Accordingly, flow today incorporates the very sys-tems that propel global capitalism and determine ourpositions within it. The consumption of mediated tex-tual sequences is important, but only one small aspectof this grand flow, which incorporates flows of energy,raw materials, labor, finance, and information across

audience, the proliferation of user-generated content,the multiple platforms through which media texts areconsumed, and the ongoing war between feminismand antifeminism are presenting new challenges andopportunities for further elaboration of feminist mediaanalysis to the ongoing, explosive changes in our digitalenvironment and how it too is now profoundly shap-ing gender identity, performance, relationships, and thestill elusive hope for gender equality

Yet it is a characteristic for which hardly any of our receivedmodes of observation and description prepare us. The reviewingof television programmes is of course of uneven quality, but inmost even of the best reviews there is a conventional persistencefrom earlier models. Reviewers pick out this play or that feature,this discussion programme or that documentary. I reviewed tele-vision once a month over four years, and I know how muchmore settling, more straightforward, it is to do that. For most ofthe items there are some received procedures, and the method,the vocabulary, for a specific kind of description and responseexists or can be adapted.

BC 1, 13 June 1973, from 5.42

American television this development was different; the spon-sored programmes incorporated the advertising from the outset,from the initial conception, as part of the whole package. Butit is now obvious, in both British and American commercialtelevision, that the notion of ‘interruption’, while it has stillsome residual force from an older model, has becomeprogramming: distribution and flow90

Meanwhile, sporting events, especially footballmatches, as they became increasingly important public occa-sions, included entertainment such as music or marching intheir intervals.

From the late nine-teenth century this came to be reflected in formal layout,culminating in the characteristic jigsaw effect of the modernprogramming: distribution and flow 87

. Although it ispossible to construct the TV sitcom according to this evolutionary model,one could equally argue that the sitcom has gone through repeated cyclesof regression to earlier incarnations, as exemplified by the cycle of mindless teen comedies of the 1970s and by the return to the traditional domestic comedy in the mid-1980s. Another theory of film genre developmentargues that after a period of experimentation, a film genre settles on aclassical "syntax" that later dissolves back into a random collection oftraits, now used to deconstruct the genre.

Marc says that we are invited to test our own cultural assumptions because "the antagonists are cultures" and the characters "chargedcultural entities:' He concludes that Paul Henning's The Beverly Hillbillies, although it is not satire per se, is nonetheless a "nihilistic caricatureof modern life:'

Within the institution of film criticism, however, the concept of genrewas initially employed to condemn mass-produced narratives such as Hollywood studio films for their lack of originality.

Drawing on Aristotle, the literary critic Northrop Frye attempted inthe 1950s to further develop the idea of classifying literature into typesand categories that he called genres and modes

In many respects theclosest analogy to this process would be taxonomy in the biological sciences. Taxonomy dissects the general category of "animal" into a systembased on perceived similarity and difference according to certain distinctive features of the various phyla and species

the company’s efforts to keep key tenicalpersonnel out of the war effort

CBS head William S. Paley to an industry groupin 1946, whi identified the recent public criticism of commerciallysupported radio programming as “the most urgent single problem of ourindustry.”

two dominant network firms, NBC and CBS

three or fewer stations in most large cities

ideological and economic constraints during television’s early growth

Screenshot of trailer for Fallout 76 (2018)

“It keeps us together more,” andanother commented, “It makes a closer family circle.” Some women evensaw television as a cure for marital problems. One housewife claimed, “Myhusband is very restless; now he relaxes at home.” Another woman confided,“My husband and I get along a lot beer. We don’t argue so mu. It’swonderful for couples who have been married ten years or more.... Beforetelevision, my husband would come in and go to bed. Now we spend sometime together.”

William H. Whyte’s The Organization Man(1956) presented illing visions of white-collar workers who weretransformed into powerless conform-ists as the country was taken over bynameless, faceless corporations.

themagazines included television as a staple home fixture before mostAmericans could even receive a television signal,

but can’t affordto buy them with the expense of television

but still allow for social and sexual divisions in the home

As this classic scene illustrates, in postwar years the television set becamea central figure in representations of family relationships