Envisioning Media Power: On Capital and Geographies of Television

by Brett Christophers Assistant Professor in th

Overview

Envisioning Media Power develops an original geographical perspective on the nature and exercise of power in the international television economy. It uses theories of political economy as the basis for a comparative empirical examination of the UK and New Zealand television markets, while closely considering these markets' respective relationships with the US market and its globally-influential media corporations. In fleshing out this geographical perspective, the book critically addresses the power to produce, reproduce, and extract profit from territorialized media markets. To understand such powers, the book examines processes of creation and dissemination of industry knowledge, structures of industry governance, and the locational characteristics of television's operational economy.

Through its rigorous and creative combination of conceptual insights with empirical substance, Envisioning Media Power both illuminates the fabric of television's international space economy, and ultimately offers a unique theoretic argument - suggesting that power, knowledge and geography are inseparable not only from one another, but from the process of accumulation of media capital.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780739123447
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	04/16/2009
Pages:	340
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Brett Christophers is a research fellow in the Department of Social and Economic Geography at Uppsala University in Sweden.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Introduction
Part 2 Reflections on Method
Part 3 Part I: Knowing the Television Economy
Chapter 4 1. Enframing Creativity
Chapter 5 2. Television's Economy and the Power of the Geographical Imagination
Chapter 6 3. Knowledge Travels
Chapter 7 Conclusion to Part I
Part 8 Part II: Capitalizing and Circulating Power
Chapter 9 4. Power, Scarcity, and a "Spatial Fix"
Chapter 10 5. Television's Local Power Relations
Chapter 11 6. Power and Program Pricing in International Markets
Chapter 12 7. Circuits of Capital
Chapter 13 8. Mirrors, Meters, and Media Power
Chapter 14 Conclusion to Part II
Part 15 Part III: From Space to Place
Chapter 16 9. Geopolitics
Chapter 17 10. Putting Television in Its Place
Chapter 18 11. The Political Economy of Place in Programming
Chapter 19 Conclusion to Part III
Chapter 20 Coda: Into the Home of Media Power
Chapter 21 Closing Remarks

What People are Saying About This

Neil Coe

A penetrating and thought-provoking analysis of an industry that is under-researched and yet of great cultural and economic significance. Using the UK and New Zealand TV industries as windows onto wider processes, Christophers skilfully reveals the complex intersections of knowledge, power and geography through which the sector is constantly being made and remade. Most significantly, the analysis lays bare the different modalities of power which shape the media worlds that surround us all.

Toby Miller

Brett Christophers brings acute intelligence and original research to bear on television. This innovative study offers a new and exciting approach that blends political economy, geography, and cultural theory. Bravo!

Timothy Mitchell

Television today is a major locus for the organization of knowledge, the accumulation of capital, and the exercise of power. Envisioning Media Power offers a forceful and insightful examination of how these processes interact. The book should be read by anyone interested in rethinking the ways the media industries have given contemporary political economy some of its most distinctive political and financial forms.

Editorial Reviews

Through his combination of conceptual insights with empirical substance, the author lays open the fabric of television's international economy, and ultimately offers a new theoretical argument-suggesting that power, knowledge and geography are inseparable not only from one another, but from the process of accumulation of media capital.

Communication Booknotes Quarterly - Chris Sterling

A brief series of remarks at the end draw out both conclusions, comment, and some further research ideas.

Communication Booknotes Quarterly

[This] detailed and well-written monograph combines a political economy approach with concepts from classical economics. Those who will find the book most useful are economic geographers, economically oriented media scholars, and persons seeking to bring a progressive approach to media administration.

Progress In Human Geography

Television today is a major locus for the organization of knowledge, the accumulation of capital, and the exercise of power. Envisioning Media Power offers a forceful and insightful examination of how these processes interact. The book should be read by anyone interested in rethinking the ways the media industries have given contemporary political economy some of its most distinctive political and financial forms.

Timothy Mitchell

Brett Christophers brings acute intelligence and original research to bear on television. This innovative study offers a new and exciting approach that blends political economy, geography, and cultural theory. Bravo!

