Download or read book The Columbia History of American Television written by Gary Richard Edgerton and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richly researched and engaging, The Columbia History of American Television tracks the growth of TV into a convergent technology, a global industry, a social catalyst, a viable art form, and a complex and dynamic reflection of the American mind and character. Renowned media historian Gary R. Edgerton follows the technological progress and increasing cultural relevance of television from its prehistory (before 1947) to the Network Era (1948-1975) and the Cable Era (1976-1994). He considers the remodeling of television's look and purpose during World War II; the gender, racial, and ethnic components of its early broadcasts and audiences; its transformation of postwar America; and its function in the political life of the country. In conclusion, Edgerton takes a discerning look at our current Digital Era and the new forms of instantaneous communication that continue to change America's social, political, and economic landscape.
Download or read book Down The Tube written by William Baker and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The president of public television's flagship station and a longtime senior CBS executive reveals the surprising reasons today's television programs are so bad. Written by insiders who have played on both sides of the programming game, DOWN THE TUBE is a sweeping examination of the history of television and an important indictment of the mercenary mentality that taints the most powerful medium in the world.
Download or read book Quality TV written by Janet McCabe and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2007-09-26 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his seminal book "Television's Second Golden Age", Robert Thompson described quality TV as 'best defined by what it is not': 'it is not "regular" TV'. Audacious maybe, but his statement renewed debate on the meaning of this highly contentious term. Dealing primarily with the post-1996 era shaped by digital technologies and defined by consumer choice and brand marketing, this book brings together leading scholars, established journalists and experienced broadcasters working in the field of contemporary television to debate what we currently mean by quality TV. They go deep into contemporary American television fictions, from "The Sopranos" and "The West Wing", to "CSI" and "Lost" - innovative, sometimes controversial, always compelling dramas, which one scholar has described as 'now better than the movies!' But how do we understand the emergence of these kinds of fiction? Are they genuinely new? What does quality TV have to tell us about the state of today's television market? And is this a new Golden Age of quality TV? Original, often polemic, each chapter proposes new ways of thinking about and defining quality TV. There is a foreword from Robert Thompson, and heated dialogue between British and US television critics. Also included - and a great coup - are interviews with W. Snuffy Walden (scored "The West Wing" among others) and with David Chase ("The Sopranos" creator). "Quality TV" provides throughout groundbreaking and innovative theoretical and critical approaches to studying television and for understanding the current - and future - TV landscape.
Download or read book Television and American Culture written by Jason Mittell and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2010 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring television at once as a technological medium, an economic system, a facet of democracy, and a part of everyday life, this landmark text uses numerous sidebars and case studies to demonstrate the past, immediate, and far-reaching effects of American culture on television--and television's influence on American culture. Arranged topically, the book provides a broad historical overview of television while also honing in on such finer points as the formal attributes of its various genres and its role in gender and racial identity formation.
Download or read book America As Seen on TV written by Clara E. Rodríguez and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2018-03-20 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist, 2020 Latino Book Awards, Best Academic Themed Book The surprising effects of American TV on global viewers As a dominant cultural export, American television is often the first exposure to American ideals and the English language for many people throughout the world. Yet, American television is flawed, and, it represents race, class, and gender in ways that many find unfair and unrealistic. What happens, then, when people who grew up on American television decide to come to the United States? What do they expect to find, and what do they actually find? In America, As Seen on TV, Clara E. Rodríguez surveys international college students and foreign nationals working or living in the US to examine the impact of American television on their views of the US and on their expectations of life in the United States. She finds that many were surprised to learn that America is racially and economically diverse, and that it is not the easy-breezy, happy endings culture portrayed in the media, but a work culture. The author also surveys US-millennials about their consumption of US TV and finds that both groups share the sense that American TV does not accurately reflect racial/ethnic relations in the US as they have experienced them. However, the groups differ on how much they think US TV has influenced their views on sex, smoking and drinking. America, As Seen on TV explores the surprising effects of TV on global viewers and the realities they and US millennials actually experience in the US.
