Wide-Screen Television and Home Movies: Towards an Archaeology of Television and Cinema Convergence Before Digitalisation

In this article, Tom Steward uses past interrelations of television and cinema spectatorship, exhibition, production and aesthetics to historicize phenomenological digital-era discourses on, ontological definitions of, and cultural arguments about television and cinema convergence. He argues that television and cinema assisted in defining each other as late 20^th Century media and cultural forms, have a multi-directional industrial and artistic flow, and are often interdependent in reception and distribution. Television and cinema convergence demonstrates the need for historical breadth in media convergence theory and an understanding of medium-specificity that incorporates interactions with other media.