Complex Television

It was a pretty thrilling moment: during a workshop on collaborative structures in digital scholarship at last week’s Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Jason Mittell, Skyped-in from Germany, launched the MediaCommons Press hosted peer-to-peer review of his book manuscript, Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling, while the rest of the panel and the audience watched.

Jason is releasing the text chapter by chapter, with each new installment due every week or two. The book is under contract to NYU Press, but this draft manuscript and its surrounding discussion will remain on MediaCommons Press, even after the book has been published.

We hope that you will read along as Jason publishes his chapters and contribute to the discussion of this exciting volume!

2 Responses to “Complex Television”

  1. i wanted to comment to Jason Mittel whether he has taken on board that the DVD market is slowly in decline as streaming takes over – apart from being an independent scholar i am a literary agent, and i’ve certainly noted how things are changing in that respect – are some of his comments on the aestheic object of the boxed sett going to change? and in this cae, the flow model becomes something you can easily manipulate yourself as a viewer – slow up, interrupt, or skip etc – it does not include requirement to see material at a particular time etc – ‘catch up on BBC and ITV in this country also means you can watch things when you want right on the computer some time later. you cannot keep it. but rental companies like netfix and love films all offer streaming. how does that work into his theories? thanks, Leslie Gardner (editor of a book on ‘House, the wounded hearler on television’ (Routledge 2011).

  2. Hi, Leslie. This post is only the announcement of Jason’s project; you’d probably be better off posting your comment on his project directly.