2019 | 15 | Material Histories of Television

Television’s material culture offers a starting point into this exploration of television’s current status. Artefacts and material traces are imbued with social relations. They unearth for us the web of users, uses and meanings associated to television, both in its historical and present form. This edition of VIEW explores many ways in which television’s material heritage can be repurposed or exploited, bringing to the fore new emergent uses for this older medium.
Co-edited by John Ellis and Dana Mustata

Browsing 2019 | 15 | Material Histories of Television by Title

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  • Article
    Culture Under Threat: Minority Hyperlocal Cable Television in Finland
    Ingram, Darren P. (2019-10-27) , S. 22-31
    Hyperlocal community television is currently under threat and its content documenting local memories and histories is underused and hardly accessible. Newly generated hyperlocal content runs the risk of not being archived, curated and preserved. Can new technologies that encourage hyperlocal media contribute to its demise? This article discusses the history of hyperlocal community television in Finland, considers its current challenges and draws awareness to the need of securing this local heritage for the future. The article debates how the future fate of this form of hyperlocal television is dependent on material resources, such as manpower, access to storage and preservation infrastructures as well as funding.
  • Article
    Editorial: Material Histories of Television
    Ellis, John; Mustata, Dana (2019-10-27) , S. 1-4
    Television’s material culture offers a starting point into this exploration of television’s current status. Artefacts and material traces are imbued with social relations. They unearth for us the web of users, uses and meanings associated to television, both in its historical and present form. This edition of VIEW explores many ways in which television’s material heritage can be repurposed or exploited, bringing to the fore new emergent uses for this older medium.
  • Article
    Filming for Television: How a 16mm Film Crew Worked Together
    Ellis, John (2019-10-27) , S. 91-110
    A media archaeology project reveals how film crews worked together. By reuniting analogue equipment with the professionals who used to use it, the ADAPT project is able to unpack the professional routines and relationships of both people and technology that are at the core of television production. This detailed study of a film crew setting up 16mm equipment reveals the constraints and affordances that defined analogue television material. To study working practices in a historical setting also reveals that there is an absent area in contemporary production studies: the work of ‘content acquisition’.
  • Article
    Grounding TV’s Material Heritage: Place-based Projects That Value or Vilify Amateur Videocassette Recordings of Television
    VanderBurgh, Jennifer (2019-10-27) , S. 59-78
    VCRs were once prized for their ability to allow amateurs to create material records of ephemeral television broadcasts. But what value do amateur video-recordings of television have at their late stage of obsolescence? This article outlines some of the discursive parameters surrounding the perceived use-value of amateur video-recordings of television, drawing on case studies of video collection projects that are divided on the question of whether amateur television video-recordings continue to have merit. It argues that both advocates and detractors of videocassette recordings of television tend to rely on place-based heritage discourses in order to value or vilify them.
  • Article
    Implementing Low Cost Digital Libraries for Rural Communities by Re-functioning Obsolescent Television Sets: The Offline-pedia Project
    Minniti, Sergio; Salazar, Joshua; Vega, Jorge (2019-10-27) , S. 123-139
    The article addresses the issue of the digital divide in Ecuador and illustrates how artefacts from television material heritage might be transformed into digital libraries to provide marginalized communities with access to digital information. It describes an ongoing socio-technical project which aims at providing Ecuadorian rural communities with access to digital information through the re-functioning of analogue TV sets and other complementary technologies that will become obsolete due to Ecuador’s switch from an analogue to digital broadcasting signal. On one hand, the project is discussed with reference to the contemporary debate in the fields of Media and Television Studies on the obsolescence and renewal of technology; And on the other, it is discussed on the background of earlier projects focusing on the design of digital libraries to circulate information and improve digital literacy in rural contexts. Finally, the prototype created is discussed from a technical and conceptual point of view.
  • Article
    Making Old Television Technology Make Sense
    Marshall, Paul (2019-10-27) , S. 32-45
    How does traditional analogue television work? That’s a question beyond the comfort zone of most media historians who may not be familiar with analogue electronics. Even young engineers know little of thermionics, cathode rays and a myriad of other forgotten technologies. This important facet of television’s history is now only recorded by older engineers and by amateur groups who collect these technologies. In this paper, I will show by using examples how material artefacts can help us understand television’s history more fully.
  • Article
    Memory, Nostalgia and the Material Heritage of Children’s Television in the Museum
    Holdsworth, Amy; Moseley, Rachel; Wheatley, Helen (2019-10-27) , S. 111-122
    ‘The Story of Children’s Television, from 1946 to Now’ was an exhibition co-conceived by the authors and colleagues from the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry, UK, running from 2015 to 2017 through a national tour. At the exhibition, objects from children’s television history sat alongside screens showing the programmes to visitors. Our research explores how children’s television culture operates as a site of memory and nostalgia, through which we can investigate forms of (inter)generational cultural memory. This paper explores the reconnections and disconnections that emerge in encounters with the material heritage of children’s television in Britain.
  • Article
    The Rise and Fall of the Analogue Television Set: From Modernity to Media Heritage
    Chambers, Deborah (2019-10-27) , S. 79-90
    This article explores the shifting materiality and meanings of television as an exhibited object. To consider the fluctuating discourses involved in the display of analogue TV sets, the article critically examines how the object has been re-presented: aestheticized, interrogated, destabilised and reorganized as science, modernity, art, and media heritage. An interpretive approach drawing on Walter Benjamin and media archaeology is supported by archival sources. The term “analogue rupture” is introduced to critically assess the implications of, and discontinuities involved, in analogue television’s status as art and heritage. Digital media heritage discourses that invite us to regard obsolescence as inevitable progress are questioned.
  • Article
    The Site of a Film Set as Material Heritage: A Case Study of the Pohjola Village from Rauta-aika (The Age of Iron) TV-Series
    Ikäheimo, Janne; Äikäs, Tiina (2019-10-27) , S. 46-58
    Rauta-aika (The Age of Iron, 1982), a four episode TV-series produced by YLE – the Finnish Broadcasting Company, transported the audience into a world of fantasy by successfully mixing the Finnish national epic Kalevala with elements of the local Iron Age. This paper focuses on the dismantled film set of the Pohjola village at the Seinävuori Hill in Hämeenkyrö, documented using archaeological methods in 2012, from the perspective of material heritage. While the remains visible today at the Seinävuori Hill are scarce, they continue to give a context for various meanings and experiences assigned to this place in the recent and more distant past and hence impact the heritagisation of the place.
  • Article
    Television Sound Operators: Who Were They and What Exactly Did They Do?
    Heath, Tim (2019-10-27) , S. 5-21
    The working practices of below the line television operators is an area of television studies that continues to be under-researched. Despite notable recent efforts, this lack of academic engagement is perhaps at its most pronounced in regards to the sub group of television operators who record, mix, and edit the soundtrack of British television. However, hands on methodologies continue to gain traction in the area of film and television research and, in doing so, create new opportunities to engage with below the line practices and bring into focus the hidden work of production personnel. This article, aims to explore these new methodologies and assess how they can bring new affordances to researchers engaging with communities who’s practices are often seen as routine and unremarkable. Focusing specifically on the work of television sound operators this article hopes to add to the growing body of work that sheds light on the practices of sound operators and the skills, codes, and identities that shape their work. By doing so through using hands on methods, it hopes to show the benefits of such approaches to wider television and film research.