development, Dina Hillier works for Paramount TV as
VP of Comedy Development, and Jordan Levin is the CEO of AwesomenessTV. Both
Seabury and Hillier were founding members of the advisory board. Gipson and
McFarland said in their AMA that for the first season of the festival, they just contacted people they knew to try to get an event together.
Their connections with the film and television industry made their conception of a television festival feasible for them to implement, and as the festival continued attracting more attendees each year, the network of connections grew. Additionally, the advisory board attracted more high-profile showrunners over time, such as Beau Willimon from
House of Cards, Noah Hawley from Fargo, and Graham Yost from Justified (House of
Cards; Fargo; Justified). One of Newman and Levine’s key interventions in Legitimating
Television involves positioning showrunners in the post-convergence era as auteurs— multi-hyphenate writers, producers, and (generally speaking but this role is not technically necessary for someone to be considered a showrunner) creators of scripted 34 fictional shows. The example they provide is Aaron Sorkin of The West Wing, who incidentally appeared at ATX as part of a West Wing reunion (Newman and Levine, 38;
Egner; West Wing) The primary outlier on the advisory board is Austin-based indie filmmaker Richard Linklater. Although Linklater is known for supporting film in Austin as the founder of Austin Film Society, his ventures into television are few and far between. He created, wrote, and produced a limited series for Hulu back in 2012 called
Up to Speed, which is around the time that ATX was founded, so he could have used his connection to the festival as a way to publicize that series or to find a platform that would take it (“Linklater;” Up to Speed).
The advisory board’s professional connections to networks, production companies, and agencies serve a practical purpose in helping to secure programming. In the same vein that the biggest film festivals and Comic Con rely on industry talent for revenue and buzz, ATX relies on their connections and could not function without them.
These kinds of connections were easy for Gipson and McFarland to obtain based on their prior experience working in the industry and as the festival has grown (discussed further in Chapter 3). The sponsors listed on ATX’s sponsor page represent a wide variety of networks and organizations. Although ATX only has advisory board ties to HBO, CBS, and Paramount TV, their sponsor list includes many more networks, presumably the ones whose programming the festival showcases in a given year. (“Advisory Board ATX
Television Festival”) Some of those include USA, Hulu, Amazon, and TV Land to name a few (2016 Festival Guide 10). The New York Television Festival has more network sponsors (and also just more sponsors generally) but it is a bigger event and also in the 35 same town where much of the industry’s decision-making regarding television production takes place, so this is a logical difference (“SPONSORSHIP”). Denver SeriesFest’ primary sponsors are NBC Comcast and Denver Film Society, with Starz also sponsoring, but their other sponsors are more film-oriented organizations, such as IFP
(SeriesFest). The original Kickstarter campaign for the inaugural ATX raised just over
$25,000, which undoubtedly helped to prove that the concept would work (Gipson). But at this point, ATX does not reveal any information about how much revenue it generates, what its budget is, what levels of sponsorship there are, or any more information about their finances on their website, in interviews with press, or in published materials. As I later learned from Gipson and will discuss more in Chapter 3, the festival has only recently begun to turn a profit.
CHAPTER TWO CONCLUSION
To conclude, the amount of television available to viewers and the alleged
“legitimation” of television (by way of becoming more cinematic) has inspired a new generation of television fans and film converts to experience television in new ways, making television festivals more relevant than ever. ATX really showcases one kind of television, which is fiction television. ATX programmers do not directly connect the kind of television they want to celebrate with being cinematic or therefore legitimate, but the fact that a television festival is able to exist at all, much less thrive, does in some way depend on the cultural acceptance of the idea that television programming does not seem strange in a setting traditionally reserved for cinema. ATX’s relationships with people in 36 the industry give it further cultural legitimation that put it above other television festivals in terms of star power and political clout. While the future of independent television as a proving ground for upcoming producers is uncertain, fans of network television shows and shows of the recent past can experience and contribute to the production of television in a whole new way. Not only can viewers watch the newest shows whenever they want, they can also return to them as many times as they wish and use this more extensive knowledge to participate in fan communities. In my next chapter, I will explore the operations of ATX using interviews with ATX staff members and drawing from my experience attending the festival.
