Quality TV

Quality TV PDF Author: Janet McCabe
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857715992
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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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.

Quality TV

Quality TV PDF Author: Janet McCabe
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857715992
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Get Book Here

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.

Masculinity in Contemporary Quality Television

Masculinity in Contemporary Quality Television PDF Author: Michael Mario Albrecht
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317099826
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description
Recent years have seen a rise in the popularity and quantity of ’quality’ television programs, many of which featuring complicated versions of masculinity that are informed not only by the women’s movement of the sixties and seventies, but also by several decades of backlash and debate about the effects of women’s equality on men, masculinity, and the relationship between men and women. Drawing upon studies of contemporary television programs, including popular series viewed internationally such as Mad Men, The League, Hung, Breaking Bad, Louie, and Girls, this book explores the ways in which popular cultural texts address widely circulating discourses of the ostensible ’crisis of masculinity’ in contemporary culture. A rich study of masculinity and its representation in contemporary television, Masculinity in Contemporary Quality Television will appeal to scholars and students of cultural and media studies, popular culture, television studies and cultural sociology with interests in gender, masculinities, and sexuality.

Quality Popular Television

Quality Popular Television PDF Author: Mark Jancovich
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Why are some contemporary television shows so compelling? The Sopranos, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Friends and ER are examples among many of a new era of the 'must-see' programme. These shows and others like The X-Files and Ally McBeal, have a compulsiveness, a depth of characterisation and 'back-story' that puts most of cinema to shame. Quality Popular Television looks at this new category of 'cult' television (mostly US-produced) and the reasons for its emergence. Looking at shows as diverse as Ally McBeal, Martial Law, Buffy, Lois and Clark, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Ellen the book examines the particular qualities necessary for success and how they relate to issues such as the economics of network scheduling, the growth of the internet and contemporary debates about television audiences. This important new book provides an invaluable window on transformations in contemporary television culture.

TV by Design

TV by Design PDF Author: Lynn Spigel
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226769682
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
From the Publisher: While critics have long disparaged commercial television as a vast wasteland, TV has surprising links to the urbane world of modern art that stretch back to the 1950s and '60s during that era, the rapid rise of commercial television coincided with dynamic new movements in the visual arts-a potent combination that precipitated a major shift in the way Americans experienced the world visually. TV by Design uncovers this captivating story of how modernism and network television converged and intertwined in their mutual ascent during the decades of the cold war. Whereas most histories of television focus on the way older forms of entertainment were recycled for the new medium, Lynn Spigel shows how TV was instrumental in introducing the public to the latest trends in art and design. Abstract expressionism, pop art, art cinema, modern architecture, and cutting-edge graphic design were all mined for staging techniques, scenic designs, and an ever-growing number of commercials. As a result, TV helped fuel the public craze for trendy modern products, such as tailfin cars and boomerang coffee tables, that was vital to the burgeoning postwar economy. And along with influencing the look of television, many artists-including Eero Saarinen, Ben Shahn, Saul Bass, William Golden, and Richard Avedon-also participated in its creation as the networks put them to work designing everything from their corporate headquarters to their company cufflinks. Dizzy Gillespie, Ernie Kovacs, Duke Ellington, and Andy Warhol all stop by in this imaginative and winning account of the ways in which art, television, and commerce merged in the first decades of the TV age.

Cognition, Emotion, and Aesthetics in Contemporary Serial Television

Cognition, Emotion, and Aesthetics in Contemporary Serial Television PDF Author: Ted Nannicelli
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000478815
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
This book posits an interconnection between the ways in which contemporary television serials cue cognitive operations, solicit emotional responses, and elicit aesthetic appreciation. The chapters explore a number of questions including: How do the particularities of form and style in contemporary serial television engage us cognitively, emotionally, and aesthetically? How do they foster cognitive and emotional effects such as feeling suspense, anticipation, surprise, satisfaction, and disappointment? Why and how do we value some serials while disliking others? What is it about the particularities of serial television form and style, in conjunction with our common cognitive, emotional, and aesthetic capacities, that accounts for serial television’s cognitive, socio-political, and aesthetic value and its current ubiquity in popular culture? This book will appeal to postgraduates and scholars working in television studies as well as film studies, cognitive media theory, media psychology, and the philosophy of art.

