The Institutional Fan-Made Paratext: the Case of the Van Der Memes

This paper discusses the case of the Van Der Memes, internet memes based on close-ups of actor James Van Der Beek emoting feelings which, born as user-generated content (UGC), end up working as marketing tools for a rebranding campaign of the actor. Framing the case study into the complexity of contemporary mediascape, a digital environment where corporate branding strategies progress alongside remix culture, the analysis will unfold along two main directions: on the one hand, we will see how the same content undertakes constant reworks and repurposes, as the duration and circulation of the media objects involved gets inevitably altered. On the other, we shall see how the case of the Van Der Memes calls into question the conflict between bottom/up and top/down productions, as it exemplifies a profitable relation between the notoriously unruly world of UGC and the institutional environment of television industry

Straight-to-Series in Broadcast Television: Causes, Issues and Consequences

In the last few years, Netflix has set itself as a true player in U.S. television industry, fostering new competitive dynamics that have contributed to redefine television's production and distribution models. This paper aims to discuss one of the effects of this competition: the rethinking of the pilot process in favour of the straight-to-series commitment in broadcast television. The analysis will unfold along three main directions: 1. Causes: we will argue that Netflix, through its high financial commitments, has launched a speculative bubble that has shaken up the traditional structure of competitive forces, pushing competitors to outbid its offers to hit-producers. 2. Issues: we will see whether the straight-to-series model could prove economically viable for broadcast television. 3. Consequences: we will ultimately analyse the consequences on narrative forms of network series, focusing in particular on writing processes and modes of storytelling

Dalla Disco Fever al Disco Dan. Forme di rappresentazione della cultura disco nella televisione statunitense

Considering disco not only a music genre, but above all an expression of underground cultures as well as an iconic imaginary, this article examines the manifold ways the U.S. television industry has depicted disco culture. We analyse how industrial practices have make use of its various aspects in relation to commercial and creative demands both in the Seventies and today, ultimately using disco culture as a representation of reality or as a narrative trope, according to need

La produzione senza distribuzione: il caso Mobcaster

This article centers on the case of Mobcaster, a website for crowdfunding TV shows. The platform sets itself as a “television without television”: it allows the audience to choose which series deserve a full-season order (an to fund it) and it also grants producers 100% creative and economic control over their products. The first distribution channel is Mobcaster TV, but founder Aubrey Levy also aims to a wider distribution, possibly including network television. However, this target raises issues concernig the compatibility of two different business models: on the one hand, we have completely independent productions. On the other, the oligopolistic network system. Focusing on this opposition, the paper analyses critical elements such as entry barriers, access to ditribution channels and target audience differences. Ultimately, it discusses the over-the-top distribution model, finding it more suitable for the needs of Mobcaster

It's All Connected. Competitive Strategies and Formal Evolutions in U.S. TV Series