37 Chapter Three: At ATX, Fans and Industry Collide
CHAPTER THREE INTRODUCTION
This chapter will utilize interviews with ATX staff (co-founder Emily Gipson and volunteer coordinator Willita Mahone), my experiences attending the festival for the past two years, and information from festival program guides to explore ATX’s structure and get a behind-the-scenes look on how the festival is planned, how it gets executed, and what it feels like to attend. ATX prides itself on being an intimate festival, and I will demonstrate how it has accomplished this in the coming chapter. Because it is put on by a small staff, only takes up one weekend, and occupies less than ten venues (in which only one to five events are planned each day, so the schedule is not oversaturated), it has been able to maintain this sense of intimacy while continuing to grow. But ATX still strives to create a social space for fans to interact with each other, whether they work in the industry or not. I will begin by explaining how I was able to attend ATX and what the experience was like for me. Then, I will analyze a sample from the schedule, discussing programming decisions and trends. Finally, I will utilize interviews with Willita Mahone, volunteer coordinator, and Emily Gipson, co-founder to illustrate the planning process for
ATX.
38
MY EXPERIENCE AT ATX
As I mentioned in the introduction, I have attended ATX twice. For the purposes of this paper, I will focus largely on my experience attending the festival in 2017, since I had not yet decided to research ATX the firs time I attended in 2016 and therefore I have much more detailed notes from my time attending in 2017. I was able to get a free badge through ATX’s partnership with University of Texas at Austin in 2016. In 2017 I got a free badge for ATX from a friend who has volunteered with them for many years and had an extra one. The first year, I primarily wanted to attend the Friday Night Lights screening and panel I mentioned earlier. My goal this year was to attend as many panels and events as possible and document the experience the best I could. ATX badge-holders can acquire fast passes, which are essentially tickets that guarantee entry into a particular screening. Fast passes are free if you have purchased a badge, and you can choose them a few weeks before the festival begins via an online lottery system. Badge-holders can only get up to four fast passes and there is not an option to purchase more. For anything else they want to attend, attendees must wait in segmented lines. Fast pass-holders get to go into the venue first. Then, other badge-holders without fast passes can enter and people file in until the venue is full or the line ends, whichever comes first. Attendees may have to arrive at the venue a few hours early for an event if they cannot get fast passes to make sure they get into the venue. ATX releases varying amounts of fast passes for each event, depending on demand and the size of the venue in which the event takes
39 place, so if they run out of fast passes that does not necessarily mean that getting into a particular event is impossible. The standard number of fast passes is equal to 10% of the
“house,” or 10% of the number of seats available in a particular venue. The venues ATX selects are based on being in walking distance of each other (Gipson). They also cultivate relationships with some of the venues and continue to use them year after year, such as the State Theatre (Gipson).
Some of this was explained to me as I picked up my badge for this year’s festival.
I was not sure if I would be able to attend the festival, so I did not utilize the lottery system for fast passes since I did not want to take a fast pass from anyone who could definitely attend the festival. The lottery system also closes before the festival actually begins, I think to assist organizers in calculating how many fast passes are left so that they know how to distribute them to any latecomers like me. Film festivals often employ a similar system of segmented lines. Attendees get in a line based on what kind of ticket they have. Ticketholders with VIP badges or the equivalent, most expensive tickets get to go in first, then the next-most-expensive, and so on. This practice further reinforces class hierarchies even on the small scale by letting either the wealthiest participants (those with the most expensive badge) or those who received a VIP badge for free due to their professional affiliations enter first, they are assigned an elevated status compared to the other attendees.
When I picked up my badge, I was easily able to pick up fast passes for a few events I wanted to attend. Because I had waited so long, I did not get fast passes for some events that would have been my first choice and I ended up getting turned away from a 40 screening of GLOW that I wanted to go to because I did not arrive several hours early to wait in line (GLOW). ATX’s website does not list any particular protocols for attendees who might hold single tickets or day passes whenever those are applicable. In an interview, they discourage people from attending for only one event – they want their attendees to come because they love television, not just one thing. (Alter) Some special events, such as this year’s opening night party, required a special RSVP. If certain networks are planning to sponsor their own event, they have a bit more say in who can attend the event and how RSVPs work. For example, there is an advertisement for a
Hasbro Studios Cartoon Breakfast in the 2014 Festival Guide. Attendees are invited to wear their pajamas and come eat breakfast as they watch Hasbro cartoons. It also advertises free giveaways for kids and a cartoon character photo booth (2014 Festival
Guide 47).
