Television Entertainment

Television Entertainment PDF Author: Jonathan Gray
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113525348X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Television entertainment rules supreme, one of the world’s most important disseminators of information, ideas, and amusement. More than a parade of little figures in a box, it is deeply embedded in everyday life, in how we think, what we think and care about, and who we think and care about it with. But is television entertainment art? Why do so many love it and so many hate or fear it? Does it offer a window to the world, or images of a fake world? How is it political and how does it address us as citizens? What powers does it hold, and what powers do we have over it? Or, for that matter, what is television these days, in an era of rapidly developing technologies, media platforms, and globalization? Written especially for students, Television Entertainment addresses these and other key questions that we regularly ask, or should ask. Jonathan Gray offers a lively and dynamic, thematically based overview with examples from recent and current television, including Lost, reality television, The Sopranos, The Simpsons, political satire, Grey’s Anatomy, The West Wing, soaps, and 24.

Television Entertainment

Television Entertainment PDF Author: Jonathan Gray
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113525348X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Get Book Here

Book Description
Television entertainment rules supreme, one of the world’s most important disseminators of information, ideas, and amusement. More than a parade of little figures in a box, it is deeply embedded in everyday life, in how we think, what we think and care about, and who we think and care about it with. But is television entertainment art? Why do so many love it and so many hate or fear it? Does it offer a window to the world, or images of a fake world? How is it political and how does it address us as citizens? What powers does it hold, and what powers do we have over it? Or, for that matter, what is television these days, in an era of rapidly developing technologies, media platforms, and globalization? Written especially for students, Television Entertainment addresses these and other key questions that we regularly ask, or should ask. Jonathan Gray offers a lively and dynamic, thematically based overview with examples from recent and current television, including Lost, reality television, The Sopranos, The Simpsons, political satire, Grey’s Anatomy, The West Wing, soaps, and 24.

Television and Its Audience

Television and Its Audience PDF Author: Patrick Barwise
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1849207208
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
This book by two leading experts takes a fresh look at the nature of television, starting from an audience perspective. It draws on over twenty years of research about the audience in the United States and Britain and about the many ways in which television is funded and organized around the world. The overall picture which emerges is of: a medium which is watched for several hours a day but usually at only a low level of involvement; an audience which views mainly for relaxation but which actively chooses favourite programmes; a flowering of new channels but with no fundamental change in what or how people watch; programmes costing millions to produce but only a few pennies to view; a wide range of programme types apparently similar to the range of print media but with nothing like the same degree of audience 'segmentation'; a global communication medium of dazzling scale, speed, and impact but which is slow at conveying complex information and perhaps less powerful than generally assumed. The book is packed with information and insights yet is highly readable. It is unique in relating so many of the issues raised by television to how we watch it. There is also a highly regarded appendix on advertising, as well as technical notes, a glossary, and references for further reading.

Big World, Small Screen

Big World, Small Screen PDF Author:
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803272637
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Big World, Small Screen assesses the influence of television on the lives of the most vulnerable and powerless in American society: children, ethnic and sexual minorities, and women. Many in these groups are addicted to television, although they are not the principal audiences sought by commercial TV distributors because they are not the most lucrative markets for advertisers. This important book illustrates the power of television in stereotyping the elderly, ethnic groups, gays and lesbians, and the institutionalized and, thus, in contributing to the self-image of many viewers. They go on to consider how television affects social interaction, intellectual functioning, emotional development, and attitudes (toward family life, sexuality, and mental and physical health, for example). They illustrate the medium's potential to teach and inform, to communicate across nations and cultures?and to induce violence, callousness, and amorality. Parents will be especially interested in what they say about television viewing and children. Finally, they offer suggestions for research and public policy with the aim of producing programming that will enrich the lives of citizens all across the spectrum. Nine psychologists, members of the Task Force on Television and Society appointed by the American Psychological Association, have collaborated on Big World, Small Screen.

Television and Society

Television and Society PDF Author: Nicholas Abercrombie
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780745614359
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
This textbook is designed to introduce students to the role of television in contemporary society, and explores the structure of the television text, the way in which that text is produced and the way it is consumed.

Homicide

Homicide PDF Author: David Simon
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
ISBN: 1429900954
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 668

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Book Description
From the creator of HBO's The Wire, the classic book about homicide investigation that became the basis for the hit television show The scene is Baltimore. Twice every three days another citizen is shot, stabbed, or bludgeoned to death. At the center of this hurricane of crime is the city's homicide unit, a small brotherhood of hard men who fight for whatever justice is possible in a deadly world. David Simon was the first reporter ever to gain unlimited access to a homicide unit, and this electrifying book tells the true story of a year on the violent streets of an American city. The narrative follows Donald Worden, a veteran investigator; Harry Edgerton, a black detective in a mostly white unit; and Tom Pellegrini, an earnest rookie who takes on the year's most difficult case, the brutal rape and murder of an eleven-year-old girl. Originally published fifteen years ago, Homicide became the basis for the acclaimed television show of the same name. This new edition—which includes a new introduction, an afterword, and photographs—revives this classic, riveting tale about the men who work on the dark side of the American experience.

