Reproducing Television Canons: Streaming Services and the Legacy of Linear TV

Abstract

Rosenbaum describes his experience defending Citizen Kane (1942) as an important cinematic work while a film student at New York University in the early 1960s, noting the pushback he received from a professor (xi). Today, most film programs touch on the historical and artistic importance of Citizen Kane at some point in introductory or film history courses. However, as Rosenbaum's anecdote indicates, which media texts are valued as "important" is highly fluid, and oftentimes works previously judged as unremarkable will be rediscovered and reevaluated by contemporary audiences (e.g., many science fiction B-films of the 1950s). Moreover, Rosenbaum remembers how film criticism publications were much more "consequential" (xii) in cultivating his taste in film than were his courses within the academy. Rosenbaum writes about film canons in order to counteract the marketing campaigns of film studios, which he believes set the agenda for which films are considered "canonical" in contemporary culture (xvii). Writing in 2010, Rosenbaum's perspective comes from a time when streaming services like Netflix and Hulu were in their infancies and neither had begun creating original content. For Rosenbaum, media canonization was dominated by traditional marketing campaigns from studios and the writings of film and television critics. Lucas Hilderbrand nuances this view, suggesting video-ondemand (VOD) services, each of which is supported by a multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD), are central components of distribution strategies for major and independent film studios, as