The most “immersed” I became while attending ATX was when I was waiting in line. I was able to talk with other television fans about shows we had in common (not necessarily the one we were waiting to see) in addition to the festival itself. I was able to forget for a moment how long I had been waiting in line and what a nuisance I usually feel waiting in line is. The example I mention here was when I waited in line for a screening of an episode from GLOW, Netflix’s new series starring Alison Brie. (This screening was the one I got turned away from since I had not gotten a fast pass and not arrived early enough to get a good spot in line.) I talked to some people standing behind me in line who were from out of town and had never attended the festival before. We chatted about Community (a show Alison Brie had previously acted in), a documentary 41 from a few years ago that I had seen about the original series GLOW, and about other events they had attended at the festival. Even though I had never seen or heard of some of the shows they were mentioning to me, I still felt comfortable speaking to them because I could tell we had some level of shared knowledge of popular culture.
The biggest events at ATX usually take place on Friday and Saturday night of the festival, and are often some combination of a reunion panel, a screening of a beloved show, and some sort of interactive event to go along with it. These events would find an analog in the reunion panels in Hall H at Comic Con, though of course they operate on completely different scales. In 2017 the main Friday night event for ATX was a screening of a few episodes of Parks and Recreation in a parking lot decorated to look like the
Harvest Festival (an event that took place in the show) at Hotel San Jose in downtown
Austin (the only venue not within walking distance of the festival footprint) (Parks and
Recreation). At badge pickup, I noticed some festival merchandise for sale. It was mostly t-shirts and buttons with the ATX logo, but there was also merchandise related to Parks and Recreation. For example, one t-shirt had the logo of the fictional city of Pawnee (the setting of Parks and Recreation) with the slogan “First in Friendship, Fourth in Obesity.”
People who watch the show would be in on the joke but this t-shirt would probably be lost on people who have never seen it. No previous cast members attended the screening, though. This event created a fun environment for fans of the show with plenty of references (that people who do not watch the show would not understand, but would undoubtedly bring fans of the show joy).
42 These bigger events do not necessarily reflect how it feels to attend the screenings and panels of the festival. A panel I attended on HBO’s The Leftovers provides a good example of a typical panel at ATX. Damon Lindelof (executive producer), Mimi Leder
(executive producer and director), Tom Perrotta (executive producer and author of the novel that the show is based on) were all there to discuss the final season of the show, which had ended recently (The Leftovers). I love the show but I had not seen final season when I went to the panel, so I was a little worried that some elements might be spoiled for me. The Leftovers is known for taking strange and confusing turns all the time, so there was some information revealed to me that I probably would not have known otherwise. But because I lacked the context of the final season, none of the information that could have been considered “spoilers” made any sense to me. I knew I wanted to attend the panel even though I was not totally caught up because I love the first two seasons so much and I knew it would mean a lot to me to see the talent behind the show discussing it in person. The Leftovers chronicles life around the world after a cataclysmic event, where millions of people disappear from earth very suddenly on one day. No one knows if they died, if they are coming back, or why or how it happened. The panel touched on the show’s existential themes, the creative talent that directed the episodes, alternative theories about who the show’s protagonist actually is, and how characters in the show sort of fit into but ultimately resist certain tropes (specifically Kevin, the listed protagonist, an almost antihero). The discussion was an even mix between revolving around the narrative, discussing certain creative decisions from an institutional standpoint, and the critical reception of the show. There was no discussion really of any 43 related sponsorship that might have occurred in order for this panel to take place. Gipson said in an interview the networks affiliated with premieres or current shows are responsible for paying for the talent’s travel to and from the festival, so at least that much is guaranteed (Gipson).
