Flow TV Book is Out

Today, I finally received my copy of Flow TV: Television in the Age of Media Convergence, edited by Michael Kackman, Marnie Binfield, Matthew Thomas Payne, Allison Perlman, and Bryan Sebok. The book took its sweet time — my chapter was meant to be a trial run at a section for Show Sold Separately, but the latter soon overtook this book in schedule — and Routledge sent the thing to Joseph Gray (?!). I’m also deeply embarrassed to see that my bio in the contributors section is about three times as large as anyone else’s, and for the record, I don’t think I’m three times cooler. On the contrary, the book collects work from such a wonderful group of people, many of whom I’m only a third as cool as. And thus, misgivings about timing, addressing, and my bio aside, it’s exciting to finally have the book in my hands. When your section of a book includes pieces by Derek Kompare, Louisa Stein, Heather Hendershot, and John Corner, you’re in the presence of awesomeness.

My chapter, “The Reviews Are In: TV Critics and the (Pre)Creation of Meaning” takes the press reviews for Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Heroes, and Friday Night Lights, and looks at how they attempted to pre-decode the shows. While of course other paratexts played an important role in creating the texts of each show, I became fascinated when reading through the reviews for all three shows by how much they tried to funnel readers into a rather narrow set of interpretations. So, for instance, and as discussed in Show Sold Separately too, Friday Night Lights‘ reviewers overwhelmingly tried to insist on it not being a football show and not being a high school drama; in the process, they may have killed the show’s chances at tapping into two other huge audience segments.

Anyways, I’d highly recommend the book, not because I’m in it, along with my embarrassingly large bio (you even find out where I did my BA. tmi indeed), but because it’s full of wonderful work from wonderful scholars. Thanks to the editors for wrestling the beast to the ground and getting it out.