Rewitched: Retextuality and the Queering of Bewitched

At the same time the 1960s sitcom Bewitched aired in reruns next to drag queens on LOGOtv, a cable channel targeted to LGBTQ viewers, it also aired on the former National Christian Network channel (FamilyNet) immediately preceding a lineup of church programs featuring far-right, anti-gay hosts. Bewitched's ability to appeal to these very different channels’ brands and audiences underscores a textual vigor and sustainability for success in syndication that even the best so-called quality shows today lack. While some may deride a study of syndication (and reruns especially) as irrelevant and passé, syndicated programs are neither of those things if their continued popularity assures our familiarity with them. As a text, Bewitched is already supple enough to motivate two politically opposing media brands to pick it up, but the context of each of these channels’ flow, including commercials, station IDs, and edits to content, can make the experience of watching the same episode of any show on different channels a wholly different textual experience. This article returns to foundational theories of TV flow and intertextuality to propose retextuality as a theoretical and methodological intervention in studies of television. It argues that in syndication, the production labor of syndicators, executives, programmers, and marketing departments effectively retextualizes shows like Bewitched, offering scholars opportunities for new textual analyses and new insight into the marginalized and queer audiences syndicated programming often serves.

Distributing Whiteness: Please Like Me and Global Television Circulation

This essay examines the formal and informal distribution of Australian dramedy Please Like Me via the now-defunct American digital cable channel Pivot and via fan communities on Tumblr. I argue that structural whiteness operates as an invisible engine at the heart of Please Like Me’s distribution. My analysis unpacks how an unexamined narrative of white privilege forms the backbone of Please Like Me’s diegesis, fandom’s investment in circulating the show, and Pivot’s alignment of the show with its supposedly socially conscious brand. Examining trade press, promotional material, and fan discourse, I demonstrate how structural whiteness functions as point of intersection between industry and fan-driven distribution.

Design of hybrid cable remote power supply circuits with a coaxial element for collecting and processing information based on video surveillance systems

Обоснована перспективность применения компьютерных систем управления с централизованной структурой. На примере системы видеонаблюдения показаны возможности коаксиальных, витопарных и волоконно-оптических кабелей при построении физического уровня подобных систем. Определено место коаксиального кабеля при реализации таких структур. Рассмотрены возможности комбинированных конструкций из коаксиальной трубки и дополнительных жил питания при подключении удаленной терминального сетевого компьютерного оборудования с коаксиальным интерфейсом. Предложен метод расчета площади поперечного сечения выделенных жил питания для такого кабеля, определены их конкретные значения в зависимости от требуемого расстояния и мощности потребления терминального оборудования. Продемонстрирована целесообразность применения повышенного напряжения питания для систем уличного исполнения при протяженности тракта свыше 300 м. The prospects of using computer control systems with a centralized structure are substantiated. The possibilities of coaxial, twisted-pair and fiber-optic cables for building the physical level of modern video surveillance systems are shown. The place of the coaxial cable in the implementation of such systems is determined. The possibilities of combined structures made of a coaxial tube and additional power wires when connecting a remote TV camera are considered. A method is proposed for calculating the cross-sectional area of the separated power wires for such a cable, and their specific values are determined depending on the required distance and power consumption of the TV camera. The expediency of using increased supply voltage for street systems with a cable channel length of more than 300 m is demonstrated.

Fan-ning the flame

While promoting recent seasons of supernatural Western horror series Wynonna Earp (2016), cable channel Syfy released several fan-style videos championing the show’s resident lesbian couple: the protagonist’s sister, Waverly, and police officer Nicole Haught (celebrated via the portmanteau “WayHaught”). In 2019, a network “shipping” its own queer characters in service of fans contrasts starkly with the televisual landscape twenty, or even ten, years prior, when viewers invested in lesbian characters and/or same-sex couples relied on subtext and fan paratexts to fuel their enthusiasm for mostly unacknowledged or thwarted relationships between female characters. In this article, I engage in a two-part interrogation of the representation of lesbian romance on cult television shows in the last twenty-five years, with a focus on Wynonna Earp and its historical antecedents—supernatural, sci-fi, and fantasy shows featuring women and their female companion(s) (whether close friends or lovers). This includes a historiography of the development of lesbian fan communities around certain shows from the late 1990s and early 2000s, as well as an analysis of the narrative stakes and character development in both historical and contemporary shows, like Earp, in order to interrogate their representations of subtext or main text romantic pairings.

Research summary of cable channel fire extinguishing technology

Cable channel fire is an important factor affecting the safe operation and maintenance of power cables. This paper summarizes the current research situation of fire-extinguishing technology, analyzes the fire-extinguishing technology suitable for cable channel, and proposes to use S-type aerosol fire-extinguishing technology to extinguish the fire of cable channel..

Mad Men

Once or twice a decade, a new television program comes along to capture and express the zeitgeist. Mad Men (2007–2015) was that show in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Soon after premiering on the 19 July 2007 on AMC (formerly American Movie Classics from 1984 to 2003), Mad Men evolved from being that little program that nobody watched on an also-ran basic cable channel to the most celebrated scripted drama of its era. Mad Men set the creative standard for dramatic series over the span of its initial run. It was recognized by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association as the Best Television Drama of 2007, 2008, and 2009; the British Academy of Film and Television as Best International Show of 2009 and 2010; and the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences as the Outstanding Drama Series of 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011, being the first basic cable series ever to win this award. Overall, Mad Men won five Golden Globes, sixteen Emmys, and fifty other major awards, including honors from all of the major Hollywood guilds, as well as receiving a prestigious George Foster Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting. In retrospect, AMC executives adopted what they referred to as “the HBO formula” of developing their own edgy, sophisticated, passion project by a proven writer-producer, Matthew Weiner, who just happened to have a pedigree that included The Sopranos (HBO, 1999–2007). What resulted was the gradual emergence of Mad Men as AMC’s first original hit series, generating unprecedented word-of-mouth, and rebranding the channel as a hipper, more discriminating, alternative cable-and-satellite network. In turn, Mad Men broke the glass ceiling for basic cable in much the same way that The Sopranos had done for pay TV some eight-and-a-half years earlier. Mad Men also benefited greatly from the emergence of multiplatform reception. Even though Mad Men’s impact on AMC was immediate and transformative, the show was at first more a cultural phenomenon than a breakout hit. Nevertheless, its first-season audience average of 900,000 on AMC in 2007 eventually grew to 2.5 million by Season 6. Moreover, Mad Men’s total viewership relied heavily on syndication, DVDs, and streaming to digital devices, translating into an estimated 30 million unduplicated viewers per episode in North America alone. By the time of its finale on 17 May 2015, Mad Men was being syndicated in over fifty countries and was available 24/7 through online streaming globally.