I’m spinning all too many plates at the moment, but I just wanted to point to the debut of the new Lion’s Share podcast, now available on the iTunes store via iTunesU (link works if you have iTunes installed. Developed by my good friend and fellow media scholar Tim Anderson of Old Dominion University, this podcast features discussions with scholars about their research, and research methods. I’m the guest on the debut episode, discussing my upcoming book on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which will be published by Blackwell next year. Future guests include Kathleen Battles of Oakland University discussing radio crime drama, and Judd Ruggill of Arizona State University and Ken McAllister of the University of Arizona on educational videogames.

As most of you probably already know, there are many outstanding podcasts out there; perhaps I’ll do a post on them at some point (especially since podcasts are probably my primary form of media consumption these days). Till then, check out the Lion’s Share, and let Tim know what you think about the format, or ideas for future segments.

Just a news blip, as I’m too busy to ruminate long, but I thought this was worth keeping an eye on.

It’s February, so that means it’s pilot season in television. Yes, even in 2009, in between mass corporate layoffs at all the networks and studios, of course. Anyway, apparently CBS has ordered a pilot from Jackie and Jeff Filgo (former exec producers of That 70s Show). The show is to be called Big D, and will feature an NYC couple moving to the hubby’s hometown of Dallas, where the east-coast wife will clash with her mother-in-law and Texas culture.

I’m thinking about settting a lot these days, as I’m writing about how CSI has used Las Vegas, so any kind of premise so dependent on perceptions of a particular setting strikes my interest. Moreover, as Dallas has been my home for the past five years (and the DFW Metroplex for the last, gulp, ten), I’ll tune in for sure (assuming it gets picked up for fall, which is probably unlikely, given CBS’ mostly-full sitcom slate).

That said, given the usual treatment of places-that-aren’t-NY-or-LA in most television, I’m about 90% sure it’ll be a sad parade of the usual blue state/red state shtick. King of the Hill set a very high bar indeed for televisual depictions of DFW, and it’s unlikely Big D will approach it. So here’s a few cliches I’m looking forward (sic) to:

- NY wife freaking out at Big Hair and tacky jewelry

- NY wife freaking out about BBQ

- NY wife shrinking in terror in rooms full of people in cowboy hats shouting “Yee-Ha!”

- NY wife lamenting her favorite NY coffee shop/eatery

- Some Texan will say “Who’s Woody Allen [or other big NYC celebrity]?”

- An episode will revolve around a sighting of George or Laura Bush

- Larry Hagman and/or Patrick Duffy will be pulled from the DL to guest star

and of course…

- the theme song will have a kind of bluesy-twangy feel to it

Etc. I can hardly wait.

What’s your favorite TV cliches about your hometown?

Just a quick post rantlet about my latest experience with “new media.”

The first class meeting of the semester for my American Television History class was today at 11 am, CST, or, as it is more widely known, the exact moment of the Inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America. Knowing this, I planned on showing the events in my classroom live. This room does not have, nor has ever had, a standard television set or feed. Lots of other options (including a brand new, simple, Ikea-like multimedia port), but no over-the-air or cable TV. No problem, I surmised: it’s all over the web, covered by many news organizations. Piece of cake.

As it turned out, not so much. The event was live, and plentiful online, of course. It was just that the network traffic completely clogged it up, rendering every source I tried as four minutes of waiting fitfully followed by 18 seconds of choppy, distorted audio and a wash of live-streamed rendering artifacts, followed by more waiting. Frustrated, I sent the class out at what I think was the beginning of Obama’s address to watch the event down in the atrium in the Owens Art Center, where apparently a portable jumbotron was set up for just that event. (I say “apparently” because I knew nothing of this, save what a few students told me this morning).

So, while they went to watch, I waited for stragglers and missed the whole inauguration. Now granted, this is 2009, and this event will be available universally online and on cable and broadcast TV (already, not quite one hour later, there are about a dozen videos available of it on YouTube). But the liveness of the moment is gone. And I blame the internet.

In our rush to go all “smart” in our media technology, we may be forgetting the sheer elegance and simplicity of terrestrial broadcasting. Cheap devices, many of them iPod-sized, have been available for decades that do one thing very, very well: receive live broadcast radio and television. You know all those stock film images of people crowding around TV sets and radios? My Macbook can’t do that, and neither can my iPod. Even in ideal situations, live broadcasting online is hit-or-miss, with everyone’s favorite word, “BUFFERING,” attempting to mollify our frustrations. Still. Now. Almost 20 years into this whole cyber- internet- phenomenon thingy. We would never have put up with such interruptions back in the analog age; now we expect them.

Anyway, this will be a great talking point for situating television history on Thursday and down the line in my class. Television, as a social institution, is greater than whatever electronic components make it up. But when those components fail us, it does challenge the idea of the institution of television.

On a related note, I’m also cooking up a rant on the Failure of the Digital Transition, or, as it is known Chez Kompare, “why the hell is Tina Fey missing half of her face”?

