Making Media Work

<p><b>The management and labor culture of the entertainment industry.</b> <br>In popular culture, management in the media industry is<br>frequently understood as the work of network executives, studio developers, and<br>market researchers—“the suits”—who oppose the more productive forces of<br>creative talent and subject that labor to the inefficiencies and risk aversion<br>of bureaucratic hierarchies. However, such portrayals belie the reality<br>of how media management operates as a culture of shifting discourses,<br>dispositions, and tactics that create meaning, generate value, and shape media<br>work throughout each moment of production and consumption.<br><br>Making Media Work aims to provide a deeper and more nuanced understanding of<br>management within the entertainment industries. Drawing from work in critical<br>sociology and cultural studies, the collection theorizes management as a<br>pervasive, yet flexible set of principlesdrawn upon by a wide range of<br>practitioners—artists, talent scouts, performers, directors, show runners, and<br>more—in their ongoing efforts to articulate relationships and bridge<br>potentially discordant forces within the media industries. The contributors<br>interrogate managerial labor and identity, shine a light on how management<br>understands its roles within cultural and creative contexts, and reconfigure<br>the complex relationship between labor and managerial authority as productive<br>rather than solely prohibitive. Engaging with primary evidence gathered through<br>interviews, archives, and trade materials, the essays offer tremendous insight<br>into how management is understood and performed within media industry contexts.<br>The volume as a whole traces the changing roles of management both historically<br>and in the contemporary moment within US and international contexts, and across<br>a range of media forms, from film and television to video games and social<br>media.</p>