The cast did attend the big reunion panel for 2017 for the 2004 edition of
Battlestar Galactica (Battlestar Galactica). Creator Ronald D. Moore and cast members
Grace Park (Sharon “Boomer” Valerii, Sharon “Athena” Agathon, Number Eight),
Edward James Olmos (William Adama), Mary McDonnell (Laura Roslin), Katee
Sackhoff (Kara “Starbuck” Thrace), Tricia Helfer (Number Six), Michael Trucco (Sam
“Longshot” Anders), and James Callis (Gaius Baltar) all attended the panel at the
Paramount Theatre, one of ATX’s largest venues. The panel was moderated by two reporters from Entertainment Weekly and was a mix of questions from moderators and questions from people in the audience. Although no executives took part in the panel, the panel was listed as being sponsored by Entertainment Weekly and SyFy (formerly Sci-
Fi), Battlestar Galactica’s home network (Abrams and Maslow). Initial press indicated that the reunion panel would actually be for Designing Women, but it is likely that due to issues with the special guests’ availability they had to change it at the last minute (Agard;
Designing Women). There are several disclaimers on all festival publications indicating that guests’ availability is subject to change without notice and that refunds will not be provided in the event of a sudden cancellation or rescheduling, a policy that seems to have been created based on experience. It is worth noting that ATX’s relationship with the press seems to be very strong (they have much more press coverage on their website 44 than SeriesFest or New York Television Festival, and almost every panel at ATX is moderated by journalists), which probably contributes to their success so far.
SCHEDULE AND PROGRAMMING ANALYSIS
I will now begin to analyze the festival schedule as a whole to identify trends.
Initially, ATX took place in a few small venues around Austin. In 2014 there were five venues, in 2015 another venue was added, in 2016 they went up to eight venues, and stayed at eight venues (but added another day) in 2017 (2014 Festival Guide 13-15; 2015
Festival Guide 12-14; 2016 Festival Guide 15-17; “ATX Mobile Application”). For greater insight into what ATX’s schedule looks like, I have included scans of a program guide from 2015, pictured on the following two pages.
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Figure 2: Friday schedule from 2015 Festival Program Guide.
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Figure 3: Saturday and Sunday schedule from 2015 Festival Program Guide.
Based on this schedule, most of the series screenings take place in the Alamo
Drafthouse Ritz theatres. There were 17 series events out of 51 total events on the schedule, which is exactly one third of the events. The panels took up two thirds. On this
47 schedule, Bunheads and the Gilmore Girls reunion (the tentpole event of this particular festival) take place on the same day, both of which were created by Amy Sherman-
Palladino (Bunheads). They also have an event where they give an Achievement in
Television Excellence award to James L. Brooks, host panels about diversity in television, and an interview with the creators of Rick and Morty that promises a sneak peak into the new season of the show (2015 Program Guide 45-47; Rick and Morty).
Additionally, the shows get their own longer blurbs and underneath each show is categorized into a number of categories: Cancelled too soon, Current, Current (New
Episode), Premiere, Never Picked Up Pilot, and World Premiere (2015 Program Guide
15-31).
I’ve also included a photo of how the events are portrayed in the schedule in more detail (pictured below). This particular page was from the ATX 2015 program guide.
Each event listing contains a synopsis of the series that will be screened, the talent, connections of the talent to any other shows, a list of panelists, the moderator, the event category, a photo, and the basic details about the event (time, location, etc.) Note that the synopses do not pertain to the episodes being screened at the events, just the general premise of the series. Enough information is given so that you can decide whether you want to attend or not without giving away the entire story. Each event listed below contains at least one recognizable name or show. Only the event in the premiere category lists any kind of network affiliation. Based on the schedule blocks in the previous images, it is easy to tell how long an event will last, though no end time is listed within the main
48 event page. And the panelists and moderators are fairly equal in terms of gender representation, although for the events on this page, most of the creative talent are men.
Figure 4: Sample event description page from 2015 Festival Program Guide.