As 2009 dawns, I thought I’d recognize all that made my 2008 bearable (and occasionally inspiring). Since my year divides roughly into two seasons — college football, and the rest of the year — I’ve decided to name an all-star team. These were my MVPs, on both sides of the ball.

OFFENSE

QB – Barack Obama – For keeping cool in the pocket, and methodically moving the ball downfield. That said, under the circumstances, winning this election was comparatively easy compared to the real task at hand. Keep cool, Mr. President.

RB – Ben and Rose Kompare – To be honest they drive me a fair way up the wall most days, draining between 60 and 80 percent of my energy and attention. However, they keep right on moving forward, and remind me what it’s all about.

RB – Heath Ledger (RIP) as The Joker – Full disclosure: we just saw The Dark Knight a few days ago (life with little ones = summer movies in winter on DVD).  I was literally haunted by this performance, dreaming of the Joker after seeing the film. The rest of the production was also compelling, but Ledger’s Joker was on another plane, taking a well-worn character that’s been around for over six decades and making him exactly of the moment. One could easily imagine that weird, uber-smart, misanthropic and vaguely scary guy you knew in high school or college showing up like this, and meaning it, a decade or so on.

WR – everybody involved in Battlestar Galactica – They’re all done with it, having wrapped production a few months back, but we’re still to see the last ten-plus hours of this existential saga. Even when they get a bit sloppy, as with the shaky Mutiny on the Bounty arc, it’s compelling (like, say, Miles Davis on an off night). Like the best receivers, they go deep, and make things happen. Bring home the cat, guys.

WR – Henry Jenkins – The very model of a 21st century media scholar, and a helluva person in his own right. Consistently pushing, never staying put, and generously bringing us all along. And in 2009, he’s literally moving forward to what looks to be a more prominent position at USC, after many years at MIT. Good luck, Henry!

TE – Tim Anderson - After some challenging times, Tim’s had an amazing 2008, with a new family and a new job, and he’s poised again to challenge Media Studies. Plus, he’s kind of built like a tight end.

C – William Petersen – Having reviewed all 190-odd episodes of CSI for my book this year, I am in awe of Petersen’s nine-year performance as Gil Grissom. It’s kind of the inverse of Ledger’s, all underplayed and thoroughly normative, but at the same time carrying heavy burdens. Grissom has been through hell the past three years in particular, and Petersen’s made that transition subtle yet compelling. Hats off for nine years, and for seeing Grissom through to his end.

OL – Google apps - They’ve made my life so much easier, to the point that I scarcely run anything that’s not anchored in my web browser anymore. Gmail alone is a godsend, but Google Reader and Google Maps are incredibly versatile apps. It’s been the reinvention of the personal computer.

OL – Sean Griffin - I’ve several amazing colleagues in my division at SMU, but only one Sean Griffin. Tireless, brilliant, dedicated to our little community (and to the Meadows School in general), and always doing it with aplomb and good humor. And he always throws a heckuva soiree.

OL – Lifehacker – This site is crazy addictive, but also thoroughly useful, with everything from video conversion tips to coping with job loss. It protects us fearlessly, making our lives easier.

Willie Tuitama, in his last college game

OL – Willie Tuitama – The four-year starting quarterback of my University of Arizona Wildcats, he’s not flashy like Florida’s Tim Tebow or those Big 12 guys, nor as rock-solid as USC’s Mark Sanchez, but he’s as good as it gets when he’s on, calmly toying with opposing offenses. Four years of highs and disastrous lows ended with a sharp, flawless performance against BYU in the Las Vegas Bowl on December 20 (I was there!). He holds every significant QB record in UA history, and, more importantly, weathered the storm of uncertainty alongside Coach Mike Stoops to finally (finally!) get us back to a winning record and a bowl game.

DEFENSE

OLB – Mad Men – It’s on defense because it represents all that has been great about the medium of television for the past sixty years; i.e., defending it now from becoming irrelevant. Moreover, in its rich vision of the early 1960s, it waves the flag of historiography, i.e., of critically examining its sources and not pretending to be a window to that world.

MLB – Sally Kompare – She’s defended me more reliably and more readily than anyone else has for half of my life. In 2008, she made some major changes, and we’ve both grown more as a result. Plus, she’s very effective against those shifty running backs, Ben and Rose.

OLB – My iPod - Oh, iPod, what did I ever do without you? In 2008, you served up gigabytes of my standard writing music (soundtracks and classical), helped me organize fixations on 1950s-60s pop and contemporary indie, and kept me enlightened with scads of podcasts. And you kept the world out when I needed it most.

DE – The Colbert Report and The Daily Show – Unbeatable as always, but particularly on-target in this crazy election year. Nailing the opposition relentlessly, four days a week.

DT – Daily Kos - I only really get into the Kos in an election year, and although I’m only a lurker there, I found its diarists reports, commentaries and calls to action invaluable in 2008. After an entire existence in the Bush years, it’s going to be interesting to see how the community, and the whole progressive blogosphere, evolves now that the Democrats are the government.

