Timothy Havens – författare

A deep dive into the new era of digital content production and distributionIn the twenty-first century, the platforms that both create and host content have become nearly as important as media itself. Companies such as Netflix, Spotify, and YouTube have attained a massive hold on the public imagination and have become an almost ineluctable part of people's everyday lives. While the workings of media distribution had until very recently remained inconsequential to the average consumer, the recent popularization of various online platforms has made the question of distribution immediate to everyone. Digital Media Distribution: Portals, Platforms, Pipelines provides a timely examination of the multifaceted distribution landscape in a moment of transformation and conceptualizes media distribution as a complex site of power, privilege, and gatekeeping. These tensions have local, national, and global consequences on the autonomy of creative workers, as well as on how we gain access to, engage with, and understand cultural products. Drawing on original research into distribution practices in industries as diverse as television, film, videogames, literature, and adult entertainment, each chapter explores how digitization has changed media distribution and its broader economic, industrial, social, and cultural implications.Bringing together experts from around the world and across the media industries, Digital Media Distribution: Portals, Platforms, Pipelines presents a vast array of critical approaches and illustrative case studies for understanding the factors that have an impact on the way media travels and moves throughout our digital lives.

This is an introduction to the media industries, a topic that sometimes has its own course but is also incorporated into courses on media criticism, media literacy, and even a basic mass media course where the instructor wishes to teach from topical paperbacks as opposed to a big textbook. The book examines the influence of media industry organization and practices on society; at the same time, it offers students pursuing both scholarly and professional careers related to the media industries a comprehensive overview of how the industries work, why they work as they do, and what the broader theoretical and practical implications of the media industries are. Questions such as "why is media industry organization important?", "how do we make sense of media industry changes?" and "what are the key issues facing media industries?" animate the analysis.

This collection of essays responds to the recent surge of interest in popular television in Eastern Europe. This is a region where television's transformation has been especially spectacular, shifting from a state-controlled broadcast system delivering national, regional, and heavily filtered Western programming to a deregulated, multi-platform, transnational system delivering predominantly American and Western European entertainment programming. Consequently, the nations of Eastern Europe provide opportunities to examine the complex interactions among economic and funding systems, regulatory policies, globalization, imperialism, popular culture, and cultural identity.This collection will be the first volume to gather the best writing, by scholars across and outside the region, on socialist and postsocialist entertainment television as a medium, technology, and institution.

"Black Television Travels provides a detailed and insightful view of the roots and routes of the televisual representations of blackness on the transnational media landscape. By following the circulation of black cultural products and their institutionalized discourses—including industry lore, taste cultures, and the multiple stories of black experiences that have and have not made it onto the small screen—Havens complicates discussions of racial representation and exposes possibilities for more expansive representations of blackness while recognizing the limitations of the seemingly liberatory spaces created by globalization." —Bambi Haggins, Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at Arizona State University "A major achievement that makes important contributions to the analysis of race, identity, global media, nation, and television production cultures. Discussions of race and television are too often constricted within national boundaries, yet this fantastic book offers a strong, compelling, and utterly refreshing corrective. Read it, assign it, use it." —Jonathan Gray, author of Television Entertainment, Television Studies, and Show Sold Separately Black Television Travels explores the globalization of African American television and the way in which foreign markets, programming strategies, and viewer preferences have influenced portrayals of African Americans on the small screen. Television executives have been notoriously slow to recognize the potential popularity of black characters and themes, both at home and abroad. As American television brokers increasingly seek revenues abroad, their assumptions about saleability and audience perceptions directly influence the global circulation of these programs, as well as their content. Black Television Travels aims to reclaim the history of African American television circulation in an effort to correct and counteract this predominant industry lore.Based on interviews with television executives and programmers from around the world, as well as producers in the United States, Havens traces the shift from an era when national television networks often blocked African American television from traveling abroad to the transnational, post-network era of today. While globalization has helped to expand diversity in African American television, particularly in regard to genre, it has also resulted in restrictions, such as in the limited portrayal of African American women in favor of attracting young male demographics across racial and national boundaries. Havens underscores the importance of examining boardroom politics as part of racial discourse in the late modern era, when transnational cultural industries like television are the primary sources for dominant representations of blackness.

"Black Television Travels provides a detailed and insightful view of the roots and routes of the televisual representations of blackness on the transnational media landscape. By following the circulation of black cultural products and their institutionalized discourses—including industry lore, taste cultures, and the multiple stories of black experiences that have and have not made it onto the small screen—Havens complicates discussions of racial representation and exposes possibilities for more expansive representations of blackness while recognizing the limitations of the seemingly liberatory spaces created by globalization." —Bambi Haggins, Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at Arizona State University "A major achievement that makes important contributions to the analysis of race, identity, global media, nation, and television production cultures. Discussions of race and television are too often constricted within national boundaries, yet this fantastic book offers a strong, compelling, and utterly refreshing corrective. Read it, assign it, use it." —Jonathan Gray, author of Television Entertainment, Television Studies, and Show Sold Separately Black Television Travels explores the globalization of African American television and the way in which foreign markets, programming strategies, and viewer preferences have influenced portrayals of African Americans on the small screen. Television executives have been notoriously slow to recognize the potential popularity of black characters and themes, both at home and abroad. As American television brokers increasingly seek revenues abroad, their assumptions about saleability and audience perceptions directly influence the global circulation of these programs, as well as their content. Black Television Travels aims to reclaim the history of African American television circulation in an effort to correct and counteract this predominant industry lore.Based on interviews with television executives and programmers from around the world, as well as producers in the United States, Havens traces the shift from an era when national television networks often blocked African American television from traveling abroad to the transnational, post-network era of today. While globalization has helped to expand diversity in African American television, particularly in regard to genre, it has also resulted in restrictions, such as in the limited portrayal of African American women in favor of attracting young male demographics across racial and national boundaries. Havens underscores the importance of examining boardroom politics as part of racial discourse in the late modern era, when transnational cultural industries like television are the primary sources for dominant representations of blackness.

