Forgoing an examination of the media industries, Chapter 1 focuses instead on the rise of what one might call the mediated industries. A prehistory of television at work, this chapter traces an intensifying relationship between electronic media and the workplace that follows the development and industrial application of telegraphy, telephony, recorded sound, wireless, applied radio, Muzak, faxing, and nontheatrical film. Situating this discussion in the context of scholars’ treatment of communication and empire, it argues that television occupies a key transitional position for the mediated corporation in which electronic communication’s dual uses as a logistical tool and as a conduit for cultural production converge. These processes illustrate the development of an alternative media sector and the symbiotic relationship between the “knowledge industries” and corporate expansion, as well as the specificities of how media infrastructures are created at scale.
Screening race in American nontheatrical film