Bringing together 49 chapters from leading experts in media industries research, this major collection offers an authoritative overview of the current state of scholarship while setting out proposals for expanding, re-thinking and innovating the field. Media industries occupy a central place in modern societies, producing, circulating, and presenting the multitude of cultural forms and experiences we encounter in our daily lives. The chapters in this volume begin by outlining key conceptual and critical perspectives while also presenting original interventions to prompt new lines of inquiry. Other chapters then examine the impact of digitalization on the media industries, intersections formed between industries or across geographic territories, and the practices of doing media industries research and teaching. General ideas and arguments are illustrated through specific examples and case studies drawn from a range of media sectors, including advertising, publishing, comics, news, music, film, television, branded entertainment, live cinema experiences, social media, and music video. Making a vital and significant contribution to media research, this volume is essential reading for students and academics seeking to understand and evaluate the work of the media industries. Chapter 10 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com

Bringing together 49 chapters from leading experts in media industries research, this major collection offers an authoritative overview of the current state of scholarship while setting out proposals for expanding, re-thinking and innovating the field. Media industries occupy a central place in modern societies, producing, circulating, and presenting the multitude of cultural forms and experiences we encounter in our daily lives. The chapters in this volume begin by outlining key conceptual and critical perspectives while also presenting original interventions to prompt new lines of inquiry. Other chapters then examine the impact of digitalization on the media industries, intersections formed between industries or across geographic territories, and the practices of doing media industries research and teaching. General ideas and arguments are illustrated through specific examples and case studies drawn from a range of media sectors, including advertising, publishing, comics, news, music, film, television, branded entertainment, live cinema experiences, social media, and music video. Making a vital and significant contribution to media research, this volume is essential reading for students and academics seeking to understand and evaluate the work of the media industries. Chapter 10 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com

When the videocassette recorder was launched on the consumer market in the mid-1970s, it transformed home entertainment. Bringing together complementary but also competing interests from the consumer electronics industry and the film, television and other copyright industries, video created a new sector of media business. Two decades later, DVD reinvented video media for the digital age. DVD provided consumers with an innovative form of entertainment technology and almost instantaneously became the catalyst for a huge boom in the video market. Although the VCR and DVD created major markets for video hardware and software, the video business has been continually shaped by industry conflicts and tensions. Repeatedly the video market has become divided when faced with the introduction of competing formats. Easy reproduction of films and other works on cassette or disc made video software a lucrative market for the copyright industries but also intensified struggles to combat the effects of commercial piracy. "Video and DVD Industries" examines the business of video entertainment and provides the first study looking at DVD from an industrial perspective. Detailing divisions in the video business, the book outlines industry battles over incompatible formats, from the Betamax/VHS war, to competing laserdisc systems, alternatives such as video compact disc or Digital Video Express, and the introduction of HDDVD and Blu-ray high-definition systems. Chapters also look at the formation of international markets in the globalization of video media, the contradictory responses of the Hollywood studios to video and DVD, and the legal and technological measures taken to control industrialized video piracy.

A deep dive into the new era of digital content production and distribution In 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 purpose of this series is to promote the study of writing in the English language through the introduction of the major figures writing in English throughout the ages. They provide an analytical and historical framework for understanding their subjects. Philip Roth's career has spanned more than 40 years, in which he has produced more than 20 books and wom almost major literary award. The Jewish-American writer's work is a search for form that takes him from social realism, through comedy and fantasy, to pseudo-confessional and a postmodern aesthetic. Paul McDonald explores each of Roth's works in turn, from his first book "Goodbye Columbus" to "The Dying Animal". He shows that although Roth writes about the human condition in often provocative and unusual ways, his treatment is witty and always based on values.

Storytelling introduces some of the key issues addressed by narratologists, explaining the more useful terminology and concepts, and applying them to fictional texts that are commonly studied on literature courses. Invaluable to both students of criticism and creative writers, the book explores the constituent elements of stories: their structure, the significance of who tells them, and the important aspects of characterisation and dialogue. Throughout the discussions are accessible, entertaining and, above all, relevant to contemporary readers.

