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Second Screen Industries Research Lecture Institute for Screen Industries Research University of Nottingham GETTING IT: UNDERSTANDING TELEVISION AS DIGITAL MEDIA Dr James Bennett Reader in Television and Digital Culture Royal Holloway, University of London 5.00pm Wednesday 27 November 2013 Clive Granger A48 (for directions, see below) ‘I think there is a great divide in [TV], there are those that absolutely know it and get it … and those who are still fairly in the dark with it’ (Interview 15) ‘They [broadcasters] just don’t really get it yet’ (Interview 104) Television’s transition to digital media is now largely complete in many Western nations, making a new media form out of a technology that has often been positioned as the old media technology par excellence. This paper asks how the transition has affected both the production and study of television. In the first section of my paper I examine how television’s digitalisation has brought the production cultures and processes of ‘old’ broadcast, television into contact with the ‘new’ cultures of digital media. Drawing on a two-year research project on the production cultures of UK television and digital media companies involved in producing ‘multiplatform’ content for broadcasters, I discuss how a discourse of ‘getting it’ emerged in the way television and digital producers and companies interact with each other. For some digital producers, many of their television workers and broadcasters simply didn’t ‘get’ digital media. Such a discourse was part of a wider set of boundary-marking rituals between television and digital media, which meant the production cultures didn’t ‘speak each others’ language at all’ (Interview 39). In part two, I turn to this question of different languages and cultures in relation to our own academic study of television. In Television as Digital Media I argued that studying television as digital media required an urgent consideration of ‘a new anthology in television studies history, one that draws explicitly on new media studies in order to constitute television as digital media as its object of study’ (2011: p. 8). Thus in thinking about ‘what is the digital television of television studies,’ I examine a range of recent academic work on digital television. In so doing I ask not only whether we ‘get’ the digital of our new object of study, but also whether it gets us. The lecture will take place in A48 at the Sir Clive Granger Building on the University Park campus. For directions to the University Park Campus, see www.nottingham.ac.uk/about/visitorinformation/mapsanddirections/universityparkcampus.aspx). The Sir Clive Granger Building is marked as 16 on the campus map at www.nottingham.ac.uk/sharedresources/documents/mapuniversitypark.pdf Please address any enquiries to: Prof. Paul McDonald Professor of Cinema and Media Industries University of Nottingham -------------------------------------------------------- MeCCSA mailing list -------------------------------------------------------- To manage your subscription or unsubscribe from the MECCSA list, please visit: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=MECCSA&A=1 ------------------------------------------------------- MeCCSA is the subject association for the field of media, communication and cultural studies in UK Higher Education. Membership is open to all who teach and research these subjects in HE institutions, via either institutional or individual membership. The field includes film and TV production, journalism, radio, photography, creative writing, publishing, interactive media and the web; and it includes higher education for media practice as well as for media studies. This mailing list is a free service from MeCCSA and is not restricted to members. For further information, please visit: http://www.meccsa.org.uk/ --------------------------------------------------------