Television, Sex and Society

Television, Sex and Society PDF Author: Beth Johnson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1441141316
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
Since the 1990s, the screening of sex on American, British and Asian television screens has become increasingly prolific. Considering not only the specificities of selected sexualised images in relation to popular series, this study also concerns itself with the ramifications of TV sex as well as discussing the various techniques that are used by TV producers/programme makers to establish the cultural worth of their texts in series such as Shameless, The Tudors and True Blood. The contributions draw attention to shifting representations of sex on television away from the authoritarian state and patriarchal order, toward a more democratic form of representation. As a significant and under-represented aspect of contemporary television studies, this is the first full-length academic collection to consider the wide-ranging representations of sex in society on contemporary television.

Prime-Time Society

Prime-Time Society PDF Author: Conrad Phillip Kottak
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315421917
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
A landmark comparative study (U.S. and Brazil) of television's social and cultural effects on human behavior. The Updated Edition brings forward the author’s research on this topic since the original volume was published in 1990 with an extensive new Introduction.

Mainstream Culture Refocused

Mainstream Culture Refocused PDF Author: Xueping Zhong
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824860667
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Serialized television drama (dianshiju), perhaps the most popular and influential cultural form in China over the past three decades, offers a wide and penetrating look at the tensions and contradictions of the post-revolutionary and pro-market period. Zhong Xueping’s timely new work draws attention to the multiple cultural and historical legacies that coexist and challenge each other within this dominant form of story telling. Although scholars tend to focus their attention on elite cultural trends and avant garde movements in literature and film, Zhong argues for recognizing the complexity of dianshiju’s melodramatic mode and its various subgenres, in effect "refocusing" mainstream Chinese culture. Mainstream Culture Refocused opens with an examination of television as a narrative motif in three contemporary Chinese art-house films. Zhong then turns her attention to dianshiju’s most important subgenres. "Emperor dramas" highlight the link between popular culture’s obsession with emperors and modern Chinese intellectuals’ preoccupation with issues of history and tradition and how they relate to modernity. In her exploration of the "anti-corruption" subgenre, Zhong considers three representative dramas, exploring their diverse plots and emphases. "Youth dramas’" rich array of representations reveal the numerous social, economic, cultural, and ideological issues surrounding the notion of youth and its changing meanings. The chapter on the "family-marriage" subgenre analyzes the ways in which women’s emotions are represented in relation to their desire for "happiness." Song lyrics from music composed for television dramas are considered as "popular poetics." Their sentiments range between nostalgia and uncertainty, mirroring the social contradictions of the reform era. The Epilogue returns to the relationship between intellectuals and the production of mainstream cultural meaning in the context of China’s post-revolutionary social, economic, and cultural transformation. Provocative and insightful, Mainstream Culture Refocused will appeal to scholars and students in studies of modern China generally and of contemporary Chinese media and popular culture specifically.

Television Studies

Television Studies PDF Author: Gary C. Burns
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
Burns and Thompson help to remedy the lack of a forum for current research on television by bringing together, in this volume, some of the best recent research in television studies. This work will begin to fill the gap in literature on television studies as a discipline. In compiling these 13 papers, the editors maintain a balance of timely interest and lasting relevance. The contributors study the texts of current TV dramatic and comic series, such as Dallas and Cheers, as well as current trends in nonfiction TV, such as network and local news coverage. Each analysis of a specific television text is complimented with rigorous theoretical argumentation. Students and scholars of communications and television criticism will find Television Studies valuable reading. The book begins with a two-chapter debate primarily seeking a definition of `television studies.' The debate includes a critical examination of the capitalist institutions that dominate television as an industry. Further chapters discuss dramatic television series; an examination of the development of the lengthy serial text of Dallas, and structural analysis of the pilot episode of Cheers. The book contains five essays on nonfiction television, including an insiders view of the production and promotion of local TV news and an analysis of CBS and ABC's TV news coverage of South Africa over a two week period in 1987. In a final essay, conventional wisdom about `the audience' is refuted.

Make Room for TV

Make Room for TV PDF Author: Lynn Spigel
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226769677
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Between 1948 and 1955, nearly two-thirds of all American families bought a television set—and a revolution in social life and popular culture was launched. In this fascinating book, Lynn Spigel chronicles the enormous impact of television in the formative years of the new medium: how, over the course of a single decade, television became an intimate part of everyday life. What did Americans expect from it? What effects did the new daily ritual of watching television have on children? Was television welcomed as an unprecedented "window on the world," or as a "one-eyed monster" that would disrupt households and corrupt children? Drawing on an ambitious array of unconventional sources, from sitcom scripts to articles and advertisements in women's magazines, Spigel offers the fullest available account of the popular response to television in the postwar years. She chronicles the role of television as a focus for evolving debates on issues ranging from the ideal of the perfect family and changes in women's role within the household to new uses of domestic space. The arrival of television did more than turn the living room into a private theater: it offered a national stage on which to play out and resolve conflicts about the way Americans should live. Spigel chronicles this lively and contentious debate as it took place in the popular media. Of particular interest is her treatment of the way in which the phenomenon of television itself was constantly deliberated—from how programs should be watched to where the set was placed to whether Mom, Dad, or kids should control the dial. Make Room for TV combines a powerful analysis of the growth of electronic culture with a nuanced social history of family life in postwar America, offering a provocative glimpse of the way television became the mirror of so many of America's hopes and fears and dreams.