DT – Russ Pennell – Having only been hired on Lute Olson’s staff last spring, he took the reins of the men’s basketball team in the wake of Olson’s surprise November retirement. Even though he has to wear the badge of “interim,” and will almost certainly not be around next fall, he’s completely redesigned the Wildcats’ style. This team could have completely folded, but they’re 9-3, and look to be a legit threat in the Pac-10. Memo to UA athletic director Jim Livengood: don’t rule him out entirely for the future.

DE – Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow – For expanding the challenge to the Fox (or, in CNN’s case, Fox-esque) mentality, and reawakening my greatly lapsed faith in television journalism.

CB – Console-ing Passions @ UCSB – The best conference I attended this year, in many respects. True, the incredible California climate and jaw-dropping beach views might have swayed me a bit, but this was an academically solid event through and through. Excellent feminist analyses of television texts and social contexts, and a well-managed theme of “women in production.” In these leaner times, conferences per se are looking more and more like extravagances. But if they can maintain this high standard, they’re well worth the expense.

CB – Heather Hendershot - The incoming editor of Cinema Journal inherited a very solid title from Jon Lewis, but has upped the ante with a swath of new departments and a more varied structure. These are changing times for SCMS and for academic organizations and publishing in general, and Heather’s meeting those challenges with verve and thoroughness. In 2008, I also loved geeking out with her over BSG, and am more and more convinced about her fifth Cylon theory.

George Carlin, 1937-2008

S – George Carlin (RIP) – He’s been vital for the last 35 years, but perhaps never more so than during the last eight. Thank you, George, for shouting the truth and never letting up.

S – 30 Rock – Yes, television comedy is in a pretty sad state at the moment (as is all of television, but that’s a larger story). Thankfully, we have Tina Fey. The more I watch, the more I realize how amazing this show is. I’ll still go with Arrested Development as the sitcom of the 2000s, but 30 Rock is a suitable heir to a “backstage” TV comedy tradition that goes back to The Dick Van Dyke Show, where completely implausible characters and situations thrive. Where else on TV are you going to get an updated take on Ted Baxter and Georgette (in the forms of Tracy Jordan and Kenneth)?

SPECIAL TEAMS

Catherine Tate as Donna Noble

K – Catherine Tate – One of the truly fantastic things about Doctor Who has been its consistent ability to surprise us, and one-up itself. Many people (myself included) were dubious about the revival of Ms. Tate’s Donna Noble, this time as the regular companion. But, like a place kicker under enormous pressure, Tate nailed it every time, fleshing out the fairly one-dimensional character seen in “The Runaway Bride” with pathos, wit, intelligence, anger, and joy.

P – Grant Morrison - Faced with writing two universe-shaking DC Comics titles this year (Batman and Final Crisis), Morrison fearlessly aimed high, challenging readers, artists, and fellow DC writers to keep up. While the end results of these dark narratives have yet to be seen, they’ve provided a hell of a ride thus far.

I’m eyeball-deep in writing at the moment, but I just had to briefly weigh in (along with everyone else) on what’s going on over at NBC. Long story short: they’re bleeding money and viewers, and have announced both hundreds of layoffs and the eye-popping plans to strip an hour of Jay Leno five nights a week at 10, starting next fall.

Oh, and Ben Silverman and Jeff Zucker still keep their jobs.

Everyone (and I mean everyone) is restructuring in these lean, mean times. Big media companies (and their employees) are particularly taking it on the chin, as the perennial dilemma of dwindling ratings is now compounded by disappearing ad revenue, as cost-cutting advertisers pull back. All of NBC’s competitors are having to do similar sorts of moves, in varying ways.

But NBC, that venerable old TV network, is arguably hurting the most. They’ve been mired in fourth place in the ratings for the entire post-Friends era (the last four years), and have lost both their edge in terms of affluence and 18-49 viewers. While ABC, Fox, and, especially, CBS, have found at least a few nights of stability on their schedules, NBC has holes on virtually every night. Sure, they’ve cornered the market on us effete aging hipsters with the likes of 30 Rock and The Office on Thursdays, but both shows get regularly and soundly trounced by CSI and Grey’s Anatomy. Effete aging hipsters might write a lot of great reviews and vote for the Emmys, but they do not a network make (just ask Judd Apatow or Bryan Fuller or Mitchell Hurwitz).

Even their other lone spot of moderate scripted success, Monday, hasn’t fared well of late. Heroes is creatively failing, and its bandwagon is shrinking. Hoping the Olympics would launch their fall schedule, NBC tried more action-heavy, expensive shows, like My Own Worst Enemy and a revamped Knight Rider, in an attempt to bring back the magic of Heroes circa 2006-07. That strategy utterly failed, as both shows have been cancelled.

So, faced with the very real possibility of losing one of their remaining assets, Jay Leno, to a competitor (most likely ABC), NBC has opted to give him an entire quarter of their prime-time schedule. That’s five nights of Jay, mostly doing the same stuff he’s done on The Tonight Show for the last 16+ years, only now 90 minutes earlier. Creatively speaking, this is an absolute disaster for the industry, as five hours that had been given over to scripted series are now filled with Jay, a desk, and a couch. Producers and writers are already livid with this decision, and they’re right.