Questo lavoro propone un'analisi di come le evoluzioni istituzionali, economiche e tecnologiche dell'industria televisiva statunitense abbiano influenzato forme e formati delle serie TV dal secondo Dopoguerra a oggi. Coniugando teorie di television e media studies a strumenti dell'economia e dell'analisi strategica, il lavoro si serve di un approccio sistemico che evidenzia le proprietà dinamiche del settore e dei suoi prodotti, portando così in primo piano la co-evoluzione fra forze di mercato e proprietà formali delle serie TV, il cui valore simbolico e monetario è ciclicamente rinegoziato. La tesi si compone di cinque capitoli che delineano un percorso co-evolutivo fra industria e produzioni. Nei primi due, di tipo storico-ricognitivo, si indagano le pratiche competitive, produttive e distributive dell'industria dall'inizio delle trasmissioni all'affermazione della televisione via cavo e degli OTT. Negli altri tre, ci si concentra sul contemporaneo e sulle pratiche che stanno nuovamente ridefinendo il settore e i prodotti, analizzando gli effetti (economici, culturali, estetici) dell'invasione dei player online nel mercato televisivo, con attenzione alla costruzione di ecosistemi digitali e narrativi.This thesis examines how the U.S. television industry's institutional, economic and technological evolutions shaped the styles, aesthetics and formats of scripted TV series, from the mid-Forties to today. Being the U.S. TV industry a highly competitive oligopoly, closely related to the fluctuations of the outer environment (national and global economy, mediascape, society and culture), the thesis focuses on how the market leaders responded to cyclical institutional, technological, and industrial changes, along with how these adaptive reactions shaped the forms and texts of TV series, constantly renegotiating their symbolic and financial values. The thesis is composed of five chapters that trace co-evolutionary paths between TV institutions and TV products. The first two chapters provide an historical account of the main industrial practices of the network era and the multichannel transition, highlighting the competition between broadcast TV and cable and outlining some main product groups sharing some aesthetic and narrative features. It then introduces the post-network era and digitization, along with the entrance of OTT players into the TV market. The following three chapters problematize this entrance and examines the manifold ways broadcasters reacted to the new scenario, focusing on corporate strategies, business strategies, formal strategies and the construction of digital and narrative ecosystems. Bringing together television and media studies and strategy analysis, the work uses a sistemic approach that highlights the dynamic features of the industry and its products, eventually bringing to the fore the co-evolutionary patterns of market forces and formal properties of TV series

External validation of a convolutional neural network for the automatic segmentation of intraprostatic tumor lesions on 68Ga-PSMA PET images

Introduction: State of the art artificial intelligence (AI) models have the potential to become a "one-stop shop " to improve diagnosis and prognosis in several oncological settings. The external validation of AI models on independent cohorts is essential to evaluate their generalization ability, hence their potential utility in clinical practice. In this study we tested on a large, separate cohort a recently proposed state-of-the-art convolutional neural network for the automatic segmentation of intraprostatic cancer lesions on PSMA PET images.Methods: Eighty-five biopsy proven prostate cancer patients who underwent Ga-68 PSMA PET for staging purposes were enrolled in this study. Images were acquired with either fully hybrid PET/MRI (N = 46) or PET/CT (N = 39); all participants showed at least one intraprostatic pathological finding on PET images that was independently segmented by two Nuclear Medicine physicians. The trained model was available at and data processing has been done in agreement with the reference work.Results: When compared to the manual contouring, the AI model yielded a median dice score = 0.74, therefore showing a moderately good performance. Results were robust to the modality used to acquire images (PET/CT or PET/MRI) and to the ground truth labels (no significant difference between the model's performance when compared to reader 1 or reader 2 manual contouring).Discussion: In conclusion, this AI model could be used to automatically segment intraprostatic cancer lesions for research purposes, as instance to define the volume of interest for radiomics or deep learning analysis. However, more robust performance is needed for the generation of AI-based decision support technologies to be proposed in clinical practice

Gli studi sulla distribuzione: approcci, direzioni, prospettive

In questo capitolo cerchiamo di individuare e mappare i principali studi sulla distribuzione cinematografica a partire da approcci disciplinari e metodologici che fanno principalmente riferimento ai media industry studies. Intendiamo così tracciare la loro evoluzione ed evidenziare, infine, percorsi di analisi in via di sviluppo e prospettive per la definizione della disciplina dei distribution studies

Rerun, Revival, Reboot. Serie tv nel regime della ripetizione

Abstract: La domanda centrale di questo studio è: in che modo la ripetizione nelle serie TV, che ritarda il concetto di fine, genera costantemente nuovo valore (simbolico e monetario) per l’industria televisiva? Ripercorrendo le pratiche storiche di syndication, rerun e riallocazione sulla televisione broadcast e cable, arriviamo all'era dei revival e dei reboot fino alla "war of reruns" lanciata dalle piattaforme di streaming. In questo senso intendiamo la “fine” non solo dal punto di vista strettamente narrativo, ma soprattutto industriale, come un punto di arrivo potenzialmente inesistente, che diventa effimero in un ciclo economico fondato sulla ripetizione e il prolungamento constante della generazione di valore