---

This book is the first authoritative account of the UK´s independent television production sector, following the creation of Channel 4 in 1982. It examines the rise of a global industry, increasingly interconnected through format development, distribution, ancillary sales and rights. Drawing on case studies, interviews and policy analysis; the author considers the cultural politics behind the growth of the ´indies´, the labour conditions for workers in this sector, and some of the key television programmes that have been created within it. Filling an important gap in our understanding, this book constitutes a comprehensive account of this vital cultural industry for students, academics and researchers working in the areas of the cultural and creative industries, media and cultural policy and television studies.

---

1. Chapter 1: Introduction: Situating Independent Television in the cultural economy.- 2. Part I: Independent transformations. The politics of independence: Contextualising independent television production in the UK - Chapter 2. The creation of the independent sector in the UK.- 3. Chapter 3. Creative Industries policy and the rise of the ´mega-indies´; Independent television production in the age of New Labour.- 4. Part II: Working in independent television - Chapter 4: Creative labour and social change.- 5. Chapter 5 Working in the Indies: Precarity, value and burnout.- 6. Chapter 6 Networks, social capital and the burden of performativity.- 7. Part III: Cultural Value - Chapter 7 Independent Creativity.- 8. Chapter 8: Commercialisation, consolidation and cultural value: The restructuring of the British independent television industry, and the implications for production.- 9. Chapter 9. Conclusion: towards a moral economy of independent television production.

---

David Lee is Lecturer in Cultural Industries and Communication at the University of Leeds, UK. He is the co-author of C ulture, Economy and Politics: The Case of New Labour (2015) and co-editor of Advancing Media Production Research (2016). He has published extensively in refereed journals and his research has been funded by the AHRC and the ESRC.

---