Fiscally speaking, however, this will likely be a win for NBC. It’s already widely reported how much money this will save them; Jay’s show will cost less than a third as much as five new scripted series. I’m more interested in what the move offers them in terms of stability. Assuming Jay’s able to bring his late-night audience with him, and grow it a bit, they could easily lock down around 6-8 million viewers a night most nights (they’ll likely get killed on Mondays vs. CSI Miami, however). That’s a much better proposition than the anemic, up-and-down numbers they’ve been getting in that slot for years.

Critics have also complained that the Leno audience is too old, averaging well above the 18-49s ostensibly coveted by advertisers. Here, again, I think NBC made a move towards stability. The 18-49 demo is increasingly fickle, and entirely unreliable at its young end (unless you’re American Idol). The older audience is much more likely to stick around. And given the economy, the older audience may actually be more desirable to advertisers, as they’ll be more likely to have any money to spend. This could portend a big shift in the kinds of products advertised in prime time, with less Apple gizmos, movies, and cars, and more big retailers, household products, and drugs (Big Pharma’s likely going to chip in for a big chunk of NBC’s bailout).

If successful, it’ll at least keep NBC afloat as a business, even though they’ll potentially be a pale shadow of their earlier creative swagger. If it fails, this may finally be what does the seemingly indestructible Zucker in. Either way, it’s sure to be an intriguing chapter in broadcast network history, and may portend similar shifts at the other networks.

I realize it’s a bit late after the fact to talk about Comic-Con 2008, but I’ve had some thoughts bouncing around for the last few weeks after my experience there (and have had many other things on my desk since then).

I’ve attended many media conventions (aka “cons”) for over twenty years, and while I’ve seen a fairly wide range of size and scope, I’ve never had a fundamentally dissimilar experience at any of them. In other words, they all function more or less identically. If you’ve never been to a con, imagine large groups of people milling around a hotel or civic convention space, attending panel sessions, screenings, and workshops in the small rooms, and hearing keynote addresses and buying merchandise in the big rooms. Indeed, with the exception of a relatively small number of people dressed in costume (as well as a lack of insecurity and posturing), it looks more or less like an academic conference or trade convention. People talk, people walk, people watch people, people drink, and people buy crap.

That said, Comic-Con exponentially ratchets up the scale of this experience.

Welcome to Comic-Con 2008

The sheer size of the event is a cliché, but a warranted one. I’ve been to sold-out football games and concerts before, but this was easily the largest event I’ve ever attended, in terms of numbers of people simultaneously converging on a single place. The San Diego Convention Center, as Kristin Thompson pointed out, is itself so gargantuan that you can’t capture it in one image from street level. But every corner of that space was still full of people on both days I attended. Every concourse, meeting room, sidewalk, restroom, exhibit booth, breezeway, and ballroom: packed. Even floor space along walls and around support columns was scarce.

You really can’t overstate this, and I still find it immensely significant, though I’m also a bit ambivalent about it. It challenges the dubious claim that online culture has made physical contact obsolete. Well over a hundred thousand people–the vast majority of whom are otherwise fully tapped into online communities–had come to the SDCC, at considerable expense of money and time. If so many people are willing to come so far (or at least, for Southern Californians attending, at such cost) then physical proximity must still matter. But proximity to what, exactly? Is it just to be around their flavors of consumer culture?

I’m increasingly interested in how media companies–i.e., The Powers That Be, or TPTB, in fanspeak–navigate and negotiate in fan-dominated spaces. Thus, my main academic interest in attending Comic-Con was in scouting it out as an example of what John Caldwell refers to as “contact zones,” i.e., as spaces where the media industry contacts “civilians,” be they the press, investors, aspiring entrants, or fans. In this case, the “industry” included not only the major film studios, television networks, and cable channels, but also comics publishers, game publishers, and toy and collectible manufacturers. Though the weekend is certainly centered on the fan perspective (see below), all of the categories of “civilian” listed above were present at Comic-Con. Accordingly, as I realized over my two days there, proximity takes on multiple dimensions at the con. Fans are close to “stars” (whether actors, writers, artists, or directors) and new media products (i.e., upcoming films, TV shows, comics, games, etc.). Aspiring industry workers are close potential employers or network contacts. Media companies are close to the press, potential partners, potential employees, and (lastly) potential consumers.

The proximity of media company to press is the one that matters most to Hollywood. Like most events from the perspective of industry, it’s the media coverage that matters, not the actual experience. Accordingly, the infamously packed Hall H–the largest room in the SDCC, where the biggest film and TV projects are previewed–gets the brunt of media coverage. Indeed, aside from a couple of elevated VIP platforms in the main exhibit hall (set up for TV interviews) this was apparently where most of the press was camped out. The resulting mainstream coverage was skewed towards big projects, with a smattering of quotes from somewhat lesser-known-to-the-mainstream figures (like comics writer Geoff Johns, and America’s Favorite Geek™, Kevin Smith). From this perspective, the tens of thousands of fans at the SDCC functioned as publicity props, there to fill B-roll and offer enthusiastic testimonials.