Download or read book Race in American Television 2 volumes written by David J. Leonard and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 901 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This two-volume encyclopedia explores representations of people of color in American television. It includes overview essays on early, classic, and contemporary television and the challenges for, developments related to, and participation of minorities on and behind the screen. Covering five decades, this encyclopedia highlights how race has shaped television and how television has shaped society. Offering critical analysis of moments and themes throughout television history, Race in American Television shines a spotlight on key artists of color, prominent shows, and the debates that have defined television since the civil rights movement. This book also examines the ways in which television has been a site for both reproduction of stereotypes and resistance to them, providing a basis for discussion about racial issues in the United States. This set provides a significant resource for students and fans of television alike, not only educating but also empowering readers with the necessary tools to consume and watch the small screen and explore its impact on the evolution of racial and ethnic stereotypes in U.S. culture and beyond. Understanding the history of American television contributes to deeper knowledge and potentially helps us to better apprehend the plethora of diverse shows and programs on Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, and other platforms today.
Download or read book Same Time Same Station written by James L. Baughman and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2007-03-26 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Outstanding Academic Title for 2007, Choice Magazine Ever wonder how American television came to be the much-derided, advertising-heavy home to reality programming, formulaic situation comedies, hapless men, and buxom, scantily clad women? Could it have been something different, focusing instead on culture, theater, and performing arts? In Same Time, Same Station, historian James L. Baughman takes readers behind the scenes of early broadcasting, examining corporate machinations that determined the future of television. Split into two camps—those who thought TV could meet and possibly raise the expectations of wealthier, better-educated post-war consumers and those who believed success meant mimicking the products of movie houses and radio—decision makers fought a battle of ideas that peaked in the 1950s, just as TV became a central facet of daily life for most Americans. Baughman’s engagingly written account of the brief but contentious debate shows how the inner workings and outward actions of the major networks, advertisers, producers, writers, and entertainers ultimately made TV the primary forum for entertainment and information. The tale of television's founding years reveals a series of decisions that favored commercial success over cultural aspiration.
Download or read book Science on American Television written by Marcel Chotkowski LaFollette and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume narrates the history of science on television, from the 1940s to the turn of the 21st-century, to demonstrate how disagreements between scientists and television executives inhibited the medium's potential to engage in meaningful science education.
Download or read book The American Television Industry written by Michael Curtin and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American Television Industry offers a concise and accessible introduction to TV production, programming, advertising, and distribution in the United States. The authors outline how programs are made and marketed, and furthermore provide an insightful overview of key players, practices, and future trends.
Download or read book Saturday Night Live American TV written by Nick Marx and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-02 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thought-provoking and “undeniably interesting” essays on this cultural institution of comedy and what it says about our society (Booklist). Since 1975, “Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” has greeted late night–TV viewers looking for the best in sketch comedy and popular music. SNL is the variety show that launched the careers of countless comedians, including Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, Chris Farley, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Adam Sandler. Week after week, SNL has produced everything from unforgettable parodies to provocative political satire—adapting to changing times decade after decade while staying true to its original vision of performing timely topical humor. With essays that address issues ranging from race and gender to authorship and comedic performance, Saturday Night Live and American TV follows the history of this iconic show, and its place in the shifting social and media landscape of American television.
Download or read book Televisuality written by John T Caldwell and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2020-08-14 with total page 667 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although the "decline" of network television in the face of cable programming was an institutional crisis of television history, John Caldwell's classic volume Televisuality reveals that this decline spawned a flurry of new production initiatives to reassert network authority. Television in the 1980s hyped an extensive array of exhibitionist practices to raise the prime-time marquee above the multi-channel flow. Televisuality demonstrates the cultural logic of stylistic exhibitionism in everything from prestige series (Northern Exposure) and "loss-leader" event-status programming (War and Remembrance) to lower "trash" and "tabloid" forms (Pee-Wee's Playhouse and reality TV). Caldwell shows how "import-auteurs" like Oliver Stone and David Lynch were stylized for prime time as videographics packaged and tamed crisis news coverage. By drawing on production experience and critical and cultural analysis, and by tying technologies to aesthetics and ideology, Televisuality is a powerful call for desegregation of theory and practice in media scholarship and an end to the willful blindness of "high theory."
