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This chapter considers the notion of “conversation economy” as well as MSNBC.com's strategy of cultivating numerous brands to capture the attention and sharing activity of different niche audiences. It begins with a discussion of the concept of epistemic cultures introduced by Karin Knorr Cetina before turning to the shared links and embeddable media objects that drive so much traffic in the conversation economy. It then examines the factors that make the conversation economy especially salient to media practitioners, including the dramatic increase in media choice. It also analyzes the impact of audience fragmentation and high media choice on distribution decisions, along with the initiatives undertaken by MSNBC.com to deal with the challenges of moving content in the conversation economy. Finally, it explains how the demands of the web and the logic of branding could be recalcitrant from the perspective of the provincial system builders at MSNBC.

This chapter spotlights Susan Seidelman, who came of age during the second-wave feminist movement and found success and acclaim in the 1980s indie wave but, like other female filmmakers of her generation (Julie Dash and Allison Anders), struggled subsequently when their follow-up projects failed through poor distribution or never reached production. Lane examines Seidelman’s long-term response to this dilemma through self-reinvention and by capitalising on new technologies, including digital, social and emergent media and micro-budget strategies such as crowdsourcing and self-distribution. Her most recent films (Boynton Beach Club, 2005, and The Hot Flashes, 2013) are low-budget ‘high concept’ endeavours marketed to niche audiences – seniors, Latinos and disabled rights groups – yet blend elements of commercial and independent film.

Chapter 5 (keyword: narrowcasting) explores the development of private satellite networks to manage distributed workforces in the context of globalization and a “cultural turn” in popular management theories. The late 1980s saw the proliferation of industry-focused subscription channels (e.g., geared toward insurers) and internal “networks” housed by a single company (e.g., Hewlett Packard). Two case studies (Johnson Controls and Steelcase) show how businesses used television to target worker identity in a bid to usurp other modes of affiliation (the nation, class) within the unstable employment environment of the 1980s and 1990s. This is the other side of the multichannel era: the creative deployment of employees as niche audiences. At the same time that post-national consumer identities became lucrative as a means of gathering and selling audiences on the diverse products of flexible specialization, proper cultural management of worker identity supported companies’ profit-maximization strategies (often based in cuts to employees’ material welfare).