Hollywood Television Research Articles

Hollywood survival strategies in the post-COVID 19 era

Since the arrival of the Coronavirus in the United States, Americans have been forced to quarantine themselves at home in dramatic fashion, unlike almost any other time in the nation’s history. Moreover, the American workforce has been equally impacted by virtue of state-imposed shutdowns that have affected innumerable businesses, including the Hollywood entertainment industry, which is the subject of this research. I examine how commercial entertainment conglomerates like AT&T, Comcast, Disney, ViacomCBS, and Fox have responded to mandatory closures for businesses that employ a human workforce upon whom they rely for their labor, and to human consumers they seek to distribute their film and television commodities to for profit. Using historical and discourse analyses in a political economic theoretical framework, I review contemporary reports about the economic conditions which have influenced the industry’s technological adaptation and innovation and argue that the Hollywood television and film industries will capitalize upon this current public health crisis as a motivator to adopt streaming platforms as the new preferred distribution mechanism of entertainment long after COVID 19 is a memory. This qualitative research examines the technological adaptations employed by these entertainment conglomerates to analyze (1) how the transition to streaming video on demand has occurred, and evaluates (2) what the adoption of these survival strategies mean for Hollywood’s long-term economic future and survival in a “digitally competitive” (Smith and Telang, 2017) marketplace.

The Golden Ratio of Algorithms to Artists? Streaming Services and the Platformization of Creativity in American Television Production

In this article, I examine how and why “platformization” was initially made sense of by writers in the American television industry. As streaming platforms entered the production space and became important homes for the commissioning of longform television content, they sought to build brand images as places that were both “data-driven” and characterized by work cultures of “creative freedom.” At least for a time in the mid-2010s, they succeeded in selling this conceptual link to the professional culture of Hollywood television screenwriters. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews from 2017 as well as a longer ranging analysis of trade press, I identify those features of the production culture established at major streaming platforms that forged the somewhat counterintuitive notion that “being data-driven” created an environment of greater “creative freedom” in the mid-2010s. However, these were the very early days of streaming platform production cultures, and norms began to crystallize, it was these very same features that began to undermine creative comfort with streaming platforms.

Tuning Into the On-Demand Streaming Culture—Hollywood Guilds’ Evolution Imperative in Today’s Media Landscape

Hollywood television and film production has largely been unionized since the early 1930s. Today, due in part to technological advances, the industry is much more expansive than it has ever been, yet the Hollywood unions, known as “guilds,” have arguably not evolved at a similar pace. Although the guilds have adapted to the needs of their members in many aspects, have they successfully adapted to the evolving Hollywood business model? This Comment puts a focus on the Writers Guild of America, Directors Guild of America, and the Screen Actors Guild, known as SAG-AFTRA following its merger in 2012, and asks whether their respective collective bargaining agreements are out-of-step with the evolution of the industry over the past ten years, particularly in the areas of new media and the direct-to-consumer model. While analyzing the guilds in the context of the industry environment as it is today, this Comment contends that as the guilds continue to feel more pronounced effects from the evolving media landscape, they will need to adapt at a much more rapid pace than ever before in order to meet the needs of their members. However only time will reveal whether the current trajectory is idyllic or flawed.

Irony in The Twilight Zone: How the Series Critiqued Postwar American CultureDavidMelbye. Rowman & Littlefield, 2016.

Irony in The Twilight Zone: How the Series Critiqued Postwar American Culture David Melbye. Rowman & Littlefield, 2016.In Irony in The Twilight Zone: How the Series Critiqued Postwar American Culture, David Melbye provides meticulous analyses of the groundbreaking television series's use of irony as a narrative strategy to critique postwar America. Although other books on The Twilight Zone tend to serve as guidebooks to the series-see Marc Scott Zicree's The Twilight Zone Companion (1989)-or nonscholarly book-length studies such as Peter Wolfe's In the Zone: The Twilight World of Rod Serling (1997) or critical biographies such as Gordon F. Sander's Serling: The Rise and Twilight of Television's Last Angry Man (1992)-Melbye's study is the first scholarly examination of the show's use of irony as a narrative device. In his analysis of 140 of the series's 156 episodes, Melbye, who teaches a broad range of media studies courses in Southern California and has worked in the Hollywood television industry, has produced a mostly readable, if at times dense, account of The Twilight Zone's place in postwar American culture through its use of narrative irony.Melbye argues that The Twilight Zone employs irony as a tool of social critique in postwar America, a device the series consistently uses in each episode to such an extent, he claims, as to suggest that the ironic circumstances reflected in the series, in the series's moral universe, and in the series's larger social contexts cannot be separated. In making this argument, he responds to the work of M. Keith Booker's Strange TV: Innovative Television Series from The Twilight Zone to The X-Files (2002), a study that situates The Twilight Zone as a reflection of postwar culture and focuses on the formulaic, science fiction structure of the series. Melbye insists that The Twilight Zone is less a piece of formulaic science fiction as much as it is a series that, while still formulaic due to its reliance on the surprise twist ending, draws from multiple generic traditions whose main connecting thread is the presence of irony. As such, Melbye's book is an important study of not only one of America's most important and influential television programs, but it is also an important comment on how the series went beyond the confines of the science fiction genre to produce a complex critique of postwar America.Melbye divides the book into seven chapters. The first chapter focuses on the multiple cultural and personal influences on the show and on its creator Rod Serling, providing a useful overview of 1940s-1950's radio and television programming that inspired him to create an agenda for social critique. …