49 In the early years of the festival, Friday Night Lights screenings and cast appearances served as the main events. This is the only major instance of any event being repeated year after year. A lot of the same creative talent do come to the festival to promote shows and moderate panels, what they offer is usually fundamentally different every time. Some of the creative talent who keep returning year after year serve on
ATX’s advisory board (such as Noah Hawley and Beau Willimon), which I discussed earlier. The festival’s offerings in its early years included much of the same kind of events we see now, there were just fewer of them. The schedule has been divided into
Panels, Series, and Events since the beginning. Some networks attend every year, including Adult Swim, TBS, and USA, just to name a few. Even in its first year, they were able to secure high profile talent like Jane Espenson (writer/producer of Buffy the
Vampire Slayer), Noah Hawley, and Paul Scheer (“Relive”). However, there was a lot of overlap in panel moderators and series promoters – it seems like they were trying to get the people they could convince to come to do as much as possible (which seems fair considering that, before then, television industry people really had not come to Austin from New York just to discuss television). For example, Jane Espenson was on one panel about TV fantasy on Saturday morning, another one about women in television Saturday afternoon, a screening of various web series (unusual for ATX) later Saturday afternoon, and at a screening of two episodes of Once Upon a Time that she helped produce on
Sunday morning (“Relive”). And a lot of the people that attended in the first year have continued attending over time, although ATX has definitely expanded their offerings since the first festival. 50 DISCUSSING ATX WITH FESTIVAL STAFF
The success of these events prompted me to ask ATX co-founder Emily Gipson about what kind of shows ATX wants to highlight with the festival. An exact programming strategy was unclear based on having only attended the festival once before and based on looking at the schedules listed in the festival programs. ATX’s programming challenges differ from a traditional film festival since they essentially have every show ever made to choose from for programming purposes, which really sets them apart from SeriesFest and New York Television Festival. Gipson said that they try to program 1/3 past, 1/3 present, and 1/3 future. (Gipson) The final choices are based on what shows are coming out when, which networks and platforms hope to have a presence at the festival (and how much money they are willing to dedicate to that presence), and what kind of shows would work well for a reunion. Gipson said that she and McFarland had, at some point, ultimately had to reject a show that a network had specifically wanted to highlight one year because they felt the show would not perform well with ATX’s audience. She was not forthcoming about what prompted them to make that decision or which show they ended up rejecting. It is unclear whether that was based on demographic research that ATX had done in previous years or if it was just a gut feeling on her behalf.
Something that might not do well at ATX would be a show that had a very small fan base, or a show that is too old.
Gipson assured me that ATX was not a pay-to-play festival, meaning that ATX’s programming team has final say in what shows they choose to include in the festival
51 program and will not be bullied by sponsoring networks into just programming anything that sponsors suggest. ATX has several high-profile sponsors such as Hulu, Amazon, and
TV Land, to name a few. She stressed that they will usually program some things from sponsoring networks but ultimately if they think a certain screening or event will not do well, they will say so and not program it (or program it in a time slot that is up against something else that would be much more popular). But all in all, the 1/3 balance takes precedent. And it is important to note that just because ATX does not take submissions from outside filmmakers does not mean that all the shows they include in the program have actually made it on television. At this year’s festival, there was an event hosted by
Paul Scheer where he screened a few pilots that he had assisted with that did not end up getting picked up and therefore had not really been seen before by the public. ATX is inextricably intertwined with the television industry and they still primarily focus on shows that were picked up and has a fan base that would likely attend ATX (especially with the added bonus of star attendance). Even with the content they showcase that did not make it on television, they only make selections that are associated with a recognizable, initiated member of the television and/or film industry. An “initiated” member is someone who has already established their career in the film or television industry, as a star or as a creative talent. Additionally, the festival puts recordings of a lot of the panels online after the festival, so although they are probably sacrificing revenue by doing this, they ultimately want to cater to fans everywhere (and, supposedly, use this as a promotional opportunity to encourage people to buy badges for the coming year’s festival). 52 ATX’s structure allows them to receive the tax benefits associated with nonprofit status in addition to granting Gipson and McFarland “ownership” of the festival
(Gipson). What ownership looks like in terms of “owning” an event is unclear, especially considering the organization has twelve staff members including Gipson and McFarland.
I imagine there are more material benefits besides the emotional comfort associated with material control, but because they just recently switched from being completely non- profit, the benefits of their new structure have not necessarily manifested in any meaningful way yet. It seems, though, that they are just starting to turn a profit from the festival and are hoping that the new structure will grant them long-term creative control
(and will help them benefit from the festival’s continued prosperity, one would hope).
