Juan Monroy — Module on Curtin and Amaya

Michael Curtin, “On Edge: Culture Industries in the Neo-Network Era,” in Making & Selling Culture, ed. Richard Malin Ohmann et al. (Hanover, N.H.: Wesleyan University Press, 1996).
Hector Amaya, “Citizenship, Diversity, Law and Ugly Betty,” Media, Culture & Society 32, no. 5 (September 1, 2010): 801–17.

For each of the following quotes from the assigned essays, interpret and summarize the quote in your own words—in about two to three sentences in length.

“The high network era was in large in part a product of explicit government policy that began during television’s infancy, the late 1940s and early 1950s when major corporations in the entertainment and electronics industries wrestled among themselves for control of broadcast licenses and struggled over the technical standards that would guide equipment manufacture“ (Curtin 182).
“Nevertheless, [time warner] has strategically positioned itself to reap the benefits of creative work carried out in a variety of contexts: large-scale, highly integrated enterprises (Time Magazine), boutique production operations (TV sitcoms), and seemingly autonomous niche venues (Death Row Records). Note that each operation targets a different market: the middle-class, college-educated reader; the mass television audience; and the trendy, urban youth culture” (Curtin 192).
“This lack of representation in media work is worrisome, not only because it represents the exclusion of Latinas/os from the enormous wealth that media industries generate, but, as importantly, because it has laid the basis for culturally normalizing Latino disenfranchisement” (Amaya 806).
“Because today more advertisers believe in the strength of the Hispanic market, television, which typically has been inhospitable to Latinas/os, may see a gradual change. If discourse around Ugly Betty is any indication, these changes will be defined partly in terms of diversity. But this is not the diversity of the civil rights era, but a social and economic tactic aimed at attracting new profits, new markets, and securing success for mainstream media in a Latinized future” (Amaya 813).