About
I’m currently an Associate Professor and Chair of
Film and Media Arts in the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University. My current research interests focus on the fate of physical media in the digital age, and more broadly on how older media forms, texts, and objects “age.” At SMU, I teach courses on media industries, media history, media theory, and media fandom. As Chair of our program, I’m interested in updating our curriculum and practices to better serve the needs of 21st century media practitioners and citizens, and in evolving broader, more inclusive, and more effective models of higher education.
MastodonEducation
Ph.D. (1999) in Media and Cultural Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison
M.A. (1994) in Telecommunications, University of Wisconsin-Madison
B.A. (1990) in Media Arts, University of Arizona Mastodon Feed
I've started a Bluesky account, due to the groundswell of folks in my networks who never made the move over here. I'm still on the Fedi at this account as well, but may decide if/how to make these accounts more distinct. Anyway, come follow me over there as well! https://bsky.app/profile/dkompare.bsky.social (2024-11-30 ↗)
Test – Complete the sequence: SQUAWK! Hallelujah! ? (2024-11-22 ↗)
I'm so Gen X I automatically play appropriate music cues and sound effects from ancient TV shows in my head for every situation I encounter. #Television #GenX (2024-11-21 ↗)
Really looking forward to the upcoming game Hollywood Animal. Here's a nice explanation of why and how they went with a detailed but playful 2D design in an era when even strategy games are 3D. #Games https://youtu.be/HQZZOFVSXx8?si=MnNdd6cZ_yuKaX2P (2024-11-19 ↗)
In having to contend with AI despite not remotely wanting to, I find myself wondering about all the food companies and restaurants that had to deal with the onslaught of high fructose corn syrup and McDonald's-style processing in the 1960s and 1970s. #AI #HigherEd (2024-11-18 ↗)
Publications
Books
Making Media Work: Cultures of Management in the Entertainment Industries
(co-edited with Derek Johnson and Avi Santo), NYU 2014
CSI, Wiley-Blackwell 2010
Rerun Nation: How Repeats Invented American Television, Routledge 2005
Articles
“MeTV: Old-Time TV’s Last Stand?,” in Derek Johnson, ed.,
From Networks to Netflix: A Guide to Changing Channels (85-93)
, Routledge 2018
“Fan Curators and the Gateways into Fandom,” in Melissa A. Click and Suzanne Scott, eds.,
The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom (107-13), Routledge 2018
“Flow,” in Laurie Ouellette and Jonathan Gray, eds.,
Keywords For Media Studies (72-74), NYU 2017
“Landmark Television: The Twilight Zone,” in Jason Mittell and Ethan Thompson, eds.,
How To Watch Television (299-307), NYU 2013
“Filling The Box: Television in Higher Education,”
Cinema Journal 50.4 (2011), 161-65
“More ‘Moments of Television’: Online Cult Television Authorship,” in Michael Kackman et al, eds.,
Flow TV: Television in the Age of Media Convergence (95-113), Routledge 2011
“Reruns 2.0: Revising Repetition for Multi-Platform Television Distribution,”
Journal of Popular Film and Television 38.2 (2010), 79-83
“The Benefits of Banality: Syndication in the Post-Network Era,” in Amanda D. Lotz, ed.,
Beyond Prime Time: Television Programming in the Post-Network Era (55-74), Routledge 2009
“Extraordinarily Ordinary: The Osbournes as ‘An American Family’,” in Susan Murray and Laurie Ouellette, eds.,
Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture (2nd Ed.) (100-119), NYU 2009
“Publishing Flow: DVD Box Sets and the Reconception of Television,”
Television and New Media 7.4 (2006), 335-60
“’Greyish Rectangles’: Creating the Television Heritage in the 1970s,”
Media History 9.2 (2003), 153-69
“I’ve Seen This One Before: The Construction of ‘Classic TV’ on Cable Television,” in Janet Thumim, ed.,
Small Screens, Big Ideas: Television in the 1950s (19-34), I.B. Tauris 2001
Upcoming Talks and Conferences
“The History of Media History” (roundtable participant)
Radio Preservation Task Force conference
Washington, DC, April 27-30, 2023
