Empires of Entertainment

JENNIFER HOLT is an assistant professor of film and media studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the coeditor of Media Industries: History, Theory, and Method.

"Incisively argued and elegantly written, Empires of Entertainment shows the anti-democratic character of huge concentrations of media wealth and the manner in which an ideal of the public good has been sacrificed on behalf of unfettered corporate power." - Stephen Prince (author of Firestorm: American Film in the Age of Terrorism) "Jennifer Holt has written a concise, captivating, and much-needed history of industry and regulatory developments in U.S. television since the eighties. It will be required reading for scholars of industry history and anyone interested in contemporary media policy."- Michele Hilmes (University of Wisconsin-Madison) “Holt elegantly details the twists and turns of the political economics of U.S. film and TV industries at the end of the twentieth century. With a keen eye for the subtleties (and sometime ironies) of corporate thinking, she reveals a process that is both very political and very human. Empires of Entertainment sheds new light on how the media really works.” - Thomas Streeter (author of The Net Effect: Romanticism, Capitalism, and the Internet) "Incisively argued and elegantly written, Empires of Entertainment shows the anti-democratic character of huge concentrations of media wealth and the manner in which an ideal of the public good has been sacrificed on behalf of unfettered corporate power." - Stephen Prince (author of Firestorm: American Film in the Age of Terrorism) "Jennifer Holt has written a concise, captivating, and much-needed history of industry and regulatory developments in U.S. television since the eighties. It will be required reading for scholars of industry history and anyone interested in contemporary media policy."- Michele Hilmes (University of Wisconsin-Madison) “Holt elegantly details the twists and turns of the political economics of U.S. film and TV industries at the end of the twentieth century. With a keen eye for the subtleties (and sometime ironies) of corporate thinking, she reveals a process that is both very political and very human. Empires of Entertainment sheds new light on how the media really works.” - Thomas Streeter (author of The Net Effect: Romanticism, Capitalism, and the Internet)

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Foundation of Empires 1. 1980-1983: Film versus Cable2. 1983-1985: Broadcast and the Blueprints of Empires3. 1984-1986: Outsiders Moving in--Murdoch and Turner4. 1986-1988: Golden Era Redux5. 1989-1992: Big Media without Frontiers6. 1993-1995: The Last MileConclusion: 1996 and Beyond--The Political Economy of TransformationNotesBibliographyIndex