Looks at the development and changing organization of the star system in the American film industry. Tracing the popularity of star performers from the early "cinema of attractions" to the Internet universe, Paul McDonald explores the ways in which Hollywood has made and sold its stars. Through focusing on particular historical periods, case studies of Mary Pickford, Bette Davis, James Cagney, Julia Roberts, Tom Cruise, and Will Smith illustrate the key conditions influencing the star system in silent cinema, the studio era and the New Hollywood.

Paul McDonald s third collection of poetry - explores territory familiar to readers of his previous work: creativity, comedy and the modern world. His succinct poems chart the experience of living in an age of chaos and absurdity, and while at times this experience is nightmarish and surreal, the consolations of art, love and humour are always close at hand.

A deep dive into the new era of digital content production and distribution In 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.

Since the earliest days of cinema the law has influenced the conditions in which Hollywood films are made, sold, circulated or presented - from the talent contracts that enable a film to go into production, to the copyright laws that govern its distribution and the censorship laws that may block exhibition. Equally, Hollywood has left its own impression on the American legal system by lobbying to expand the duration of copyright, providing a highly visible stage for contract disputes and representing the legal system on screen. In this comprehensive collection, international experts offer chapters on key topics, including copyright, trademark, piracy, antitrust, censorship, international exhibition, contracts, labour and tax. Drawing on historical and contemporary case studies, Hollywood and the Law provides readers with a wide range of perspectives on how legal frameworks shape the culture and commerce of popular film.

Paul McDonald's study of the actor-filmmaker George Clooney traces the star's career, from his role in the hit television medical drama ER to his dual screen persona, allowing him to move seamlessly from commercial hits such as Out of Sight (1998) and Ocean's Eleven (2001) to more offbeat roles in such films as Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). McDonald also considers Clooney's political activism and his roles in such explicity political films as Three Kings (1999) and Syriana (2005), as well as his work as a producer of films including Argo (2012) and as director of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002); Good Night, and Good Luck (2005) and Suburbicon (2017) among others. McDonald places Clooney in the context of the Hollywood star system, considering the argument that Clooney's star persona has many similarities with that of classical Hollywood movie stars such as Cary Grant, but also addresses Clooney as a very 21st century transmedia celebrity.

This title considers aspects of the legacy that makes Film4 synonymous with a rejuvenated national cinema. When Channel 4 was launched in 1982 its policy of commissioning new feature films for television broadcast and selective cinema release marked a shift in British film culture. Widely credited with revitalising a moribund UK film industry, the initiative represented a new intervention on the part of a public service broadcaster and, in turn, redefined the place of film on television with landmark strands from Film on Four to The Eleventh Hour. Channel 4 withstood early criticism from some industry voices and controversy aroused by its broadcast film provision; in 1987 its contribution to European cinema was recognised in the accolade of the Roberto Rosselini award at the Cannes film festival. Since then the international box office successes of many Film4 titles (from My Beautiful Laundrette and The Crying Game to Four Weddings and Funeral and Slumdog Millionaire), have made Film4 synonymous with a rejuvenated national cinema and established television as a vital cornerstone of government film policy. This special issue investigates aspects of that legacy, casting a critical eye upon received wisdom, and drawing on new archival and interview material to offer a revisionist history of the broadcaster's rich and diverse contributions to British film culture. It is indispensible to anyone with an interest in British film over the past 30 years.

This is a true historical account of war in the air, at sea and on land in the battle for Maltas survival in the Second World War. It was a battle which decided the outcome of the war in North Africa and the Mediterranean. Adrian Warburton, the airman described in the subtitle by Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord Tedder, went missing in 1944 in a single-seat American aircraft. He had flown at least 395 operational missions mostly from Malta. Unusually for a reconnaissance pilot, Warby as he was known was credited with nine aircraft shot down. He lay undiscovered for sixty years. He is the RAFs most highly decorated photo-recce pilot. In Malta, Adrian met Christina, a stranded dancer turned aircraft plotter in the secret world deep beneath Vallettas fortress walls. She too was decorated for heroism. Together, they became part of the islands folklore. How important was Malta and the girl from Cheshire to the man behind the medals? This tale takes the form of a quest opening in a cemetery in Bavaria and closing in another in Malta. In between, the reader is immersed within the tension and drama surrounding Maltas Greater Siege retracing the steps of the main characters over the forever changed face of the island following its heroic victory.