Below the Line

Below the Line illuminates the hidden labor of people who not only produce things that the television industry needs, such as a bit of content or a policy sound bite, but also produce themselves in the service of capital expansion. Vicki Mayer considers the work of television set assemblers, soft-core cameramen, reality-program casters, and public-access and cable commissioners in relation to the globalized economy of the television industry. She shows that these workers are increasingly engaged in professional and creative work, unsettling the industry’s mythological account of itself as a business driven by auteurs, manned by an executive class, and created by the talented few. As Mayer demonstrates, the new television economy casts a wide net to exploit those excluded from these hierarchies. Meanwhile, television set assemblers in Brazil devise creative solutions to the problems of material production. Soft-core videographers, who sell televised content, develop their own modes of professionalism. Everyday people become casters, who commodify suitable participants for reality programs, or volunteers, who administer local cable television policies. These sponsors and regulators boost media industries’ profits when they commodify and discipline their colleagues, their neighbors, and themselves. Mayer proposes that studies of production acknowledge the changing dynamics of labor to include production workers who identify themselves and their labor with the industry, even as their work remains undervalued or invisible.

“[T]his volume succeeds in enlarging the scope of television production studies significantly. It should encourage other researchers to cast their net widely.”, “Mayer’s studies of television-set assemblers, soft-core cameramen, reality-program casters, and volunteers on television regulatory committees not only draw critical attention to the individuals whose roles, creativities, and values are frequently overlooked, but argues that their contributions to the industry can, and ought to be, viewed as creative and professional…. Mayer’s great contribution to television-production studies is in nudging the field toward a more inclusive and coherent definition of its objects of study. Below the Line provides a thoughtful example of just what stands to be gained by such a move.”, “This is an important if contentious contribution to the evolving field of cultural studies of labour…. Mayer’s invitation to researchers to broaden their understanding of what and where creativity is in television production is extremely useful, as is the provocation to reconsider different workers’ and roles’ value to media industries, and in particular to uncover the invisible labour on which media production relies.”, “There is much to recommend in this book. Although Mayer’s accounts of the challenges faced by Brazilian electronics workers will probably read as all too familiar to readers of this journal, situating these individuals within a context of media production represents a fresh and welcome perspective on the artifacts of popular culture. Her other case studies break new ground in making visible the atomized work worlds of decentralized media industries.” , “Vicki Mayer’s book, Below the Line, illuminates some of these critical trends within the context of a broader examination of work in and the production of television…. One major contribution of the book, beyond the insights provided within the individual case studies, is the author’s ability to illuminate how various facets of industry work and worker identity are transforming in the context of industry restructuring and macroeconomic forces.”

Vicki Mayer is Associate Professor of Communication at Tulane University. She is a co-editor of Production Studies: Cultural Studies of Media Industries and editor of the journal Television and New Media.