That is, the audiovisual performance of “fandom” (however narrowly defined by Hollywood) in such venues is considerably more important to media corporations than anything real fans actually do. This gap between different expectations and perceptions is a critical juncture in contemporary popular culture as TPTB openly court fans, and is at the crux of my ongoing research.

Still, even though I never made it into Hall H (despite waiting for over an hour for the Watchmen preview), there was plenty going on everywhere you looked. Under the veneer of corporate promotion, this is still a fannish event. In retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t focus on the big things so much, because there’s little to be gained from being in attendance at those panels that can’t be gleaned from press coverage and umpteen blogs. There’s so much more to see and hear there if you’re not focused solely on Hollywood: Cape comics. Indie comics. Anime. Manga. Literature. Video games. Role-playing games. Costuming. Collecting. These media, practices, and people are still compelling and vital, and they are why Comic-Con–and every con–are still important spaces.

Waiting in line to duel

In the end, despite my initial bewilderment, I was impressed by how much Comic-Con restoked my inner geek (or not-so-inner, from my wife’s perspective). I was winding down my comics infatuation prior to Comic-Con, but found it wound back up again afterwards. I’m again interested in what’s going on on screens big and small, and how smaller companies are having a go of it. I’m enamored with particular genres (SF and superheroes for the most part), and excited to see how they continue to develop.

I also embrace the term “geek,” controversy and all, because my experience at Comic-Con has made me more comfortable with it. To be “geek” today is any many ways no different than at any other time in the past half-century: focused on minutiae and worlds well out of the mainstream, always seeking out cracks in supposed “reality.” As a parent, I endeavor to pass the geek on to my children (as so many people my age, gratifyingly, did in person at Comic-Con). What’s different, and much, much better today is that geekdom, broadly speaking, has no social boundaries. Attendees at Comic-Con came from every gender, ethnicity, age, ability, and orientation, making it a far more cosmopolitan space than almost any other you could encounter. The only demographic spike was age (probably averaging close to 30), but I’d argue that was more out of convenience and social mobility than anything else.

Geeking the next generation

I feel more like a geek now than I did before I went. And that’s a good thing. I look forward to attending next year, and in exploring how media, fans, industries, and my own passions intersect in the meantime.

Yes, it’s been a long, long while, but I’m on sabbatical (see the next post), and reading and writing up a storm these days, so I figured this was an excellent time to reboot this blog.

As you can see, I’ve renamed this blog Frames. I’ve been wanting a new blog name for a while, as the previous always seemed unwieldy. I chose it because it encompasses the scope of what I’d like to talk about; mostly media-related, but also in thinking about how we process the world around us more generally, and how those frames are rapidly changing.

I’ve got a few blog posts to come quite soon (really!), so stay tuned.

Last weekend I attended the Console-ing Passions conference at UC Santa Barbara. The event, focusing on feminist media studies, has been held roughly every two years since 1992. While it is still primarily concerned with television (as it started as a counter to the predominance of film studies in the 1980s), it has always welcomed papers and presentations on a wide array of media. However, and despite occasional calls to broaden its official purview, it still importantly maintains its central focus on feminist analysis and politics. This focus has helped it maintain a particular sensibility and community over the years, and this year’s event was no exception. Indeed, it was easily one of the best conferences I’ve attended in recent years.

I should say upfront that much of this was due to the setting. Santa Barbara is one of those supernaturally beautiful places, with mountains, the Pacific Ocean, lush vegetation, and near-perfect weather. The UCSB campus, like every other UC campus I’ve ever been to, makes the best of use of this environment, with open spaces, winding walkways, low-slung buildings, and sunlit rooms. The event organizers, UCSB Film and Media Studies professors Anna Everett and Lisa Parks, shrewdly planned the schedule to make the most of this setting, with extended breaks between some sessions, over an hour for lunch each day, and two outdoor receptions (including one on Goleta Beach, adjacent to UCSB).

I bring all this up because it makes a qualitative difference in the conference experience. The best conferences are about what happens in the spaces between the panels: in hallways, restaurants, hotel bars, and (yes) beaches. I’m not as up on my Richard Florida as I should be in this regard, but there’s clearly something about the effective organization of time and space that foster greater intellectual and creative energies. It’s a lesson I hope the leaders of SCMS heed as that conference continues to expand.

The theme for this year’s CP, broadly speaking, was gender and production. Most panels took this issue head-on, presenting work ranging from the theorization of “production” per se, to representations of media production on television, to the conditions and practices of actual media production. This focus indicates the growing expansion of media studies’ objects and methods of study. The days when entire conferences would consist of dozens of individual “readings” of particular films or TV series are thankfully long gone. Instead, effective media scholarship-i.e., “doing” media studies-requires interaction with (if not mastery of) a wide array of theories, methods, media forms, texts, producers, and users. Despite the increased expectations this places on media scholars, students, and practitioners, this is how it should be. Media is too chaotic and important to be carved only into arbitrary approaches or areas of focus. There is so much to learn-about methodologies, about industrial practices, about different formal paradigms, about reception communities-that can benefit us all in ways, I think, that our present moment, with its cultural, economic, technological, political and even biological uncertainties, demands.