Toby Miller

Rarely...have considerations of the meanings and practices of consumption been extended to consider the geographiesof television production and distribution that Christophers focuses on in this book...Indeed, overall the book provides a powerful sense of the multiple geographies that underlie the production of the programming that so many of us rely on for information about, and windows onto, the world around us, as well as escapist entertainment and morning-tea-break fodder.

Social & Cultural Geography

A penetrating and thought-provoking analysis of an industry that is under-researched and yet of great cultural and economic significance. Using the UK and New Zealand TV industries as windows onto wider processes, Christophers skilfully reveals the complex intersections of knowledge, power and geography through which the sector is constantly being made and remade. Most significantly, the analysis lays bare the different modalities of power which shape the media worlds that surround us all.

Neil Coe

Brett Christophers’s book Envisioning Media Power: On Capital and Geographies of Television has set itself an ambitious agenda. It aims to capture how power operates and flows through media across geographic space, focusing on the medium of television, with media understood as its programs, production processes, ratings data, and policy discourses. The book aims to develop an original application of economic geography—particularly David Harvey’s notion of a “spatial fix” embedded in the contradictory circuits of capital accumulation—while updating the political economy of the media approach through specific application of such developments as localized case studies in the recent context of the United Kingdom and New Zealand.

Economic Geography

For those interested in a critical understanding of the relations between television, cultural production, and the geographical political economy of media, this book will be an immensely rich resource.

Environment And Planning A: Intl Journal Of Urban And Regional Research

This book will appeal to sophisticated students and to scholars looking for a deeply empirical study that engages much of the recent debates and research in media economics and the economic geography of culture industries.

Journal Of Economic Geography

Envisioning Media Power effectively confronts complacent assumptions about space and placece - or 'anaemic geographies' - within the media of political economy. It reads recent histories of television in the UK and New Zealand from multiple angles.

New Zealand Geographer

It is a study of the political economy of the Hollywood-studio-dominated television industry and of the complexities that attach to the production, distribution, and consumption of arguably very unusual commodities - television programs - across various scales. Under this umbrella, Christophers fits a lot of fascinating material.

Environment And Planning D: Society And Space

Rarely...have considerations of the meanings and practices of consumption been extended to consider the geographies of television production and distribution that Christophers focuses on in this book...Indeed, overall the book provides a powerful sense of the multiple geographies that underlie the production of the programming that so many of us rely on for information about, and windows onto, the world around us, as well as escapist entertainment and morning-tea-break fodder.

Social and Cultural Geography

It is a study of the political economy of the Hollywood-studio-dominated television industry and of the complexities that attach to the production, distribution, and consumption of arguably very unusual commodities - television programs - across various scales. Under this umbrella, Christophers fits a lot of fascinating material.

Environment And Planning D: Society And Space

For those interested in a critical understanding of the relations between television, cultural production, and the geographical political economy of media, this book will be an immensely rich resource.

Environment And Planning A: International Journal Of Urban And Regional Research

For those interested in a critical understanding of the relations between television, cultural production, and the geographical political economy of media, this book will be an immensely rich resource.

Environment And Planning A: Intl Journal Of Urban And Regional Research

A penetrating and thought-provoking analysis of an industry that is under-researched and yet of great cultural and economic significance. Using the UK and New Zealand TV industries as windows onto wider processes, Christophers skilfully reveals the complex intersections of knowledge, power and geography through which the sector is constantly being made and remade. Most significantly, the analysis lays bare the different modalities of power which shape the media worlds that surround us all.--Neil Coe, University of Manchester, UK

Television today is a major locus for the organization of knowledge, the accumulation of capital, and the exercise of power. Envisioning Media Power offers a forceful and insightful examination of how these processes interact. The book should be read by anyone interested in rethinking the ways the media industries have given contemporary political economy some of its most distinctive political and financial forms.--Timothy Mitchell, Columbia University

Brett Christophers brings acute intelligence and original research to bear on television. This innovative study offers a new and exciting approach that blends political economy, geography, and cultural theory. Bravo!--Toby Miller, New York University

From the Publisher