Now private equity please 🙏

I am officially writing an article about Alamo Drafthouse (anti-)fandom and their buyout and anti-labor policies in the broader context of media consolidation. If you are a fan of the drafthouse, current or present employee, etc and you would be interested in speaking about this, please reach out!

An academic flyer titled "RECENT PUBLICATIONS IN TV & RADIO HISTORY: FALL 2025 – SPRING 2026" under the heading "CHAPTERS AND ARTICLES." The document is organized into a 3x3 grid of boxes, each listing an author and their work:Josie Torres Barth: "The Voice of the Woman in the Wall: Uncanny Narration as Domestic Critique in the Suspense Radio Adaptation of 'The Yellow Wallpaper' (1948)," Adaptation vol. 18, no. 3, 2025. (Winner of the 2025 ECR Prize).Cynthia Meyers: "Such a Feeling of Intimacy: Familial Bonds and Eastman Kodak's Sponsorship of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1956-61)," in Commercial Intimacy (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2025).Allison Perlman: "Betraying the Dream (Machine): NET, The FBI, and Regulating Public Television Content in the 1970s," Television & New Media (2026).Elana Levine: "The Voice of Winnie Holzman," Post-45 Contemporaries, Spring 2025.Allison Perlman: "Regulating Documentary: Television, Conservative Activism, and the Expressive Power of Policy," in The Oxford Handbook of American Documentary (Oxford UP, 2025).Allison Perlman: "Slavery before Roots: Television, the Civil Rights Movement, and History TV in the 1960s," Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 43.5 (2025).Owen Gottlieb: "Heritage in Search of a Home: Archiving the Learning Designs and Artistry of Instructional Television of the 1970s and 1980s," in The Archivability of Television (University of Georgia Press, 2025).Pete Johnson: "Revisiting the Financial Interest & Syndication Rules: A Discursive and Industrial Analysis of U.S. Television Production, 1971-1990." Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television (2026).Cale Epps: "Incentives, Commissions, and Hollywood Production Mobility," in Roadmap to the Texas Media Industries (UT Austin Center White Paper, 2025).

A flyer titled "RECENT PUBLICATIONS IN TV & RADIO HISTORY: FALL 2025 – SPRING 2026" under the heading "BOOKS." The top left features a small photo of a vintage television and radio on a wooden cabinet. Below, three vertical boxes list upcoming book releases:Jason Loviglio: Empathy Machines: This American Life, Podcasting and the Public Radio Structure of Feeling (Bloomsbury, January 2026).Cynthia Meyers: Sell-e-vision: How the Advertising Industry Shaped American Television (or Madison Avenue and Mid-Century American Television). Coming late 2026 from the Peabody Media History Series, University of Georgia Press.Amanda Keeler: The Rockford Files. TV Milestones Series. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2025.

Following the conclusion of #SCMS26 in Chicago, the TV & Radio History SIG is pleased to share recent and forthcoming publications from our members.

Featured books include recent/future work by Jason Loviglio, Cynthia Meyers, and Amanda Keeler. #MediaStudies #TVHistory #RadioHistory #SCMS2026

black text on white background. it reads: N07: Yael Levy, Tel Aviv University, “On the Soundstage Couch: Early TV Sitcom Performance as Identity Processing” O12: Elana Levine, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, “Biography as Feminist Media Historiography” P05: Benjamin Kruger-Robbins, Weber State University, “Queerly Anointing the Charmed One: Aaron Spelling’s Alternate Awards Blitz”

Also, check out the excellent individual papers related to TV/Radio History:

Blue flyer with text: television & Radio history scholarly Interest group The Innovation, Regulation, and Governance of US Media Thursday 2:15 – 4:00 pm Hanna-Barbera: Untold Histories Sponsored Panels (Thursday-Friday) Thursday 6:15 – 8:00 pm C7 E11 Postwar US Television: Adjustment, Innovation, Adaptation friday 9:00 – 10:45 am F17 Hybrid Signals: Transnationalizing US Television Cultures Through Distribution friday 11:00 – 12:45 PM G4 TV and Catastrophe: Revisiting Classical Questions friday 5:15 – 7:00 pm I21 *Roundtable

Blue flyer with text: Making Academic Research Potent and Potable for a General Audience Saturday 11:00 am–12:45 pm Broadcasting ‘Agency’: Televisual Media and Identity in Korea and Japan Sunday 9:00 – 10:45 am K17 US TV Commercials Past and Present: Production Practices, Ad Strategies, and Aesthetics *Roundtable N13 Sunday 2:15 – 4:00 pm P7 television & Radio history scholarly Interest group Sponsored Panels (Saturday-Sunday)

Blue flyer with text: television & Radio history scholarly Interest group Other Panels on TV & Radio History B06: Perspectives on Public Media and Mediated Publics C08: Vocal Ontologies in the Age of AI: Histories, Infrastructures, and Fractures G01: Re-remembering the Vietnam War at 50 M02: Blurred Lines: Evolving Approaches to Studying US Film and Television Industries Q01: Exploring TV Families Across Genre, Nation, and Methodology

We are thrilled to share the remarkable TV/Radio History panels at #SCMS2026 in Chicago. Check out the linked flyer to see the SIG's sponsored and recommended panels.

See you all there! #SCMS26

Call for Chapters - Atomic TV.docx Call for Chapter Proposals – Atomic TV Submission deadline: June 15th, 2026 This proposed edited collection, Atomic TV, seeks to address the relationship between television and “atomic” history, cul...