That said, CP’s feminist ethos still provides an effective, and critically important, banner under which the new media studies can productively work. At CP, feminism is not so much a discrete approach (as it still tends to be taught) as an overarching principle: i.e., advancing work that broadens our understanding of gendered categories, and contributes to the improvement of the lives of real women and men. Here as well the organization of the event contributed to this goal, as not only media scholars but media producers and media fans interacted in this space; I saw presentations and/or chit-chatted with women television writers, studio executives, porn producers, and media acafen throughout the weekend. As someone who otherwise occupies several central social positions of contemporary American heteronormative patriarchy (white, middle-aged, straight, married, and parenting), I feel it’s important to listen to and engage in these discussions as much as possible.

(That said, I don’t mean to suggest that this makes it all or only “work”; I had a blast all weekend.)

Coming up in the next two installments: CP-presented work on gender in television programming, and work on gender in television production.

It’s been a mighty long time, but I’m back. Blogging time should (he says tentatively) open up a bit more in the coming weeks, with the end of the semester. Welcome in particular to those of you who stumbled upon my name in the Film Comment piece on David Bordwell’s blog; sorry for the lack of fresh product. I’m going to do bit more remodeling on the interface in the coming weeks as well, so stay tuned.

What concerns me these days are new seasons of three of my current favorite series (note: no hedging over the word “favorite”). Lost’s fourth season started back in February (and they’re currently on strike-affected hiatus till April 24); both Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who began their respective fourth seasons this past weekend. I had intended to blog about anticipation as a mode of media engagement, but instead (since the seasons have started) I’d like to talk about serial narrative.

I’ve blogged before about the problems of long television seasons, i.e., what Jason Mittell has beautifully dubbed the “infinity model.” Each of these shows has been able to delimit “infinity” in a variety of ways. Last spring, the executive producers of Lost negotiated an end to their series: spring 2010. This means that (counting the 2008 episodes already aired) there are forty more Lost episodes to come over the next two and a half seasons. Similarly, Battlestar Galactica will wrap up this season; the first ten episodes will run this spring, but the strike likely delayed the release of the last ten episodes till the fall (this has yet to be confirmed). As for Doctor Who, only three bumper-length “specials” will run scattered throughout 2009, followed by a full season of thirteen episodes in 2010. While some fans have panicked at this news, it is intended to become the usual pattern of production from that point forward, in order to keep the demanding series and its personnel fresh.

I bring all this up because most fans are going into these new seasons knowing that “the end” (or, in DW’s case, an “end”) is nigh. That is, each series will end at a known point in the near future. Unlike virtually every other scripted television series in history (with some important exceptions, most occurring within the last decade or so), these series are embarking on an unknown narrative trajectory with a known terminus. Again, in DW’s case, it’s more complicated: the series isn’t ending, but the way it has been produced to date is. And it’s more complicated than that as well, but I’ll get into that in a moment.

Lost made this shift in last year’s season finale, when the familiar flashbacks were replaced with flash-forwards, i.e., glimpses at the lives of some of the characters after their departure from the island. This move neatly cleaved the entire series run in half, and signalled movement to a new narrative problematic. The question of “who were these people?” has become “what happened to them?” The foregrounding of the Oceanic Six (i.e., the only six characters who “survived” Oceanic 815 and returned to civilization and became celebrities), coupled with the addition of several new characters (brought on board the freighter that made contact with the regulars at the end of last season) has provided the fuel for this problematic. Interestingly, each episode thus far (there are still five to go this season) has prompted even more questions. For every answer that’s given (e.g., what happened to Michael) loads of questions are asked (e.g., what’s the deal with the polar bear skeleton in Tunisia?).

Thus, the knowledge that viewers must bring to bear on the material increases, but moves on at the same time. That is, answered questions or cut-off plotlines (e.g,. goodbye Danielle and Karl…probably) can be filed away, opening up conceptual space for the new questions. Lost has done this all throughout, of course. However, it’s new, denser narrative structure (16 straight episodes, rather than 25 scattered across 40 weeks), plus eight-month hiatuses, means that the experience of watching each season unfold will be even more “intense” than usual. That is, more narrative significance packed into fewer episodes, engaged with in a shorter amount of time.

(Side note: yes, DVD box set viewers have been able to do this for years. What’s interesting now is that this mode of focused intense engagement is occurring more and more in scheduled runs of series on their networks)

For Battlestar Galactica fans, the stakes are even higher: these episodes are it. Twenty and out. Moreover, there’s no flashforwards (at least straightforwardly). There’s no way to effectively predict where this story is going. The series has excelled at jaw-dropping season finales all the way through, episodes that both culminate their season arcs and explode into a completely different narrative direction. Arguably, the Season 3 finale was the most explosive of them all, revealing four of the “final five” cylons, acquitting Gaius Baltar, bringing back Kara Thrace from the dead, revealing that Earth does indeed exist, and working in Bob Dylan’s “All Along The Watchtower.”

