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This chapter focuses on the international circulation of the newer forms of African American television, particularly, how different network organizations and audience configurations create opportunities for new kinds of African American television flows. The priorities of premium cable channels, general entertainment broadcasters, and comedy channels abroad, combined with industry lore about “edgy” and “quality” programming, lead to a heavy reliance on black masculinity, heteronormativity, crime, violence, and frequent use of the word “nigger” in contemporary series. These similar aesthetic choices tend to dominate web-based television series as well, largely because online producers often strive to have their programs noticed by more traditional television outlets. The chapter looks at how series creators navigate these institutional expectations of what African American television should include in order to get their shows on air.

In the late summer of 1985, one of the biggest hits of the previous year, Joe Dante's horror-comedy Gremlins (Warner Brothers, 1984), was given a limited re-release in markets including Columbus, Ohio. From the mid-1980s, new multiplexes expanded or replaced the 1960s and 1970s duplex and triplex cinemas, often located in older open-air shopping centres that were themselves falling victim to the newer mega-malls. The two biggest complexes, the Eastland Plaza 6 and the Westerville 6, both located at suburban shopping centres, were owned by American Multi-Cinemas of Kansas City. In addition to their traditional source of income from theatrical box office, revenues flowed to the movie studios from every home video transaction (sale and rental); directly (through licensing fees) or indirectly (for example, from advertising revenue) from the transmission of theatrical movies on the broadcast networks (all of which were owned by one of the majors) and basic and premium cable channels (of which most of the former and all of the latter were also owned by the majors).

This introductory chapter examines various models for popularizing and democratizing news that have been influential in the United States over the past several decades. It argues that the U.S. news industry has undergone a philosophical paradigm shift, moving away from an ideal of professional autonomy and into a “postprofessional” period characterized by an affirmation that consumers' preferences should drive news production. The chapter also describes several attempts made by key groups of news producers to shift control over the news agenda away from professional expertise and put it in the hands of ordinary news consumers: the market-centered newspaper movement epitomized by Gannett's USA Today, the creation of a genre of news amid competition among the major U.S. cable news channels, and the growth of online social news sites tapping into collaborative filtering as a mechanism for democratizing the news agenda.