CFP, hot off the presses! Stacy Takacs and I are co-editing a book on Atomic TV, and we hope you'll consider submitting a chapter proposal.
#TVstudies #atomicTV #TVhistory @scms-tv.bsky.social @tv-radio-history.bsky.social @misig-scms.bsky.social @warstudiessig.bsky.social

bit.ly/4lRzbwH

It's SCMS conference week! A good time to recirculate this 2023 document: "Tips From SCMS Members for Having
a Productive and Supportive In-Person Conference" docs.google.com/document/d/1...

I don’t know why I’m like this either, but: insofar as Petco is majority-owned by a private equity firm, and the private equity industry gives money to 88% of members of the House and Senate, there’s more overlap with Tammany Hall than you’d think! 🙂

Sometime in the mid-1980s, when Larry Tisch owned CBS, he ordered a New Jersey warehouse holding the CBS corporate archives to be cleaned out to save money.
Those files were largely destroyed.
They likely could've resolved several mysteries in U.S. media history.

www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

I worked on this on the Library of Congress project for about five years, and CBS was not interested in preserving their history!

The Trump administration has approved the acquisition of 9NEWS' parent company, TEGNA, by Fox31's parent company, Nexstar.

Nexstar issued a statement praising President Trump, who says the deal will "help knock out the Fake News." Nexstar has declared itself "the anti-fake news"

To be honest, though, I might prefer this? youtu.be/dmK47H_otew?...

‘Access Hollywood’ Canceled Along With ‘Karamo’ and ‘Steve Wilkos’ as NBCU Ends Syndicated Production The company will continue to distribute library content, but will end production of first-run syndicated programming in a strategic shift.

One day everything under the sun, even TV’s cash cows, becomes fertilizer
www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/a...

billy friedkin coming out of retirement (death) for Sorcerer 2

"...These escalating demands are often insensitive to the realities of the workplace and they furthermore raise questions about the financial legerdemain that keeps the entire system in motion."

doi.org/10.3998/mij....

been thinking about this quote a lot (from Michael Curtin):

"financialization mercilessly pressures employees to do more with less, privileging commercial calculation over creative purpose and wringing out cost economies that show little regard for creative sacrifices or safety risks..." 1/

In short, once marginal practices of junk bonds/private equity in TV would become mainstream in media ind. by the 21st century.

So if WBD-PSKY goes through as the biggest LBO of all time, it is the culmination of decades of debt, pillaging, and financial manipulation to benefit a select few in TV.

A great examples is Storer-Gillett, a 10:1 debt-to-profit disaster: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storer_... 7/

And if you can believe it, most of these deals were a disaster: cost cutting, layoffs, the usual awful sutff.

As one exec said: they “drain the business of its traditions and turn stations into … “mere commodities to be traded as dispassionately and as fundibly as soy beans or cotton future." 6/

Interestingly, the investor logic of TV LBOs was that a declining, yet cash-rich, business (station ownership) could fund emergent, not yet profitable business (cable tv) + payoff LBO debts

A PSKY-WBD LBO would be based on similar logic: use dying cable $ to fund streaming scale and pay off LBO 5/

This image is a line graph titled "Station Sales (1970-1992)," which tracks the volume and value of television station transactions in the United States over a 22-year period. A peak is visualized in 1987.

However, very quickly, tv insiders realized they could benefit from PE and LBOs even if it crippled their companies, despite the framing of insider (TV) vs. outsider (finance) in the trades. This acceptance, paired with deregulation, led to an explosion of LBOs and station sales in the late 80s. 4/

Some execs expressed skepticism in the press. Variety even called private equity partners “would be empire builders” 3/

At first, broadcast/tv execs were genuinely confused about what an LBO was. Private equity and this financial model was still fairly new, but there was a spat of LBOs in 1983. 2/

A good time to note that the first leveraged buyouts in media industries were of station groups and cable operators in the mid-80s. Where Mr Zaz got his start.

Here, a 1985 cartoon in Broadcasting: a baffled tv exec asks his accountant what an LBO is... 1/

As expected, another piece falls into place for Trump’s Viktor Orban model of media capture.

It's over: Netflix has conceded to Paramount.

"The deal is no longer financially attractive, so we are declining to match the Paramount Skydance bid."

WB still has to accept Par's offer and vote to close a deal, but...

Betraying the Dream (Machine): NET, the FBI, and Regulating Public Television Content in the 1970s - Allison Perlman, 2026 This article investigates the history of content regulation in the US public television sector. It analyzes the context and consequences of an October 1971 deci...

With the #Colbert and CBS/ #FCC news making the rounds, it’s a great time to announce our forthcoming special issue of Television and New Media on histories of content regulation. You can get a sneak peek with this open access article: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

highlighted text from a deadline article: "Fifth Season reportedly lost money on Severance in the first two seasons, especially in Season 2. According to sources, the company indeed would’ve been in the red had Severance been canceled after two seasons. Since the series is continuing, Fifth Season is expected to turn a profit from collecting producing fees going forward (along with selling the rights to Apple)."

considering there's no backend, it's sort of an unbelievable piece of information that Fifth Season *lost* money on Severance

deadline.com/2026/02/appl...

Revisiting the financial interest & syndication rules: A discursive and industrial analysis of U.S. Television production, 1971–1990 For over half a century, industrial discourses have positioned the prospect of financial regulation in U.S. television—specifically the (re)introduction of the Financial Interest and Syndication (F...

Understanding the messy, long arc of media history is essential for navigating our current moment.

50 free e-prints are available for those interested: www.tandfonline.com/eprint/BRWRP...

#MediaStudies #TVHistory #PoliticalEconomy #MediaIndustries (3/3)