Theorizing Television’s Writer–Producer: Re-viewing The Producer’s Medium

Alisa Perren and Thomas Schatz honor television studies scholar and former Peabody Director Horace Newcomb’s career. The authors illustrate how one of Newcomb’s less frequently cited books, The Producer’s Medium (coauthored with Robert Alley), expresses themes central to his larger body of work and serves as a groundbreaking study of American television, authorship, and industry in its own right. In addition, they illustrate key ways that the book might inspire contemporary investigations into convergent-era television.