Download or read book The Antihero in American Television written by Margrethe Bruun Vaage and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-14 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The antihero prevails in recent American drama television series. Characters such as mobster kingpin Tony Soprano (The Sopranos), meth cook and gangster-in-the-making Walter White (Breaking Bad) and serial killer Dexter Morgan (Dexter) are not morally good, so how do these television series make us engage in these morally bad main characters? And what does this tell us about our moral psychological make-up, and more specifically, about the moral psychology of fiction? Vaage argues that the fictional status of these series deactivates rational, deliberate moral evaluation, making the spectator rely on moral emotions and intuitions that are relatively easy to manipulate with narrative strategies. Nevertheless, she also argues that these series regularly encourage reactivation of deliberate, moral evaluation. In so doing, these fictional series can teach us something about ourselves as moral beings—what our moral intuitions and emotions are, and how these might differ from deliberate, moral evaluation.
Download or read book Women Watching Television written by Andrea L. Press and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 1991-03 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women's inclinations to identify with television characters varies with their assessment of the realism of these characters and their social world.
Download or read book Tube of Plenty written by Erik Barnouw and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1990-05-31 with total page 616 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on the classic History of Broadcasting in the United States, Tube of Plenty represents the fruit of several decades' labor. When Erik Barnouw--premier chronicler of American broadcasting and a participant in the industry for fifty years--first undertook the project of recording its history, many viewed it as a light-weight literary task concerned mainly with "entertainment" trivia. Indeed, trivia such as that found in quiz programs do appear in the book, but Barnouw views them as part of a complex social tapestry that increasingly defines our era. To understand our century, we must fully comprehend the evolution of television and its newest extraordinary offshoots. With this fact in mind, Barnouw's new edition of Tube of Plenty explores the development and impact of the latest dramatic phases of the communications revolution. Since the first publication of this invaluable history of television and how it has shaped, and been shaped by, American culture and society, many significant changes have occurred. Assessing the importance of these developments in a new chapter, Barnouw specifically covers the decline of the three major networks, the expansion of cable and satellite television and film channels such as HBO (Home Box Office), the success of channels catering to special audiences such as ESPN (Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) and MTV (Music Television), and the arrival of VCRs in America's living rooms. He also includes an appendix entitled "questions for a new millennium," which will challenge readers not only to examine the shape of television today, but also to envision its future.
Download or read book The Forgotten Network written by David Weinstein and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The heart of David Weinstein's book examines DuMont's programs and personalities, including Dennis James, Captain Video, Morey Amsterdam, Jackie Gleason and The Honeymooners, Ernie Kovacs, and Rocky King, Detective. Weinstein uses rare kinescopes, archival photographs, exclusive interviews, trade journal articles, and corporate documents to tell the story of a "forgotten network" that helped invent the very business of network television."--Jacket.
Download or read book TV The Book written by Alan Sepinwall and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is The Wire better than Breaking Bad? Is Cheers better than Seinfeld? What's the best high school show ever made? Why did Moonlighting really fall apart? Was the Arrested Development Netflix season brilliant or terrible? For twenty years-since they shared a TV column at Tony Soprano's hometown newspaper-critics Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz have been debating these questions and many more, but it all ultimately boils down to this: What's the greatest TV show ever? That debate reaches an epic conclusion in TV (THE BOOK). Sepinwall and Seitz have identified and ranked the 100 greatest scripted shows in American TV history. Using a complex, obsessively all-encompassing scoring system, they've created a Pantheon of top TV shows, each accompanied by essays delving into what made these shows great. From vintage classics like The Twilight Zone and I Love Lucy to modern masterpieces like Mad Men and Friday Night Lights, from huge hits like All in the Family and ER to short-lived favorites like Firefly and Freaks and Geeks, TV (THE BOOK) will bring the triumphs of the small screen together in one amazing compendium. Sepinwall and Seitz's argument has ended. Now it's time for yours to begin!
Download or read book Rerun Nation written by Derek Kompare and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-07-13 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rerun Nation is a fascinating approach to television history and theory through the ubiquitous yet overlooked phenomenon of reruns. Kompare covers both historical and conceptual ground, weaving together a refresher course in the history of television with a critical analysis of how reruns have shaped the cultural, economic, and legal terrains of American television. Given the expanding use of past media texts not only in the United States, but also in virtually every media-rich society, this book addresses a critical facet of everyday life.