The first episode back (after almost a year) picked up exactly where events left off and didn’t disappoint, moving each of these plot points along (including the Dylan song) and raising the stakes accordingly. What’s most extraordinary is how this is working without resorting to genre cliche, and without drawing up an explicit puzzle (like in Lost). Instead, we’re left with bits and pieces of meaning to chew on, with very little stable ground. I like to think this is how both the surviving humans and the cylons are perceiving their worlds as well: that all attempts thus far to move on have either failed (e.g., New Caprica) or have gone unpredictably awry (Tigh’s a cylon!).

This pushes the series out of the literal realm and into something more challenging, more disturbing, and more uncertain. The various strains of hybridity presented (all twelve cylon models, Baltar’s vision of Six, undead Kara, Hera (and maybe Aaron), the cylon/human hybrids, the animal consciousness of the centurions and raiders, the failing Colonial state, etc.) make any notion of a core or foundation untenable, and increasingly so. This material would be compelling in any medium, but on television-that seemingly reliable technology of modernity and civilization-its fissures and wounds are felt all the more. You can’t put it down. You can’t walk out of the theater. You can watch something afterwards, or turn off the screen. But you know it’ll be back. And yet it will still end as well, within the next eight months.

Finally, Doctor Who continues to offer kind of “annual saga” mode of narrative, in that each season has a central thematic, as well as a growing narrative problematic, that nibbles away at the corners of early episodes before building up to increasingly explosive finales. In practice, this means that while the entire series run is interconnected, individual seasons are meant to be experienced as one thirteen-episode saga (I’m leaving out the Christmas episodes in this calculus, glorious though they are, as they’ve functioned thus far as variously “interstitial” between the main action in the seasons).

Twenty-nine episodes into the David Tennant era, and we’re starting to see the emotional cracks in this particular Doctor blossom. He was put through the wringer last season well enough, but not as much as his companion Martha Jones. This season looks to compound these emotions and relationships several-fold, as not only Martha, but, incredibly, Rose Tyler (marooned in a parallel universe way back in Series Two’s finale “Doomsday”) are somehow returning this year, in addition to the now-regular companion Donna Noble (seen previously as one-off team-up in “The Runaway Bride” in 2006). Unlike Lost, which literally screams the questions and answers at us, and BSG, which plunges us into uncharted conceptual waters, DW’s real “big questions” are actually quite intimate. For despite all the copious (and extremely well-conveyed) action and epic scale, this is basically a series about a very, very lonely person, and the emotional (as well as physical) damage he leaves in his wake. And, based on the last few minutes of the Series Four opener, “Partners In Crime,” his life is about to get very, very complicated indeed.

The “end,” here, ominously foreshadowed in the already released title of this year’s final episode (”Journey’s End”), refers to the seeming end of this year’s particular theme, and I suspect, the buildup to the end of Tennant’s Tenth Doctor, probably in the last 2009 special, which then would usher in an Eleventh Doctor in a full series in 2010. But that’s all speculation. The primary advantage of Doctor Who’s narrative structure is that it allows a relatively wide range of storytelling styles (everything from comedy to horror to SF to domestic drama) which collectively, and subtly, build upon an overarching story. A story that then actually comes to a conclusion as episode thirteen ends, while still leaving plenty of bruises and mysteries to propel the next series.

Just back from Cambridge, where I attended Unboxing TV, one of the most satisfying “conference experiences” I’ve ever had. So, right off the top, yay Jonathan Gray and Joshua Green for putting this together. Let’s do it again.

In the wake of MIT5, Jon and Josh cooked up the idea for a small, one-stream conference of TV Studies scholars where the focus would not be on the conference paper as the kind of finished idea polished for presentation, but on the much more engaging process of interactive thought and discussion. They were also inspired by the design of last year’s Flow conference in Austin, which similarly put the “discussions in the corridor” front-and-center. The difference was in scale. Flow was not large, but certainly not small. There were 30 invited participants to Unboxing TV, present at every panel, in the same space, for a day and a half. This produced the effect of an undistracted collective experience, an ongoing evolution of discussion throughout the weekend.

The larger conferences in our field (e.g., SCMS, at around 800 participants) can be exciting but exhausting in all their numerous, too-brief meet-ups and scurrying between panels. By contrast, as one person put it, Unboxing TV felt like the best grad seminar ever, where everyone has done the reading, and everyone has something interesting to say.

You can do the reading as well, here, where you’ll find PDFs of the “provocations” – the short thought pieces that each participant contributed. Collectively, they indicate how we’re working to understand and contextualize both the rapid changes happening in and around television (and media and culture more broadly) and the continuities of so much unfinished lines of inquiry. Rather than break down each panel, as I did for MIT5, and will ideally do for similar conferences, I thought I’d do a synthesis here instead, giving a general sense of what our collective intelligence generated.

Indeterminacy

All throughout the weekend, and embedded in the design of the event, were questions of definition. What is “television”? What is “television studies”? What is “public service”? What is “fandom”? What is “newness”? What is “creative labor”? What is “community”? What emerged from these discussions was not only the sense that none of these categories (and several others) can be pinned down precisely, but that none of them should be pinned down. Instead, in the best post-structuralist tradition, we collectively (if often not consciously, and not with some contention) argued for the value of indeterminacy. That is, the strategic mobility of concepts, terms, and discourses.

