Making Media Work

The management and labor culture of the entertainment industry.

In popular culture, management in the media industry is

frequently understood as the work of network executives, studio developers, and

market researchers—“the suits”—who oppose the more productive forces of

creative talent and subject that labor to the inefficiencies and risk aversion

of bureaucratic hierarchies. However, such portrayals belie the reality

of how media management operates as a culture of shifting discourses,

dispositions, and tactics that create meaning, generate value, and shape media

work throughout each moment of production and consumption.

Making Media Work aims to provide a deeper and more nuanced understanding of

management within the entertainment industries. Drawing from work in critical

sociology and cultural studies, the collection theorizes management as a

pervasive, yet flexible set of principlesdrawn upon by a wide range of

practitioners—artists, talent scouts, performers, directors, show runners, and

more—in their ongoing efforts to articulate relationships and bridge

potentially discordant forces within the media industries. The contributors

interrogate managerial labor and identity, shine a light on how management

understands its roles within cultural and creative contexts, and reconfigure

the complex relationship between labor and managerial authority as productive

rather than solely prohibitive. Engaging with primary evidence gathered through

interviews, archives, and trade materials, the essays offer tremendous insight

into how management is understood and performed within media industry contexts.

The volume as a whole traces the changing roles of management both historically

and in the contemporary moment within US and international contexts, and across

a range of media forms, from film and television to video games and social

media.