Gipson says that she and McFarland like the size that ATX is at right now and that they do not wish to become the next SXSW (Gipson). Attendance for 2016 was at about 2,500 people (Alter).
Although it is relatively small, ATX depends on volunteer labor to make the festival run smoothly like many other festivals do. Willita Mahone, the volunteer coordinator for ATX, is a paid contract employee for ATX. She is technically hired as a seasonal worker but she is required to be available to them all year whenever they need volunteers for events. It is her job to recruit, train, distribute, and assist festival volunteers. She starts working on her official duties for the festival in January or
February, which essentially is six months of near-full-time work leading up to the June festival each year. She says, “I can’t focus on it all day long because I actually have a full-time job. But I am thinking of it all the time” (Mahone). The mental burden of this 53 kind of employment, where you technically only get paid for the amount of time you are
“needed” but are often required to be accessible via email in regards to festival work at all times, is exploitative. This is a typical practice within the festival circuit, where full- time staff that are on payroll are kept to a minimum and a decent amount of work is done by contract employees and, immediately leading up to and during the festivals, volunteers who give their time in exchange for access to festival panels, screenings, and events. The use of this kind of labor is due to the fact that most festivals are non-profits. Some examples of festivals that are non-profits that I have already mentioned here are Telluride
Film Festival, Sidewalk Film Festival, Cucalorus Film Festival, Oxford Film Festival, and Austin Film Festival.
The concept of fan labor is not new, and many scholars have discussed how exploitative it is. Abigail De Kosnik defines the disconnect between fandom in the eyes of the fan and fandom in the eyes of the industry:
The notion of fandom has become a more accepted and privileged term in marketing and consumer circles—companies understand that their products need fans, followers, and friends online and in the real world— but even when considered a worthwhile use of time and money, fandom is regarded as a marginal, recreational, just-for-fun activity, not as central to a person’s professional development or as a legitimate foundation for a career in the creative industries (Scholz 108).
This disconnect is key in understanding the relationship between fans and the industry—they depend on each other but they misunderstand and/or misrepresent each other. To the industry, fans are a product, one of many pieces of a puzzle created to generate additional revenue for television series. In fans’ eyes, they are peers with the industry, collaborating through Tweets and blog posts on their 54 favorite shows by suggesting storylines or pairings for a series. And now, fan labor is also being exploited by a festival designed for fans – although of course no one is forcing fans to sign up to volunteer for the festival, anything that repays someone’s time and passion for something with “experience” represents a fundamental mismatch of value.
But if Mahone had her way, she’d be doing festival work all the time and leave her full-time job. She has volunteered for countless other festivals, including Sundance, and has been with ATX since day one. She worked with another ATX employee, Laura
Kincaid, at the Texas Film Commission. Mahone prefers to bring people she knows on as volunteers, and she has a crew of veterans that come back every year. And the fact that these volunteers do return year after year indicates that ATX has provided a space for television fans to support (at least, in an indirect way) creators, executives, and stars that develop and fight for the television that they love. There is an inherent exclusivity to this dynamic. On the one hand, television superfans have a shared lexicon of terms, stories, and a directory of important names that more casual television watchers might not understand. On the other hand, the festival wants to provide a space that will include those who do understand these terms of attendance and assure them that they are not alone – there are other TV fans that are just as passionate as they are. Mahone says that this kind of intimate fan community is the thing she likes about ATX that she thinks other festivals she has worked for do not have:
That’s the way I run my volunteers. I run us like we’re a family. We’re there to help each other make this festival great and make sure everyone who comes here feels at home and feels that they belong and that they’ve, 55 you know, kind of reached the mother ship. They come and they’re like “Ahhh, people like me!” And they love it. And it’s so awesome to see the relationships that have been cultivated from this festival (Mahone).
