Television after TV : Essays on a Medium in Transition

In the last ten years, television has reinvented itself in numerous ways.

The demise of the U.S. three network system, the rise of multi-channel cable and global satellite delivery, changes in regulation policies and ownership rules, technological innovations in screen design, and the development of digital systems like TIVO have combined to transform the practice we call watching TV.

Indeed, if TV refers to the technologies, formations, government policies, and practices of looking associated with the medium in its classical public service and three-network age, it appears that we are now entering a new phase of television - a phase that comes after "TV." Contextualizing these changes, the essays in this collection consider the future of television in the United States and Europe and scholarship and activism focused on it.

Combining historical, critical, and speculative essays by senior television and media scholars, Television after TV examines both commercial and public service traditions and evaluates their dual (and some say merging) fates in our global, digital culture of "convergence."The essays explore a broad range of topics including a website launched by Mexican Americans to critique racial stereotypes on commercial television, changing notions of what constitutes "quality" television in Great Britain, television's effect on conceptions of space and place, and infomercials and commercial product placement.

In dialogue with previous media theorists and historians, the contributors collectively rethink the goals of media scholarship, pointing toward new ways of accounting for television's past, present, and future.