This journal issue considers the ways technologies, social dissent, business practices, and creative relationships have produced, continue to and promise to produce television content, programming, aesthetics, and viewership. By flexibly understanding “production” across a series of critical categories, this topic considers the meaning of television as: a labor practice; a creative function for producers and consumers; a convergence of multiple media; processes involving human figures, technological innovations, and economic pressures; and a result of activism and policies formulated by various social groups and political institutions. Questions motivating analysis may include the following: What are the ideological and aesthetic pressures placed upon television? What does television demand of its workers at all levels of production and consumption? What are the historically specific reasons behind television’s drive to reinvent its business practices and technologies? What forces “make” television what is it, at any given period?

Deadline for Submission: November 25, 2007

Spectator is a biannual publication and submissions that address the above topics in the following areas are now invited for submission:

• Relationships of reciprocity or productive dissent between political activism and television
• Cult television and audience interpretation, creative uses of and engagements with cult texts
• Relationships between creative forces in television (e.g. director and star, producer and networks)
• Government policies and legal actions that redefine television content, economics, etc.
• Corporate mergers
• Stardom (e.g. the recycling of film stars on television, creation of television stars via reality TV)
• Technologies that produce a particular television aesthetic
• Labor practices involved in the manufacturing of television technologies
• New technologies borrowed by television or that takes television beyond conventional viewing and transmission (e.g. YouTube, TMZ, podcasts)
• Representations of television that define viewing practices, imagine a future state of television, construct narratives about TV production (e.g. films about TV executives, fictional narratives about TV workers, “behind the scenes” specials, biographies of TV stars or major players)

One copy of manuscript should be submitted as well as a copy on disk. Submissions can also be e-mailed directly. Manuscripts should include the title of the contribution and the name (s) of authors, as well as the postal address, e-mail address, and phone numbers for author who will work with the editor on any revisions. All pages should be numbered consecutively. Contributions should not be more than 5,000 words. They should also include a brief abstract for publicity. Authors should also include a brief biographic entry. Rejected manuscripts will not be returned.

Articles submitted to the Spectator should not be under consideration by any other journal.

Book Reviews may vary in length from 300 to 1,000 words. Please include title of book, retail price and ISBN at the beginning of the review.

Forum or Additional Section contributions can include works on new archival or research facilities or methods as well as other relevant works related to the field.