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Broadcasting Hollywood: The Struggle Over Feature Films on Early Television uses extensive archival research into the files of studios, networks, advertising agencies, unions and guilds, theatre associations, the FCC, and key legal cases to analyze the tensions and synergies between the film and television industries in the early years of television. This analysis of the case study of the struggle over Hollywood’s feature films appearing on television in the 1940s and 1950s illustrates that the notion of  an  industry misunderstands the complex array of stakeholders who work in and profit from a media sector, and models a variegated examination of the history of media industries. Ultimately, it draws a parallel to the contemporary period and the introduction of digital media to highlight the fact that history repeats itself and can therefore play a key role in helping media industry scholars and practitioners to understand and navigate contemporary industrial phenomena.

Broadcasting Hollywood: The Struggle Over Feature Films on Early Television uses extensive archival research into the files of studios, networks, advertising agencies, unions and guilds, theatre associations, the FCC, and key legal cases to analyze the tensions and synergies between the film and television industries in the early years of television. This analysis of the case study of the struggle over Hollywood's feature films appearing on television in the 1940s and 1950s illustrates that the notion of an industry misunderstands the complex array of stakeholders who work in and profit from a media sector, and models a variegated examination of the history of media industries. Ultimately, it draws a parallel to the contemporary period and the introduction of digital media to highlight the fact that history repeats itself and can therefore play a key role in helping media industry scholars and practitioners to understand and navigate contemporary industrial phenomena.

By the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the internet had developed to the point that it became another site for the distribution and exhibition of moving-image media, and legacy media faced the challenge of figuring out how to utilize the new technology to exhibit its older content. Similarly, in the mid-twentieth century when television was developed, the film industry had to determine how they could realize the potential of its films on television. As scholar Christopher Anderson argued, “The motion picture industry during the 1950s was less an empire on the verge of ruin than one

The original goal of antitrust law in the United States was to ensure that economic competition exists, that consumers are not taken advantage of, and that corporations can provide the best goods and services in a fair marketplace. The Sherman Antitrust Act was passed in 1890 to prohibit corporations from dominating their industry through abusive practices that exclude competition. It is perhaps no coincidence that Thomas Edison first filed his patent application for his motion picture camera at almost the exact same time in 1891, and the history of the media industry and antitrust law have been intertwined ever since.

The collaborative nature of the media industries poses a particular problem when negotiating the rights to media texts and the compensation for laborers’ work. Without clearly identifiable, singular authors for films and television series, the questions of how to credit those who participated in their creation, and who determines how, when, and where the texts appear have proved sticking points at each moment of disruption. Copyright law assigns legal authorship of a text and thereby officially governs who has the right to determine the use of that text and who deserves compensation for that use. The studios typically hold the

Contractual rights and copyright determine not only what content appears where and when, but also who can claim authorship and compensation for those works. Even the most clearly written contracts, however, often require the courts to step in and settle legal disputes over their interpretation. Media scholar Jane Gaines has described the law functioning as a discourse of power that “restrains persons and regulates other objects of culture.”¹ That is certainly borne out in the central cases in this chapter and the following chapter: the antitrust case U.S. v. Twentieth Century­Fox, et al., and the cases brought by B-Western stars

By 1956, although many of the hurdles related to the expansion of television, rights and residuals, and legal questions about competition and contracts had been, at least momentarily, resolved, obstacles remained that prevented many of Hollywood’s feature films from appearing on television. The resulting negotiations reveal the different power structures in the film and television industries and the ways in which the players involved affected not only the outcomes but the nature of the negotiations themselves. For example, RKO was one of the first major studios to strike a deal for their films to television, and although they were a

At the heart of disruption is a change not only in how something is made but also, crucially, in how it is consumed by users or audiences. Today, we see this in people moving from watching films in theaters and broadcast on their TVs to streaming media on a range of devices often while on the go; and the linear flow of legacy film and television programming has shifted to à la carte curation via apps and Over-the-Top services, which bypass traditional cable, broadcast, and satellite platforms to distribute content directly to audiences. Similarly, in the late 1940s and early

This book’s analysis of the struggle over Hollywood’s feature films on early television demonstrates how long and gradual Hollywood’s sale process actually was, and the many ways that it involved all aspects of the film and television industries. It illustrates the extent to which moments of convergence are fraught with systematic, overlapping, institutional confusions that are eventually resolved through often-unpredictable methods. Some behaviors and conflicts were settled in the courts; some borne out of lengthy negotiations; some formed on the basis of personal relationships and affinities; and some determined by sheer habit and inertia. Discerning the industry’s rationalizations about how