This project adheres to the methodological tenets of television studies: mixed methods attention to producers, the text, and audiences and a sensitivity to both micro- and macro-levels of meaning creation. This case study provides access to a variety of relevant media studies issues: how talent networks function, the relationship between media in the convergence era, and the exploration of a fourth wave of feminism. Furthermore, their critical and popular success fits neatly within the current trend of politically-motivated, female-driven content, from Amy Schumer to Tavi Gevinson. Close analysis of this trajectory suggests that television is far from an outdated medium, nor is it the lowest rung of the media hierarchy ladder.
#BROAD CITY VCHAT SERIES#
By early 2015, the series had been picked up for a third season and Jacobson and Glazer have become veritable media darlings, appearing on late night talk shows, being featured in The New Yorker, and competing on Spike TV’s Lip Sync Battle.
After two short online ‘seasons,’ the series premiered on Comedy Central in January 2013. Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer created the YouTube series Broad City in 2010.
#BROAD CITY VCHAT UPDATE#
I update his argument within the context of a globalized, (post)feminist, and convergent media ecology. In addition, this project takes up Fiske’s argument that television, as a populist medium, enables subversive messages, while foreclosing truly oppositional readings due to the industry’s deep connections with capitalism. Comedy Central’s Broad City provides a case study through which I explore the relationship between YouTube and cable television. YouTube artists create series with clear intentions of moving to television network executives mine online spaces for new products and new technologies promote more fluid viewing habits: audiences ‘cast’ online content to their television sets and use the Internet to watch and engage with their favorite television series.
In an increasingly fragmented media landscape, the lines between televisual and web-based content have become blurred, if not altogether meaningless.
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