This applied most radically to the questions of television and Television Studies itself. After more than thirty years of scratching at the doors of various fields (mostly the one marked “Film Studies”) for legitimacy, the field is arguably better off pursuing an open disciplinarity. By this I don’t mean “interdisciplinarity” (which many critiqued) or even post-disciplinarity, but rather a kind of not-disciplinarity, whereby the usual parameters of an academic field (theories, methods, objects of study, etc.) could never quite be fixed. Indeed, aside from a general lack of quantitative approaches (and even there, there were exceptions), the breadth of scholarship produced by the participants is staggering. A PowerPoint slide of all the participants’ book covers reminded us of that from the very beginning.

The benefits and risks of cohering into “a field” were openly discussed, and my wheels are still turning over the possibilities, which are especially intriguing given our steady ascendancy into SCMS over the past several years, and the impending job security of most of the people in the room.

Inquiry

In a similar manner, the weekend revealed plenty of gaps in methods, concepts, terms, “languages” (I’m guilty of that metaphor, I suppose), technologies, objects of study, texts, and (arguably most importantly) histories of every kind. If Television Studies is indeterminate, than “inquiry” is what keeps it afloat, always moving forward, always questioning established categories and practices.

Yes, the academic life is about inquiry at a very basic level. But this field never stops inquiring, never rests on assumptions, never takes much for granted. It might be a sign of a seminal moment in Television Studies, or maybe only a seminal moment in my academic life, that the energy and intensity of discussions in conference rooms and grad seminars of long ago (2005, 2003, 1999, 1994, 1991,…) was matched and superceded by our collective wisdom in Cambridge.

I now find myself wanting to listen in on Julie D’Acci’s feminism seminar in 1991, or John Fiske’s Media Theory seminar in 1993, or my dissertation writing group in 1996, or the birth of the SCMS TV Studies group in 1999, or the collective intellectual geek-out over reality TV at MIT3 in 2003. To see how the act of “inquiry” propelled discussions towards where we are now, and to see those past moments under the (often harsh) glare of the present.

Inquiry is what we do; it’s what we’ve always done and always will do.

Community

The last major category to emerge from Unboxing TV was community. I understand community, coming out of this, as operating in three distinct ways (again, indeterminacy, remember?).

First, there was a lot of talk about building communities across not only other academic disciplines, but other key publics (regulators, activists, fans, creative workers, “the industry,” etc.). Lines of inquiry often led in this direction, which in turn led “out” of a sense of a cohesive field, and toward a more diffuse array of interests and politics. Every panel tied back into the concept of community in this regard, whether of Asian Americans, program buyers, journalists, striking TV writers, or Mexican factory workers (to name a few).

Second, there was great support (especially from Jon and Josh, as event organizers) for maintaining and expanding online and offline communities within our “field” (as such). The ongoing “good fight” at places like Flow, MediaCommons, LiveJournal, Henry’s AcaFan Debate, and the blogosphere more broadly were discussed as examples of how we need to effectively utilize new interfaces and technologies to support the idea of “academic community.” Oddly, the TV Studies group at SCMS didn’t come up once, despite the fact that five past or present steering committee members were there, and that one invitee (Michele Hilmes, who unfortunately couldn’t make the trip) now serves on the SCMS Executive Committee.

And a final, important note about community. At the first panel, Jon made the observation that the participants were going to be colleagues and collaborators in our “field,” or whatever it is we do, for the next thirty-odd years. I thought at that moment not only of those in the room, but of the many others, some in “adjacent” fields like Film Studies, Popular Music Studies, and Communication Studies more broadly, in my generational cohort. We’re the “class of the millennium,” I suppose, all gaining PhDs in the last ten years and many now scampering over the hedge to tenure (Amanda Lotz counted seven colleagues in the field going up this year alone). So community also means this particular community. These people, gathered in this room.

In this regard, there’s not only a shared politics and purpose; there’s love. I’ve known many of the people at Unboxing TV for several years, and a few of them for many years, dating back to my early grad school days (I first met Henry Jenkins at the first Console-ing Passions, at Iowa City in 1992). Even those I’ve only met recently, I feel a close affinity with. We’ve shared knowledge, gossip, baby pictures, book chapters, hopes, fears, drink recipes, job tips, political rants, hugs, works-in-progress, fannish crushes, mentor stories, laughter, restaurant reviews, conference panels, YouTube videos, paper calls, tears, and complaints about department meetings for years. We all feel isolated at our home institutions. We all feel like “home” in distant hotel meeting rooms and bars, and blogs and e-mail discussions. We all do, otherwise we wouldn’t have come to Cambridge.

I don’t want to critique or theorize this community, but hold onto it. Aside from family and friends, these are the most important long-term relationships we’ll ever have. These people, and the many others they’ve led me to, are ultimately the fuel that keeps my inquiry moving, and my indeterminacy undaunted.

May we never stop unboxing television.