• ABOUT

  FlowTV is a critical forum on television and media culture published by the Department of Radio, Television, and Film at the University of Texas at Austin. Flow’s mission is to provide a space where the public can discuss the changing landscape of contemporary media.

• Archives

  Select Category 13.13 14.07 14.08 Asides CFP Featured Articles Guest Columns Lead Story Special Events Special Features Uncategorized Volume 1    1.01    1.02    1.03    1.04    1.05    1.06    1.07    1.08    1.09    1.10    1.11    1.12 Volume 10    10.01    10.02    10.03    10.04    10.05    10.06    10.07    10.08    10.09    10.10 – Special Issue: Sports Media Volume 11    11.01    11.02    11.03    11.04    11.05    11.06    11.07    11.08    11.09 – Special Issue: Flow Favorites 2010    11.10    11.11    11.12    11.13    11.14 – Special Issue: The Archive Volume 12    12.01    12.02    12.03    12.04    12.05    12.06    12.07    12.08    12.09 Volume 13    13.01    13.02    13.03    13.04    13.05 – Special Issue: Aca-Fandom    13.06    13.07    13.08    13.09    13.10    13.11    13.12    13.14 – Special Issue: Flow Favorites 2011 Volume 14    14.01    14.02    14.03    14.04    14.05    14.06    14.09 Volume 15    15.01    15.02    15.03    15.04    15.05 Volume 2    2.01    2.02    2.03    2.04    2.05    2.06    2.07    2.08    2.09    2.10 Volume 3    3.01    3.02    3.03    3.04    3.05    3.06    3.07    3.08    3.09    3.10    3.11    3.12 Volume 4    4.01    4.02    4.03    4.04    4.05    4.06    4.07    4.08    4.09    4.10    4.11    4.12 Volume 5    5.01    5.02    5.03    5.04    5.05    5.06    5.07    5.08    5.09    5.10    5.11    5.12    5.13 – Special Issue: Flow Conference 2006    5.14 – Special Issue: Latin American Media    5.15 – Special Issue: Video Games Volume 6    6.01    6.02    6.03    6.04    6.05    6.06    6.07    6.08    6.09 Volume 7    7.01    7.02    7.03    7.04    7.05    7.06    7.07    7.08    7.09 – Special Issue: Flow Favorites    7.10    7.11    7.12    7.13    7.14 – Special Issue: “Battlestar Galactica”    7.15 – Special Issue: The Writers’ Strike Volume 8    8.01    8.02    8.03    8.04    8.05    8.06    8.07    8.08    8.09    8.10 – Special Issue: Sarah Palin and the Media Volume 9    9.01    9.02    9.03    9.04    9.05    9.06 – Top 10 Lists 2008    9.07    9.08    9.09 – Special Issue: Saturday Night Live    9.10    9.11    9.12    9.13    9.14 – Special Issue: Social Media

• RECENT COMMENTS

  • Nicole on Digital Media: Hot or Cool?
    Nicole Starosielski / Miami University
  • Book Review: Legitimating Television by Newman and Levine « Media Milieus on Formatted to Fit Your Screen
    Jonathan Sterne / McGill University
  • Faculty Research: Dr. Randy Lewis on Unplugging at Flow « AMS :: ATX on No Arguments for the Elimination of Anything
    Randy Lewis/University of Texas at Austin
  • Michael on The Banality of Violence
    Robert Hariman/Northwestern University and John Louis Lucaites/Indiana University
  • Sudeep Dasgupta on Formatted to Fit Your Screen
    Jonathan Sterne / McGill University

Lead Story

Formatted to Fit Your Screen
Jonathan Sterne / McGill University(3)

January 28, 2012

How do we determine the contemporary medium-specificity (or coherency?) of television?

“We’re Grinding Like Everybody Else”: Race, Video Game Culture, and New Media Authorship
TreaAndrea M. Russworm / University of Massachusetts, Amherst

A thought-provoking deconstruction of the place of race and authorship in video game culture.

“The Rock Star of Personal Finance”: Suze Orman’s Marriage of Love, Money, and Politics
Julia Himberg / University of Southern California

Suze Orman’s tough love at the intersection of celebrity branding, television production, and politics.

Bad Image, Good Art: Thinking through Banality
Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites / Northwestern University and Indiana University

The aesthetic of banality in the current economic crisis, and how it might offer an important resource for critical scholarship

More in this category:

• Garbage Collectors
  Scott Webel / Museum of Ephemerata
• Collecting the Trash: The Cult of the Ephemeral Clip from VHS to YouTube
  Iain Robert Smith / Roehampton University
• Accessing Historical Documentaries in the Convenient Digital Age
  Heather McIntosh / Boston College
• “Who Gon Check Me Boo”: Reality TV as a Haven For Black Women’s Affect
  Kristen Warner / University of Alabama
• Mining Collective Memory: Fairytales grow up, take their shirts off
  Camille DeBose / DePaul University
• Sarah, Scarlett, and Norma Rae, or Unions are as American as Apple Pie!
  Hollis Griffin / Colby College
• Controlling the Living Room: Television Viewing on Game Consoles
  Steven Boyer / University of Glasgow
• Bootleg Archives: Notes on BitTorrent Communities and Issues of Access
  Iain Robert Smith / Roehampton University
• Some Notes on Streaming
  Wheeler Winston Dixon / University of Nebraska, Lincoln
• Flow Favorites: Wikileaks’ Lessons For Media Theory and Politics
  Jayson Harsin / The American University of Paris
• Museums, Social Media and the Possibility of Canonizing Online Life
  Konrad Ng / University of Hawai’i at Mānoa
• Lines in the Sand: Media Studies and the Neoliberal Academy
  Hollis Griffin / Colby College
• The Myth of Classlessness in Apple’s “Get a Mac” Campaign
  Randall Livingstone / University of Oregon
• Digital Rhetoric and Circulation of Protest: The Banlieue Riots Turn Five
  Jayson Harsin / The American University of Paris
• Never Say Never, Insurge Pictures, and the Future of Independent Film
  Robert C. Sickels / Whitman College
• The Problem of YouTube
  Aymar Jean Christian / University of Pennsylvania
• Haunting Crime: the Gothic, the Grotesque and the Paranormal
  Yvonne Tasker / University of East Anglia
• Wikileaks’ Lessons For Media Theory and Politics
  Jayson Harsin / The American University of Paris
• Special Issue: Revisiting Aca-Fandom
• The Anti-Social Network
  Tama Leaver / Curtin University
• Everybody Knows
  Charles R. Acland / Concordia University
• We Are All Oldies: The Death of Youth Music
  Norma Coates / University of Western Ontario
• The Potential of Vernacular Video for Queer Youth
  Daren C. Brabham / University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Modern Family, Glee, and the Limits of Television Liberalism
  Alexander Doty / Indiana University
• ¡VIVA LA BROWN PERIL! The Political and Temporal Landscape of Machete
  Esteban del Rio / University of San Diego
• Meaningful Diversity: Exploring Questions of Equitable Representation on Diverse Ensemble Cast Shows
  Mary Beltran / University of Wisconsin – Madison
• “We Think INSIDE the Box”: CD Box Sets in the Download Era
  Kyle Barnett / Bellarmine University
• Power in Parody: Femininity 101 at RuPaul’s Drag U
  Daren C. Brabham / UNC at Chapel Hill
• The Harnessed Mob: Where’s the Glee, When Flash Mobs Have Network Sponsors?
  Mary Beltran / University of Wisonsin, Madsion
• Familiarity Breeds Desire: Seriality and the Televisual Title Sequence
  Lisa Coulthard / University of British Columbia
• Pedaling through the Transnational Public Screen
  Esteban del Rio / University of San Diego
• What’s at stake in claims of “post-racial” media?
  Mary Beltran / University of Wisconsin – Madison
• Special Issue: The Archive
• Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution: Serving Up A Side of Individual Blame
  Melissa Click / University of Missouri, Columbia
• An Empty Set
  Meghan Sutherland / Oklahoma State University
• Watching The Masters: Golf Becomes Exciting (In All the Wrong Ways)
  Paul Achter / University of Richmond
• Logorama’s Chaotic Critique of Corporate Rule
  Esteban del Río / University of San Diego
• Flow Favorites: A Specter is Haunting Television Studies
  Jeffrey Sconce / Northwestern University
• “More drinkin’, less thinkin’, fewer teeth, and beer”
• Thinking the Box
  Meghan Sutherland / Oklahoma State University
• Window Dressing: Spectacular Costuming in MTV’s The City
  
• Re-thinking Indian Arranged Marriage and Matchmaking on American Television
• Immigration in the News
  Carolyn E. Brown / American University
• Vampire Politics
• BET’s Baldwin Hills: Injecting Race and Class into the Projective Drama
• Threat or Treat: Film, Television, and the Ritual of Halloween
  
• Sports Media: Tensions and Transitions
• Biting Off Your Long Tail: Ruminations on Animal Planet
• Special Issue CFP – Sports Media: Tensions and Transitions
• SXSW: Vote for FlowTV’s Panels
  Flow Editorial Staff
• Fieldnotes from a Rock Band Bar Night
• Sex and the Postsocialist City
  Anikó Imre / University of Southern California
  
• Mixed Martial Arts’ Burgeoning Wild Kingdom
  Matthew Ferrari / University of Massachusetts-Amherst
• The Making of My Mothering Movie: Birthright
• Gypsy Stars in the New Europe
  
• Special Issue: Social Media
• Carla’s, Callie’s, and the Suárez’s Long Lost Ancestors: ESAA-TV and ¿Qué pasa U.S.A.?
  
• Margaret Cho’s Televisual Trajectory: From All-American Girl to The Cho Show
  Jane Park / University of Sydney, Australia
• “Scared Crazy” and Torture
  Julia Lesage / University of Oregon
• “I’m Riding a Panda!”: Japanese Cult Media and Hipster Cosmopolitanism
  Martin Roberts / The New School
• ‘Using One of its Lifelines’: Does Politics Save Saturday Night Live from Oblivion?
• “You Can be Dead but You’re Never Really Dead:” Six Feet, Six Inches Under
• Minding the Gap: Barack Obama and the Demise of Representational Politics
• “Top 10″ Lists
• Soundalikes and Disrupted Pleasures
• GMA Revisited
• The Play Paradigm: What Media Studies Can Learn from Game Studies
  Ted Friedman / Georgia State University, Atlanta
• Narrative Pleasures in House Hunters
  Julia Lesage / University of Oregon
• Sarah Palin and the Media
  
• Back to the Future?: Television in the 1980s
  Karen Lury / University of Glasgow
• The Smell of Flak in the Morning: Tropic Thunder’s Talk-Show Tour
  Jennifer Fuller / University of Texas – Austin
• iWant My TweenTV: iCarly, Sitcom 2.0
  Ethan Thompson / Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi
• Keep on rockin’ in the free (virtual) worlds: Why user-generated content matters
  Aaron Delwiche / Trinity University
• Same As It Never Was: Nostalgia and Children’s TV
  Karen Lury / University of Glasgow

• The Conference in Brief…