Chapter 3: Spec World, Craft World, Brand World

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Page ID: 175214

John T. Caldwell
University of California Press

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In the heady air of an MIT Transmedia conference, the “aca-pro” audience voiced appreciation as the futurist digital media consultant bragged about how nonhierarchical innovation hot spots like the one he’d created in his boutique company were poised to make old, conservative approaches to film and television production obsolete. Like dinosaurs and “Detroit,” he argued, lazy, inefficient “old media” film/TV production professionals—who, like the auto industry, had lived long past their prime—could vanish and no tears would be shed. The unequivocal message: good riddance. Another panelist, an edgy new media branding consultant, sketched out some of his own...

3.1: Introduction
Underlying questions for the chapter: why TV labor matters in media studies, how we can study it given recent changes, and where and how to meaningfully locate TV production for research in the digital era.
3.2: Craft World, Brand World
Definitions of three warring labor regimes in media production: the craft, brand, and spec "worlds." Includes examples of each paradigm in action and analogies to processes of raw-material production.
3.3: Production Culture as Spec Work
Comparing and contrasting the cultural chatter, expressions, and habits/rituals of the craft world, brand world, and spec world.
3.4: Self-Defeating Labor Tactics
The problems that arise as a result of professionals, aspirants, and scholars of media production misperceiving the particular labor regimes in which they operate.
3.5: Spec Work, Prototypes, Pretesting, Pilots (Brand and Franchise Fodder)
The labor implications of the shift to IP-focused media, in which all film and TV material now functions as prototypes and pilots for a potential extended franchise.
3.6: Notes