Fan communities are a prime customer base for ATX, both local fans and fans from out of town. Its tagline is that it is for fans and for people who work in the industry. So not only do fans provide the labor necessary to make the festival happen, but they also provide much of the revenue made by the festival (at least not including the revenue earned from corporate sponsorships; Gipson says that the festival’s revenue comes from about 50% badge sales and 50% corporate sponsorships, so this is a non-negligible amount of money). They also provide a big social media boost. The front cover of the
“season four” (their term for year four of the festival) program guide says “As close to heaven as a fan can get.” So it is pitched to participants as if the organizers know what fans want, which relies on the distinction that the industry does not know what fans want and that they can get what they want by attending ATX.
Gipson says that the fans who attend don’t necessarily want to work in the industry, they just want to delve deeper into the behind-the-scenes of their favorite shows. She says they are more “intellectual” than casual fans, the ones who “flip channels and watch the Kardashians.” These fans of television, the ones that ATX tries to attract, want to distance themselves from what they see as “low brow” television, like
Keeping Up With The Kardashians (Khloe Kardashian, et al.). Because ATX is staffed by women and positions itself as being for women “from 17-70,” what is considered “low brow” would likely be shows like Two and a Half Men (Alter; Two and a Half Men). If they do watch this kind of television, it is with a somewhat ironic, critical distance. 56 The fans who attend ATX use the shows they love as identifiers for themselves, and they take it fairly seriously. The definitions of what being a true “fan” is matter to these people, similar to how fans attending Comic Con treat their fandoms as part of their identity. The fans that attend want to “immerse themselves” into the shows that they love.
This does not mean that they spend all their time thinking and talking about a particular show, it just means that when they do talk about it or are thinking about it they have much more knowledge than the average person would and enjoy talking to other people who also like the show. The industry folks who attend, she says, are fans as well.
Apparently one year, Gipson says, “we had showrunners sprinting to the West Wing panel to hear Aaron Sorkin talk.” (Gipson) The industry people who attend are often attending because of their participation in a panel or because their network has a show scheduled to screen at some point over the weekend.
Gipson says that the fans who attend ATX, in her opinion, are “people that watch something and then they want to read a review and then they want to go on social media and talk about it and then they want to discuss it and they want to, like, immerse themselves in it” (Gipson). Aside from the fact that festival attendees know they are surrounded by other television fans (as signified by a badge or wristband), the event production of ATX does not really feel immersive. SXSW feels immersive, almost to the point of sensory overload – whether you are attending the festival or not, you are constantly faced with festival and sponsor signage, attendees wandering around the city, and music from festival parties. The festival never lets you forget that it is happening for ten straight days. So while the experience of ATX may not necessarily be immersive 57 (because it is scattered around downtown and there is very little signage), I think that is a welcome difference from my experience attending SXSW. The fans attending ATX are the equivalent to cinephiles at a film festival, or are operating on the ultimate level of television fandom.
So based on what I have said so far, fans and industry are obviously important to the success of ATX. But the critics and publications that write about television are also critical to this dynamic. And it shows - there is much more popular press available pertaining to ATX than there is of either of Denver SeriesFest, New York Television
Festival, or PaleyFest. ATX’s relationship with the press manifests most clearly in the panels, as journalists often moderate and therefore promote the panels. The fans that
Gipson mentions here are not necessarily fans who just sit on their couches and collect memorabilia, though that may certainly be part of their “fan behaviors.” ATX wants to attract the kind of fans who talk about their favorite shows, specifically online within fan communities and on social media platforms like Twitter. (Gipson also mentioned to me that it was only in 2016 when they started an official Social Media Team on the ground, which indicates that in previous years, attendees sharing their festival experiences on social media was sufficient publicity in addition to the press coverage.) But this reliance on fans who communicate and publications who help facilitate that communication is indicated by ATX’s sponsorships. As noted above, they have partnered with
Entertainment Weekly for three years in a row as one of their primary sponsors. And, as I noted in my second chapter, ATX’s borderline excessive communication with the press is one of the reasons its attendance has grown so much and one of the reasons they are able 58 to get such high-profile talent. Of course, Gipson and McFarland do not have final say on the articles, but with their PR backgrounds they definitely know what to say and what not to say. (Even in my interview with Gipson, I felt comfortable with her while it was happening but later realized how much she had directed the conversation when transcribing the interview.) And I say this not as a criticism. I mean it as a compliment to her business savvy: these women know the importance of good publicity, and they know how to generate it for themselves.
