Beyond Branding: The Value of Intersectionality on Streaming TV Channels

This article argues that independent TV channels releasing narratives of intersecting identities innovate in the organization and technological dissemination of representations, specifying cultural production in ways that more fully value communities in the United States and at times abroad. Through interviews with founders of ten currently running and defunct independent channels, I show how the value of intersectionality is not simply in branding corporate channels or supplying them with new narratives but also in critiquing and reinventing industrial practices to accommodate communities historically excluded from the system. These indie channels allow scholars to see the work of development itself, chronically understudied despite its rapid expansion through net-neutral web distribution and its legacy as the process from which all TV shows emerge.