Creating an Online Television Archive, 1987–2013

The growth of television, and in particular television news, has created a challenge in preserving and providing access to the resulting material. At the same time, technology has opened many opportunities to capture this information and make it more widely available. In some ways, it is a race of technology against the speed of content creation. In this paper, we describe a very successful archival project that records, indexes, archives and makes available the totality of the programming of the U.S. based C-SPAN television network, a nonprofit network that telecasts the entirety of the U.S. congressional proceedings, hearings, presidential speeches and other public policy events. As such, it is an archive of unedited primary source events. The use of evolving technology over 25 years has made this archive possible and it exists free on the Internet for world-wide access

The Stanley Kubrick Archive: A Dossier of New Research

An introduction to a co-edited Dossier of new research from The Stanley Kubrick Archive at University of Arts, Londo

Creeping decay: cult soundtracks, residual media, and digital technologies

This paper explores the recent resurgence in the collecting of cult film soundtracks, in particular films stemming from the late 1960s to the early 1980s and often linked to horror and other modes of exploitation cinema. I consider this phenomenon as an important component of cult film fandom, but one which has largely been overlooked in cult cinema research because it is often considered as belonging to popular music, as opposed to film, research. As films can become cultified in many different ways and across different media, I look into how areas of music culture can both be inspired by, as well as influence, aspects of film culture. The paper also addresses the importance of ‘residual’ technologies within cult film/music cultures, noting in particular the preference for vinyl records as well as VHS tapes in certain cult fan communities, and explores the appeal that such ‘old media’ retain within an increasingly digital mediascape

When fiction trumps truth : what ‘post-truth’ and ‘alternative facts’ mean for management studies

In this essay, we explore the notions of ‘post-truth’ and ‘alternative facts’ for management studies. Adopting a pragmatist perspective, we argue that there is no intrinsically accurate language in terms of which to refer to reality. Language, rather, is a tool that enables agents to grab hold of causal forces and intervene in the world. ‘Alternative facts’ can be created by multimodal communication to highlight different aspects of the world for the purpose of political mobilization and legitimacy. ‘Post-truth’ politics reveals the fragmentation of the language game in which mainstream politics has been hitherto conducted. Using the communicative acts of businessman-turned-politician President Trump and his aides, as a prompt, we explore the implications that ‘alternative facts’ and ‘post-truth’ have for today’s management scholarship. We argue that management scholars should unpack how managers navigate strategic action and communication, and how the creation of alternative realities is accomplished in conditions of informational abundance and multimodal communication

Howzat? The Financial Health of English Cricket: Not Out, Yet

In 1997 a review of the financial health of English county cricket highlighted strategic weaknesses within the professional game, principally an over-reliance by clubs on the annual grants provided to them by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). Without such grants the teams, in general terms, would be insolvent. Using the financial statements of the First Class Cricket Counties, this paper explores how the financial position and performance of the county game has changed, 20 years on from the seminal study. A series of structural changes to the game had been made, yet financial problems are still evident. Counties are as reliant on central grant income as they were in 1997, although there are cases where clubs have made strategic enhancements and are becoming self-sustainable as going concerns. Rather than the ECB directly funding county revenue it should be working in collaboration with individual clubs to achieve developments in the game from the grassroots upwards, in order to help clubs grow their own revenue streams.</jats:p

Interventions, Productions and Collaborations:the relationship between RAI and visual artists

On 17 May 1952, before RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana Studios began their regular broadcast from Milan, the Spatialist painter and sculptor Lucio Fontana broadcast his own experimental 'artwork' on Italian television, beginning a fruitful relationship between RAI and visual artists. For some, such as the painter Mario Sasso and the Arte Povera artist Pino Pascali, it provided careers as designers and art directors. For others, such as Carlo Quartucci and Gianni Toti, who were given unique access to RAI's television apparatus, it was an opportunity to explore their own artistic experimentations with an expensive and exclusive medium. RAI also hosted seminal artists' performances on-screen including John Cage and Fabio Mauri. This article, based on documents and interviews collected during the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project REWINDItalia, discusses these and other seminal cases as well as tracing and assessing the history of this fruitful and complex exchange between RAI and visual artists

3D UK? 3D History and the Absent British Pioneers

The recent television ‘rediscovery’ of a small cohort of 1950s British 3D films (and the producers who made them) has offered a new route into considering how the historical stories told about 3D film have focused almost exclusively on the American experience, eliding other national contexts. This article challenges both the partiality of existing academic histories of 3D, and the specific popular media narratives that have been constructed around the British 3D pioneers. Offering a rebuttal of those narratives and an expansion of them based around primary archival research, the article considers how the British 3D company Stereo Techniques created a different business and production model based around non-fiction short 3D films that stand in contrast to the accepted view of 3D as an American feature film novelty. Through an exploration of the depiction (and absence) of these 3D pioneers from existing media histories, the article argues for a revision to both 3D studies and British cinema history

Hokey Religions: Star Wars and Star Trek in the Age of Reboots

Disney’s recent “decanonization” of the decades-old Star Wars “Expanded Universe” in preparation for the release of The Force Awakens once again raises the question of the triangular relationship between the corporate ownership of intellectual property, the mainstream audience to whom the blockbuster films are addressed, and the much smaller hardcore fanbase whose loyalty sustains a franchise during its lean years. Considering fandom investment in the processes of world-building and continuity construction across the landscape of SF media forms, this article will focus specifically on two key franchises in mainstream SF, each in its own way paradigmatic of the “merely” science fictional, and each of which has recently undertaken a radical revision of its “expanded universe”: Star Wars and Star Trek. A concluding discussion extends these observations to other two franchises: Superman comics and the long-running British television series Doctor Who

“It’s Been a Hard Day’s Night” for Songwriters: Why the ASCAP and BMI Consent Decrees Must Undergo Reform

In order to guarantee reasonable fees for songwriters, composers, and publishers, the consent decrees must undergo critical reform to account for how music is licensed in new media. Part I of this Note will provide background on the mechanics of music licensing, both traditional and through modern mediums, in order to explain why the two largest PROs initially entered into governmental consent decrees. Part II will discuss recent judicial determinations of “reasonable” licensing rates for public performances in new media and demonstrate the discrepancy in compensation between songwriters and their sound recording counterparts, namely record companies and recording artists. Finally, Part III will argue that the solution to this problem is through consent decree reform. The decrees should be modified to allow songwriters to withdraw their digital rights in order to separately license songs in new media. A new PRO should then emerge in the market place to account solely for public performance rights in new media, leaving traditional licensing to the existing PROs. Additionally, the current judicial process for setting rates, known as the “rate court” system, should be replaced with expedited, binding arbitration. Making these important changes to the music-licensing system will work towards bridging the gap in compensation inequality between songwriters and recording artists

The shudder of a cinephiliac idea? Videographic film studies practice as material thinking

Long after the advent of the digital era, while most university-based film studies academics still choose to publish their critical, theoretical and historical research in conventional written formats, a small but growing number of scholars working on the moving image have begun to explore the online publication possibilities of the digital video essay. This multimedia form has come to prominence in recent years in much Internet-based cinephile and film critical culture. In this article, I will consider, above all from a personal perspective looking back at two of the sixty or so videos that I have made, some of the possibilities that these processes offer for the production of new knowledge, forged out of the conjunction of the film object(s) to be studied, digital technologies of reproduction and editing tools, and the facticity of the researcher(s). I will argue that digital video is usefully seen not only as a promising communicative tool with different affordances than those of written text, but also as an important emergent cultural and phenomenological field for the creative practice of our work as film scholars