CHAPTER THREE CONCLUSION
Based on my analysis of the schedule, interviews with ATX staff, and experience attending the festival, I found that assumptions made by ATX staff indicate that the television programming that they choose will automatically have an audience at ATX, based on the fact that the shows they choose to highlight already play somewhere (or at least will premiere soon) and also likely based on attendance of similar screenings in years past. But Gipson seemed surprised that they were able to make money off the festival, even though so far they have made relatively safe programming choices. She indicated that they do not program anything that might be even a little bit risky in attracting attendees. As seasons have gone on, ATX’s marketing has increasingly showcased television nostalgia. This year’s season was referred to as “TV Camp,” and most years a panel has been held to examine executives’ growing anxiety about the state and/or future of television. There was also a panel at this year’s festival on 90’s television and the festival tote bags came with a fanny pack covered in 90’s cartoons. 59 Although if you look at the schedule, the division between past, present, and future programming is fairly even, it seems that ATX relies on the romanticized (but still recent) past in order to get people to attend. The television of ATX is a particular kind of television. While this may narrow their programming choices (and therefore audience), they seem to have found a formula that works for them. By keeping the festival smaller, they can maintain their goal of ownership and more easily program a few quality events instead of trying to program too many. ATX’s scheduling format and labor practices mimic those of many other festivals, but their connections to the press and co-opting of fan use of social media to promote the festival has set them apart and helped them gain a new level of visibility in the entertainment world that other television festivals have failed to do.
REPORT CONCLUSION
In my report, I have argued that ATX is a fairly unique festival because of its position between fans and the industry. Because its cost of attendance is cheaper than
SeriesFest, Comic Con, and New York Television Festival, it remains accessible to most fans while attracting high profile talent that might merit a price increase and therefore greater exclusivity. Fan communities serve the festival by volunteering and by purchasing badges. In return, fans are able to discuss their favorite shows and watch new shows that have not aired yet, all while knowing they are in good company among fellow fans from the masses and from the television industry. ATX’s location in Austin, a notoriously casual city that has plenty of other festivals, makes it appear and feel much more relatable 60 and accessible to outsiders than other industry events that might take place in New York or Los Angeles. While the festival programmers certainly are not pushing any boundaries or making any daring programming choices, clearly they have found a formula that works for them since the festival continues to grow. Given the fact that television has been praised in recent years for becoming more cinematic (and therefore, one assumes, more
“legitimate”), so it makes sense that television festivals have done relatively well. As television continues to evolve, it will be interesting to see how ATX’s programming choices (both in content and organization) will adapt to reflect this, as networks are starting to pull their content form the popular streaming platforms in favor of creating their own exclusive streaming platforms. And although many festivals are non-profit, revenue is what they need not only to continue to exist but also to remain culturally relevant.
Additionally, ATX’s relationships with people in the television industry help assign it some level of cultural credibility and programming prowess that other television festivals do not have. The press are always there to report on the panels, parties, and events, making ATX increasingly visible. However, ATX’s relationship with the industry reinforces outdated notions of who the audience is, what they are willing to do, and what the industry can fairly ask them to do. The use of fan labor is understandably fraught, and it is not necessarily ATX’s job to be the solution to that particular problem, but they at least offer fans a more intimate kind of access than other film festivals and pop culture conventions do. Still, ATX’s attempt to create a television festival by women for women has been ultimately successful. By examining literature related to film festivals and pop 61 culture conventions, I have situated television festivals as a unique kind of event (that borrowed some of its traditions from these two events). I have explored popular press concerning the festival to map ATX’s relationships with the television industry and what those relationships allow it to do. Finally, by speaking to ATX staff, reviewing the festival schedules and website, and attending the festival myself, I have illustrated how
ATX is different from the other festivals I have attended and worked for, and proven that this new era of television fandom will continue to occupy social spaces and will continue to use their fandom to their advantage. Although fandom as an identity is still marginalized in implicit and explicit ways by festivals and the industry, ATX is moving towards a more respectful and inclusive celebration of fandom. Hopefully the television industry will follow suit.
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