Sport Beyond Television


Book Description

Computers, the Internet, Web, mobile, and other digital media are increasingly important technologies in the production and consumption of sports media. Sport Beyond Television analyzes the changes that have given rise to this situation, combining theoretical insights with original evidence collected through extensive research and interviews with people working in the media and sport industries. It locates sports media as a pivotal component in online content economies and cultures, and counteracts the scant scholarly attention to sports media when compared to music, film and publishing in convergent media cultures.




Beyond Television


Book Description

Since the cable revolution of the 1990s and early 2000s, the TV landscape has changed dramatically. Beyond Television explores the modern mediascape and changes in television production through analyses of prominent TV series (e.g. True Detective, Transparent, Better Call Saul, Stranger Things, Twin Peaks: The Return and Euphoria) and interviews with more than 100 people from the industry, including David Chase, David Simon, Mary Harron, Nic Pizzolatto, Beau Willimon, Tricia Brock, Jesse Armstrong, Jay Duplass, Joel Fields, Tom Fontana, Angela Kang, Peter Gould, Derek Cianfrance, Tom Perrotta, Sabrina Sutherland and Sam Levinson.




Cable Visions


Book Description

Looks beyond broadcasting's mainstream, toward cable's alternatives, to critically consider the capacity of commercial media to serve the public interest. This work offers an overview of the industry's history and regulatory trends, case studies of cable newcomers aimed at niche markets, and analyses of programming forms introduced by cable TV.




Beyond Sitcom


Book Description

This book explores the mechanisms that have driven the evolution of televisual comedy from the classic sitcom, a genre deeply rooted in its theatrical origins, toward a more mature stage of television's history. It analyzes four comic series--Scrubs, The Office, The Comeback, and Ugly Betty--revealing how each separates itself from the traditional sitcom archetype and shows increased awareness of the comic genre. Throughout the author focuses on two cardinal themes: the relationship between comedy and euphoria; and the relationship between comic texts and reality.




Television Beyond and Across the Iron Curtain


Book Description

From the mid-1950s onwards, the rise of television as a mass medium took place in many East and West European countries. As the most influential mass medium of the Cold War, television triggered new practices of consumption and media production, and of communication and exchange on both sides of the Iron Curtain. This volume leans on the long-neglected fact that, even during the Cold War era, television could easily become a cross-border matter. As such, it brings together transnational perspectives on convergence zones, observations, collaborations, circulations and interdependencies between Eastern and Western television. In particular, the authors provide empirical ground to include socialist television within a European and global media history. Historians and media, cultural and literary scholars take interdisciplinary perspectives to focus on structures, actors, flow, contents or the reception of cross-border television. Their contributions cover Albania, the CSSR, the GDR, Russia and the Soviet Union, Serbia, Slovenia and Yugoslavia, thus complementing Western-dominated perspectives on Cold War mass media with a specific focus on the spaces and actors of East European communication. Last but not least, the volume takes a long-term perspective crossing the fall of the Iron Curtain, as many trends of the post-socialist period are linked to, or pick up, socialist traditions.




Quality TV


Book Description

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.




Open TV


Book Description

Introduction: independents change the channel -- Developing open tv: innovation for the open network, 1995-2005 -- Open tv production: revaluing creative labor -- Open tv representation: reforming cultural politics -- Open tv distribution: struggling for an independent market -- Scaling open tv: the challenges of big data television -- Epilogue: open tv and the future of the networked era




Beyond Prime Time


Book Description

Beyond Prime Time brings together established television scholars writing new chapters in their areas of expertise that reconsider how programming forms other than prime-time series have been affected by the wide-ranging industrial changes instituted over the past twenty years. The chapters explore the relationship between textual and industrial changes in particular forms such as news, talk, sports, soap operas, syndication, children’s programming, made-for-television movies, public broadcasting, and local programming.




Television and Social Behavior


Book Description

This book, published originally in 1980, addressed the needs for a profile of televised violence which considered the advantages and disadvantages of various measures and for a furthering of research directions beyond the then-popular emphasis on children. The Committee on Television and Social Behavior was formed in1972 and stimulated new research in order to provide a multidimensional profile of the social effects of television programming. Chapters here look at the effect of television on adults as well as children, particularly special audiences such as the elderly and minority groups. An excellent summary of the various conceptual, substantive and methodological issues around television’s influence.




Beyond the Box


Book Description

Beyond the Box gives students and couch potatoes alike a better understanding of what it means to watch television in an era of profound technological change. Charts the revolution in television viewing that is currently underway in living rooms across the world Probes how the Internet’s development has altered how television is made and consumed Looks at a range of topics and programmes - from voting practices on American Idol to online forums for Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans Offers a fresh and innovative perspective that focuses on the shift in audience experience and how it has blurred established boundaries