Such platforms exemplify the multifaceted way of looking at and gaining access to television programming through a variety of connected platforms and screens in the current multi-platform era. This article takes a closer look at television’s abilities to circulate and contextualize the past in the current era of convergence through narrowcasting or niche programming on digital television platforms, specifically via nostalgia programming. This is evidenced by the increasing popularity of reboots, newly developed history and documentary programming, re-use of archival footage and nostalgia content.

Modern audiences engage with representations of the past in a particular way via the medium of television, negotiating a shared understanding of the past.

I zoom in on the role of creative production practices (so-called screen practices) and their social aspects in the construction of memory, in relation to the increasingly dynamic and multi-platform medium that television has become today, and present a dynamic model for studying contemporary television and screen culture as cultural memory.

How do the creative practices of media professionals contribute to cultural memory formation today? What is the role of using audiovisual archives to inform and educate viewers about the past? And how can researchers study these dynamic, contemporary representations of past events, and the contribution of audiovisual sources to cultural memory? In this chapter, I consider how new forms of television and cross-media productions, collected in and distributed by audiovisual archives, affect the medium television as a practice of cultural memory in the multi-platform landscape. In the modern, overabundant information landscape, information is accessible on and across multiple media platforms and screens, making television and audiovisual memory ever more available.

Izoom productions