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Television at Work Summary

Television at Work: Industrial Media and American Labor by Kit Hughes (Assistant Professor of Media and Visual Culture, Assistant Professor of Media and Visual Culture, Colorado State University)

Television has never been exclusive to the home. In Television at Work, Kit Hughes explores the forgotten history of how U.S. workplaces used television to secure industrial efficiency, support corporate expansion, and manage the hearts, minds, and bodies of twentieth century workers. Challenging our longest-held understandings of the medium, Hughes positions television at the heart of a post-Fordist reconfiguration of the American workplace revolving around dehumanized technological systems. Among other things, business and industry built private television networks to distribute programming, created complex CCTV data retrieval systems, encouraged the use of videotape for worker self-evaluation, used video cassettes for training distributed workforces, and wired cantinas for employee entertainment. In uncovering industrial television as a prolific sphere of media practice, Television at Work reveals how labor arrangements and information architectures shaped by these uses of television were foundational to the rise of the digitally mediated corporation and to a globalizing economy.

Television at Work Reviews

Television at Work is a book rich in material, analysis, and original research. It eloquently maneuvers between small case studies of particular technologies and larger historical trends in the economy, management theories, and labor practices. * Blake Atwood, Blake Atwood is an associate professor of media studies and chair of the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Media Studies at the American University of Beirut, Technology and Culture *
While the book emphasizes the subtle manipulation and shifting relationship between management and labor, interviews with key media producers round out this fascinating look at corporate television ... A recommended acquisition for media history collections. * R. Davis, CHOICE *
Hughes' research is a fascinating addition to our historical and contemporary debates about medium specificity and the evolution of television. * Karen Petruska, Media Industries Journal *
While the book emphasizes the subtle manipulation and shifting relationship between management and labor, interviews with key media producers round out this fascinating look at corporate television. . . .A recommended acquisition for media history collections. * CHOICE *

About Kit Hughes (Assistant Professor of Media and Visual Culture, Assistant Professor of Media and Visual Culture, Colorado State University)

Kit Hughes is Assistant Professor of Media and Visual Culture in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University.

Table of Contents

Introduction Chapter 1: The Persistence of [a] Vision: the Electronically Mediated Corporation Prehistory Chapter 2: To extend vision beyond the horizon, to see the unseen: Industrial Television in the Post-War Era Flow Chapter 3: Frankly Boring and Agonizingly Slow: Television Moves to the Office Immediacy Chapter 4: The Other Format Wars: Cartridges, Cassettes, and Making Home Work Time-shifting Chapter 5: The People's Network: Soft Management with Satellite Business Television Narrowcasting Conclusion Acknowledgements

Additional information

NPB9780190855796
9780190855796
0190855797
Television at Work: Industrial Media and American Labor by Kit Hughes (Assistant Professor of Media and Visual Culture, Assistant Professor of Media and Visual Culture, Colorado State University)
New
Paperback
Oxford University Press Inc
2020-01-24
296
Winner of A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title.
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
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Customer Reviews - Television at Work