Rewind, Replay: Britain and the Video Boom, 1978-1992

by Johnny Walker

Overview

Rewind, Replay explores the birth and maturation of the pre-recorded video entertainment business in the UK. Informed by archival research and the examination of contemporaneous trade periodicals, industrial documentation and ephemera, it scrutinises distributors, wholesalers and shops. It explores industry shifts previoulsy unconsidered in scholarship, including video rental, market rationalisation and the development of ‘sell-though’ videocassettes to identify the key factors that led to the video boom.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474454483
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	06/15/2022
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Johnny Walker is Associate Professor in the Department of Arts at Northumbria University. His authored books include, Contemporary British Horror Cinema: Industry, Genre and Society (2015), as editor, Hammer and Beyond: The British Horror Film (by Peter Hutchings, 2021), and as co-editor, Grindhouse: Cultural Exchange on 42nd Street, and Beyond (2016). His scholarship can be found in numerous journals and anthologies.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Rewind, replay

1. We’ve got it taped
2. Shrugging off the recession
3. Threats and benefits
4. Regulation and adaptation
5. Independent spirit vs. corporate muscle

Conclusion: Video legacies

Editorial Reviews

Walker authoritatively chronicles the formative years of the home video boom in Britain. By tracing the distributors, shops and clubs that brought video into UK homes, he identifies the conditions that enabled popular uptake of a new entertainment technology. In so doing, Walker provides us with essential coordinates for grasping the full significance of this transitional period in the history of screen media in Britain.

Paul McDonald

In Rewind, Replay, Johnny Walker traces with exemplary clarity and copious detail the evolution of video distribution and retail in Britain from 1978 to 1992. A great deal has been written about ‘video nasties’ but far less about the industry in which they, and many other kinds of videos, circulated. This is a much-needed and very welcome addition to the literature on the early days of video in the UK.

Julian Petley

Rewind, Replay is a formidable addition to an important and growing body of scholarship establishing home video as a prelude to the digitalization of life. Walker shows how marketing and distribution of analogue video folded ‘cinema’ into a swathe of other activities.He does so with skill and depth.

Frederick Wasser

A loving, and detailed account of how video 'boomed’, and bust, in Britain [...] The way in which Walker has brought together different magazine and journal material to generate a historical snapshot of a burgeoning industry is wonderful [...] an illuminating, poignant and insightful text that establishes an important and previously unclear historical narrative.

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television - Graeme R. Spurr

Written in lively prose that is infused with Walker’s clear passion for the subject, Rewind, Replay is as engaging as it is insightful [...] this book is essential reading for students and researchers that specialize in home video as well as those that focus on British media culture.

European Journal of Cultural Studies - Daniel Herbert

An illuminating, poignant and insightful text that establishes an important and previously unclear historical narrative.

Radio and Television Historical Journal of Film