Critical Industrial Practice

Abstract

This article examines the integral, reflexive, and critical functions that industrial texts play in contemporary corporate repurposing, cross-collateralization, and branding. More than simply practitioner discourses, the article takes as its object what it terms the “low theoretical” tendencies found in “deep” industrial texts to better understand the critical-theoretical competencies and marketing imperatives behind the textual practices of the new media conglomerates. The article reconsiders the tripartite model offered by Fiske and Gripsrud, by showing how secondary and tertiary television texts persistently migrate toward primary textual status in the current American multichannel flow. A close examination of industrial textual practice (programming events, network branding [the NBC-2000 campaign], station IDs, making-ofs, video press kits, promo tapes, TV-web synergies, and ancillary marketing) shows how the industry theorizes its presence in moving image form, even as it teaches the audience at home by publicly circulating (sanctioned) “insider” knowledge about the televisual apparatus.