How Television Invented New Media

Now if I just remembered where I put that original TV play device--the universal remote control . . . Television is a global industry, a medium of representation, an architectural component of space, and a nearly universal frame of reference for viewers. Yet it is also an abstraction and an often misunderstood science whose critical influence on the development, history, and diffusion of new media has been both minimized and overlooked. How Television Invented New Media adjusts the picture of television culturally while providing a corrective history of new media studies itself. Personal computers, video game systems, even iPods and the Internet built upon and borrowed from television to become viable forms. The earliest personal computers, disguised as video games using TV sets as monitors, provided a case study for television's key role in the emergence of digital interactive devices. Sheila C. Murphy analyzes how specific technologies emerge and how representations, from South Park to Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog, mine the history of television just as they converge with new methods of the making and circulation of images. Past and failed attempts to link television to computers and the Web also indicate how services like Hulu or Netflix On-Demand can give rise to a new era for entertainment and program viewing online. In these concrete ways, television's role in new and emerging media is solidified and finally recognized.

"This reference provides a review of the academic and popular literature on the relationship between communications and media studies, cinema, advertising, public relations, religion, food tourism, art, sports, technology, culture, marketing, and entertainment practices"--Provided by publisher.

The cultural contradictions of early video games: a medium for family fun (but mainly for middle-class boys), an improvement over pinball and television (but possibly harmful). Beginning with the release of the Magnavox Odyssey and Pong in 1972, video games, whether played in arcades and taverns or in family rec rooms, became part of popular culture, like television. In fact, video games were sometimes seen as an improvement on television because they spurred participation rather than passivity. These “space-age pinball machines” gave coin-operated games a high-tech and more respectable profile. In Atari Age, Michael Newman charts the emergence of video games in America from ball-and-paddle games to hits like Space Invaders and Pac-Man, describing their relationship to other amusements and technologies and showing how they came to be identified with the middle class, youth, and masculinity. Newman shows that the “new media” of video games were understood in varied, even contradictory ways. They were family fun (but mainly for boys), better than television (but possibly harmful), and educational (but a waste of computer time). Drawing on a range of sources—including the games and their packaging; coverage in the popular, trade, and fan press; social science research of the time; advertising and store catalogs; and representations in movies and television—Newman describes the series of cultural contradictions through which the identity of the emerging medium worked itself out. Would video games embody middle-class respectability or suffer from the arcade's unsavory reputation? Would they foster family togetherness or allow boys to escape from domesticity? Would they make the new home computer a tool for education or just a glorified toy? Then, as now, many worried about the impact of video games on players, while others celebrated video games for familiarizing kids with technology essential for the information age.

Effective marketing techniques are a driving force behind the success or failure of a particular product or service. When utilized correctly, such methods increase competitive advantage and customer engagement. Advertising and Branding: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications is a comprehensive reference source for the latest scholarly material on emerging technologies, techniques, strategies, and theories for the development of advertising and branding campaigns in the modern marketplace. Featuring extensive coverage across a range of topics, such as customer retention, brand identity, and global advertising, this innovative publication is ideally designed for professionals, researchers, academics, students, managers, and practitioners actively involved in the marketing industry.

This volume provides rich insight into the nature and practice of media management. Contributions assess the degree to which management of media firms requires a unique set of skills, highlighting similarities and differences of media firms compared with other industries in terms of management practices, HR development and operational aspects. Success and limitations of research on media management theory is evaluated, both drawing on management theory and examining insights from other disciplines. Dimensions for future research are considered along with practical implications for media managers and corporate structures. The book serves as a valuable reference for researchers, advanced students and practitioners in media industries.

Since the mid-1980s, US audiences have watched the majority of movies they see on a video platform, be it VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Video On Demand, or streaming media. Annual video revenues have exceeded box office returns for over twenty-five years. In short, video has become the structuring discourse of US movie culture. Killer Tapes and Shattered Screens examines how prerecorded video reframes the premises and promises of motion picture spectatorship. But instead of offering a history of video technology or reception, Caetlin Benson-Allott analyzes how the movies themselves understand and represent the symbiosis of platform and spectator. Through case studies and close readings that blend industry history with apparatus theory, psychoanalysis with platform studies, and production history with postmodern philosophy, Killer Tapes and Shattered Screens unearths a genealogy of post-cinematic spectatorship in horror movies, thrillers, and other exploitation genres. From Night of the Living Dead (1968) through Paranormal Activity (2009), these movies pursue their spectator from one platform to another, adapting to suit new exhibition norms and cultural concerns in the evolution of the video subject.

This book demonstrates, in contrast to statistics that show declining consumption of physical formats, that there has not been a mass shift towards purely digital media. Physical releases such as special editions, DVD box-sets and Blu-Rays are frequently promoted and sought out by consumers. And that past formats such as VHS, Laserdisc and HD-DVD make for sought-after collectible items. These trends are also found within particular genres and niche categories, such as documentary, education and independent film distribution. Through its case studies, this collection makes a distinctive and significant intervention in highlighting the ways in which the film industry has responded to rapidly changing markets. This volume, global in scope, will prove useful to those studying the distribution and exhibition of films, and the economics of the film industry around the world.