Who You Know in Hollywood: A Network Analysis of Television Writers

“It’s who you know, not what you know,” is a familiar phrase—often repeated by professionals in Hollywood. The present study focuses on “who knows who” among Hollywood television writers. Using network analysis, this exploratory study identifies the degree of centralization and types of connections found in this elite writers’ network. Results show a great deal of collaboration in the network, and while male writers are more connected overall in Hollywood, women are more likely to be brokers—a structurally advantageous position. The authors provide explanations for collaboration patterns, especially with regard to gender differences in network roles, and propose avenues for further research.

Indian Audience Interpretations of Health-Related Content in the Bold and the Beautiful

This article explores the meanings given by Indian viewers to a series of health-related episodes dealing with ‘Tony’s HIV’ in the Hollywood television soap opera, The Bold and the Beautiful. Forty-two respondents in six focus group interviews and in 17 in-depth personal interviews were asked for their interpretations of this television health content. Indian respondents interpreted the sexual explicitness and the assertiveness of female characters as characteristic of the US, but not as a part of Indian reality. The sexual openness in The Bold and the Beautiful ‘shocked’ Indian viewers, and led some to watch the episodes only in private. Indian respondents generally had positive reactions to the ‘Tony’s HIV’ episodes, although they felt that self-disclosure of HIV/AIDS status could not happen in India, where HIV/AIDS is highly stigmatized. In general, Indian respondents felt that ‘Tony’s HIV’ showed an ideal situation regarding HIV/AIDS, but one that was far removed from Indian reality.

Review: The Dynasty Years: Hollywood Television and Critical Media Studies by Jostein Gripsrud

Book Review| October 01 1996 Review: The Dynasty Years: Hollywood Television and Critical Media Studies by Jostein Gripsrud The Dynasty Years: Hollywood Television and Critical Media StudiesJostein Gripsrud Charles Maland Charles Maland Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Film Quarterly (1996) 50 (1): 46–47. https://doi.org/10.2307/1213334 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Charles Maland; Review: The Dynasty Years: Hollywood Television and Critical Media Studies by Jostein Gripsrud. Film Quarterly 1 October 1996; 50 (1): 46–47. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/1213334 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentFilm Quarterly Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1996 The Regents of the University of California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

What Happened to the American Dream? Changing Earning Opportunities and Prospects of Middle-Class Californians, 1967-1987

immigrants to California, a stream that shows no signs of abating. The exact character of that dream is nowhere precisely defined, though the image of its modern variant was presented with great effect by Hollywood television shows from the 1950s and 1960s as Ozzie and Harriet. Any adequate definition of the middle-class ideal would have to be a continually revised definition that reflects the development of new ways of life, new goods and services, as well as relative changes in the prices of goods and services consumed within a middle standard of living. At the present time, we could say roughly in quantitative terms, that this standard includes such material goods as a single-family home, one or two cars (including a new one), a washing machine and dryer, a dish washer, a color TV, raising and educating chil dren, [and the provision for] a lengthy period of retirement.1

CBS Television City Technical Facilities

The Columbia Broadcasting System recently inaugurated television program service from its new Hollywood Television City headquarters. The engineering and architectural design of this modem television broadcasting plant is based upon a flexible and expansible master plan that provides for the ultimate construction of 24 studio units. The initial construction phase now completed provides two audience and two nonaudience studios, each exceeding one-quarter acre in area, together with the necessary technical, production, scenery construction, and office facilities to completely support CBS-Hollywood television operations. This paper describes the philosophy underlying the design of the video, audio, and communication facilities for this project. Emphasis is placed on description of methods and features that are new or novel.

CBS Television City Audio and Communication Facilities

CBS Television recently placed in operation its new Television City headquarters in Hollywood. This new and ultramodern plant is built around a flexible and expansible architectural master plan that provides for orderly future expansion to twenty-four studio units together with expansion of all supporting activities. The recently completed first phase of construction provides a modern studio building housing four large studios, each exceeding one-quarter acre in area. Together with an adjacent three-story service building, the plant incorporates all the technical production, shop, and Office facilities to completely support CBS Hollywood television operations. Part I is entitled “Description of the Audio Facilities,” and Part II is “Description of the Communication Facilities.”