This collection of essays responds to the recent surge of interest in popular television in Eastern Europe. This is a region where television's transformation has been especially spectacular, shifting from a state-controlled broadcast system delivering national, regional, and heavily filtered Western programming to a deregulated, multi-platform, transnational system delivering predominantly American and Western European entertainment programming. Consequently, the nations of Eastern Europe provide opportunities to examine the complex interactions among economic and funding systems, regulatory policies, globalization, imperialism, popular culture, and cultural identity.This collection will be the first volume to gather the best writing, by scholars across and outside the region, on socialist and postsocialist entertainment television as a medium, technology, and institution.

A deep dive into the new era of digital content production and distributionIn the twenty-first century, the platforms that both create and host content have become nearly as important as media itself. Companies such as Netflix, Spotify, and YouTube have attained a massive hold on the public imagination and have become an almost ineluctable part of people's everyday lives. While the workings of media distribution had until very recently remained inconsequential to the average consumer, the recent popularization of various online platforms has made the question of distribution immediate to everyone. Digital Media Distribution: Portals, Platforms, Pipelines provides a timely examination of the multifaceted distribution landscape in a moment of transformation and conceptualizes media distribution as a complex site of power, privilege, and gatekeeping. These tensions have local, national, and global consequences on the autonomy of creative workers, as well as on how we gain access to, engage with, and understand cultural products. Drawing on original research into distribution practices in industries as diverse as television, film, videogames, literature, and adult entertainment, each chapter explores how digitization has changed media distribution and its broader economic, industrial, social, and cultural implications.Bringing together experts from around the world and across the media industries, Digital Media Distribution: Portals, Platforms, Pipelines presents a vast array of critical approaches and illustrative case studies for understanding the factors that have an impact on the way media travels and moves throughout our digital lives.

The digital communication technologies that emerged at the turn of the century have profoundly disrupted long-practiced norms of nearly every media industry. In particular, internet distribution has fundamentally changed the foundation of the media industry to enable the emergence of new sectors while posing a challenge for others. Media Industries in the Digital Age reframes our understanding of media businesses in the light of these substantial changes. To develop an integrated understanding of media industries today, the book foregrounds the different funding sources that are now common. It begins by mapping the foundations and developments of media industry operation, and exploring all forms of advertiser-funded and consumer-funded media to identify connections across sectors, including digital and legacy media. The final section grounds the book’s conceptual work in examples of media making to explore how some “old” media have successfully adapted to internet disruption, and the differences and similarities of media making outside of corporations. Looking to the future, the book anticipates implications for the emerging “metaverse” media experiences and the key issues generative AI poses to the sector. Ultimately, the book argues that the contemporary differences in media industry operation vary by sector, but meaningful patterns can be identified by considering how advertiser, consumer, or government funding sets different priorities.Offering a new and original way of understanding the media industries today, this book is enlightening reading for students and scholars of media studies and media industries, as well as global industry professionals

The digital communication technologies that emerged at the turn of the century have profoundly disrupted long-practiced norms of nearly every media industry. In particular, internet distribution has fundamentally changed the foundation of the media industry to enable the emergence of new sectors while posing a challenge for others. Media Industries in the Digital Age reframes our understanding of media businesses in the light of these substantial changes. To develop an integrated understanding of media industries today, the book foregrounds the different funding sources that are now common. It begins by mapping the foundations and developments of media industry operation, and exploring all forms of advertiser-funded and consumer-funded media to identify connections across sectors, including digital and legacy media. The final section grounds the book’s conceptual work in examples of media making to explore how some “old” media have successfully adapted to internet disruption, and the differences and similarities of media making outside of corporations. Looking to the future, the book anticipates implications for the emerging “metaverse” media experiences and the key issues generative AI poses to the sector. Ultimately, the book argues that the contemporary differences in media industry operation vary by sector, but meaningful patterns can be identified by considering how advertiser, consumer, or government funding sets different priorities.Offering a new and original way of understanding the media industries today, this book is enlightening reading for students and scholars of media studies and media industries, as well as global industry professionals

What television viewers around the world watch often depends less on popularity or government policies than on the personal relationships between buyers and sellers in the international programme market. A few thousand acquisitions and distribution professionals decide what programmes the earth's inhabitants can watch, and who can watch them. This book provides an inside look at the cultural assumptions and business practices of these television merchants. It argues that the market in television programs responds principally to institutional needs, rather than to the wishes of the viewing public or the skills of television's creative artists. Leaving aside conventional questions about the production contexts, textual strategies, or popular reception of entertainment television worldwide, this project trains its focus on the business practices of global television sales in order to provide a lucid overview of the diversity of firms, business practices, and programming genres present in international television. Consequently, this volume provides the first comprehensive portrait of the operations of the international television business, the people who work in the business, and the ideas that circulate among these businesspeople. Such a portrait is crucial to any theoretical treatment of television globalisation, since international television executives determine global television flows in the first instance, based on their own understandings of the economics of the business and the preferences of their primary audiences.