Kirjahaku

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.

Rewind, Replay is the first history of Britain’s video boom. It considers the earliest video distributors who, from the late 1970s, took chances on a wide range of films and other programmes to attract consumer interest. It also addresses the phenomenon of the video shop, the speed with which video rental became a habitual practice among the British public, and the key industry players who, at the height of a recession, invested wholesale into what contemporaneous media reportage was describing as a mere ‘plaything’. Media historian Johnny Walker explores how distributors and store owners navigated various pressures including piracy, the video nasties moral panic and market rationalisation, as well as significant developments including the introduction of new legislation bespoke to the video medium and the corporate expansion of the industry in the late 1980s and early 1990s, to show how the pre-recorded videocassette, over the course of a few years, became a staple of high street retail.