Within corporate media industries, adults produce children’s entertainment. Yet children, presumed to exist outside the professional adult world, make their own contributions to it—creating and posting unboxing videos, for example, that provide content for toy marketers. Many adults, meanwhile, avidly consume entertainment products nominally meant for children. Media industries reincorporate this market-disrupting participation into their strategies, even turning to adult consumers to pass fandom to the next generation. Derek Johnson presents an innovative perspective that looks beyond the simple category of “kids’ media” to consider how entertainment industry strategies invite producers and consumers alike to cross boundaries between adulthood and childhood, professional and amateur, new media and old. Revealing the social norms, reproductive ideals, and labor hierarchies on which such transformations depend, he identifies the lines of authority and power around which legacy media institutions like television, comics, and toys imagine their futures in a digital age. Johnson proposes that it is not strategies of media production, but of media reproduction, that are most essential in this context. To understand these critical intersections, he investigates transgenerational industry practice in television co-viewing, recruitment of adult comic readers as youth outreach ambassadors, media professionals’ identification with childhood, the branded management of adult fans of LEGO, and the labor of child YouTube video creators. These dynamic relationships may appear to disrupt generational and industry boundaries alike. However, by considering who media industries empower when generating the future in these reproductive terms and who they leave out, Johnson ultimately demonstrates how their strategies reinforce existing power structures. This book makes vital contributions to media studies in its fresh approach to the intersections of adulthood and childhood, its attention to the relationship between legacy and digital media industries, and its advancement of dialogue between media production and consumption researchers. It will interest scholars in media industry studies and across media studies more broadly, with particular appeal to those concerned about the current and future reach of media industries into our lives.

"Johnson astutely reveals that franchises are not Borg-like assimilation machines, but, rather, complicated ecosystems within which creative workers strive to create compelling 'shared worlds.' This finely researched, breakthrough book is a must-read for anyone seeking a sophisticated understanding of the contemporary media industry." —Heather Hendershot, author of What's Fair on the Air?: Cold War Right-Wing Broadcasting and the Public Interest While immediately recognizable throughout the U.S. and many other countries, media mainstays like X-Men, Star Trek, and Transformers achieved such familiarity through constant reincarnation. In each case, the initial success of a single product led to a long-term embrace of media franchising—a dynamic process in which media workers from different industrial positions shared in and reproduced familiar cultureacross television, film, comics, games, and merchandising. In Media Franchising, Derek Johnson examines the corporate culture behind these production practices, as well as the collaborative and creative efforts involved in conceiving, sustaining, and sharing intellectual properties in media work worlds. Challenging connotations of homogeneity, Johnson shows how the cultural and industrial logic of franchising has encouraged media industries to reimagine creativity as an opportunity for exchange among producers, licensees, and evenconsumers. Drawing on case studies and interviews with media producers, he reveals the meaningful identities, cultural hierarchies, and struggles for distinction that accompany collaboration within these production networks. Media Franchising provides a nuanced portrait of the collaborative cultural production embedded in both the media industries and our own daily lives.

Point of Sale offers the first significant attempt to center media retail as a vital component in the study of popular culture. It brings together fifteen essays by top media scholars with their fingers on the pulse of both the changes that foreground retail in a digital age and the history that has made retail a fundamental part of the culture industries. The book reveals why retail matters as a site of transactional significance to industries as well as a crucial locus of meaning and interactional participation for consumers. In addition to examining how industries connect books, DVDs, video games, lifestyle products, toys, and more to consumers, it also interrogates the changes in media circulation driven by the collision of digital platforms with existing retail institutions. By grappling with the contexts in which we buy media, Point of Sale uncovers the underlying tensions that define the contemporary culture industries.

Introducing a new concept in family businesses Transgenerational Entrepreneurship addresses how these businesses achieve growth and longevity through entrepreneurial activities. It focuses on the resources, capabilities and mindsets that families develop and draw upon in order to be entrepreneurial across generations, and presents findings from an international research collaboration between family business researchers and practitioners. In addition to a comprehensive conceptual chapter, the editors include a unique set of empirical case-based research papers that investigates transgenerational entrepreneurship in different European contexts. They bring together and integrate frontier research on entrepreneurship and family business, as well as provide a basis for future research. Academics, teachers and students in business and management, entrepreneurship and family business will find this path-breaking book of value, as will libraries, policy makers and consultants.

"Spreadable Media" maps fundamental changes taking place in the contemporary media environment, a space where corporations no longer tightly control media distribution. This book challenges some of the prevailing frameworks used to describe contemporary media.

"Vital for any organization with multigenerational staffs, and for marketers, public relations professionals, HRD managers, or executives." Library Journal, Starred Review Gentelligence: The Revolutionary Approach to Leading an Intergenerational Workforce presents a transformative way to end the generational wars once and for all. This book first introduces Gentelligence as a powerful business strategy and shows why it is critical for the future of work. It then presents a practical guide and a call to action for leaders of all ages to unlock the potential strengths of each generation. Readers will learn how an intergenerational workforce can be reframed as a profound business opportunity and discover how Gentelligence can help them win the talent war, create strong, diverse teams, and build adaptable cultures that will flourish in an era of rapid change. Gentelligence shares groundbreaking evidence that will have readers thinking about their generationally diverse workforce in an entirely different way. Readers will discover: Where generational conflict originates, and how it results in both dangerous ageism and reverse ageism in today’s workplaces. Why the generation gap stems from a misunderstanding of shared core values across all generations. How to find essential common ground with colleagues, both older and younger, and recognize the unique needs that come with different generational identities. How generational shaming leads us to view those from other generations as competitors rather than collaborators, further damaging employee engagement, team dynamics, innovation, and organizational culture. How leveraging the unique strengths of each generation at work can lead to a win-win outcome for all. How traditional views on leadership have been turned upside down as a result of new generational dynamics, with many employees currently being led by managers that are younger than themselves, and older leaders struggling to make sense of changing norms around authority and power. Gentelligence reveals the opportunities within an intergenerational workforce and provides actionable tools to help leaders build Gentelligent organizations. Unlike other books on generational leadership, this book rejects common stereotypes assigned to different generations, replacing them with a deep understanding of why those who grew up in different times may behave in unique and valuable, ways. We challenge leaders to go beyond simply accepting generational differences to leverage them proactively to increase engagement, innovation, and organizational success.

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