Complex TV

Complex TV PDF Author: Jason Mittell
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814769608
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
A comprehensive and sustained analysis of the development of storytelling for television Over the past two decades, new technologies, changing viewer practices, and the proliferation of genres and channels has transformed American television. One of the most notable impacts of these shifts is the emergence of highly complex and elaborate forms of serial narrative, resulting in a robust period of formal experimentation and risky programming rarely seen in a medium that is typically viewed as formulaic and convention bound. Complex TV offers a sustained analysis of the poetics of television narrative, focusing on how storytelling has changed in recent years and how viewers make sense of these innovations. Through close analyses of key programs, including The Wire, Lost, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Veronica Mars, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Mad Men the book traces the emergence of this narrative mode, focusing on issues such as viewer comprehension, transmedia storytelling, serial authorship, character change, and cultural evaluation. Developing a television-specific set of narrative theories, Complex TV argues that television is the most vital and important storytelling medium of our time.

Better Living through TV

Better Living through TV PDF Author: Steven A. Benko
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793636192
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Watching television need not be a passive activity or simply for entertainment purposes. Television can be the site of important identity work and moral reflection. Audiences can learn about themselves, what matters to them, and how to relate to others by thinking about the implicit and explicit moral messages in the shows they watch. Better Living through TV: Contemporary TV and Moral Identity Formation analyzes the possibility of identifying and adopting moral values from television shows that aired during the latest Golden Era of television and Peak TV. The diversity of shows and approaches to moral becoming demonstrate how television during these eras took advantage of new technologies to become more film-like in both production quality and content. The increased depth of characterization and explosion of content across streaming and broadcast channels gave viewers a diversity of worlds and moral values to explore. The possibility of finding a moral in the stories told on popular shows such as The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, The Wire, and The Good Place, as well as lesser known shows such as Letterkenny and The Unicorn, are explored in a way that centers television viewing as a site for moral identity formation.

TV's Betty Goes Global

TV's Betty Goes Global PDF Author: Janet McCabe
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857732994
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Premiering in 2006,Ugly Betty, the award-winning US hit show about unglamorous but kind-hearted Betty Suarez (America Ferrera),is the latest incarnation of a worldwide phenomenon that started life as a Colombian telenovela,Yo soy Betty,la fea, back in 1999. The tale of the ugly duckling has since taken an extraordinary global journey and become the most successful telenovela to date. This groundbreaking book asks what the Yo soy Betty,la fea/Ugly Betty phenomenon can tell us about the international circulation of locally produced TV fictions as the Latin American telenovela is sold to,and/or re-made-officially and unofficially-for different national contexts. The contributors explore what Betty has to say about the tensions between the commercial demands of multimedia conglomerates and the regulatory forces of national broadcasters as well as the international ambitions of national TV industries and their struggle in competitive markets. They also investigate what this international trade tells us about cultural storytelling and audience experience,as well as ideologies of feminine beauty and myths of female desire and aspiration. TV's Betty Goes Global features original interviews with buyers and schedulers,writers,story editors and directors,including the creator of Yo soy Betty, la fea, Fernando Gaitan

The New Audience for Old TV

The New Audience for Old TV PDF Author: Alexander H. Beare
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040164536
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 138

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Book Description
In 2020-21, the classic HBO show The Sopranos (1999-2007) saw a rapid increase in viewership and was proclaimed to be one of the “hottest shows of lockdown” by outlets like The Guardian and GQ. This resurgent popularity of The Sopranos raises important analytical questions for media scholars—how do audiences understand a complex text like The Sopranos in a radically different televisual and cultural context? Did they adapt the show to fit the particularities of the present moment or was it simply a nostalgic escape from the bleak conditions of the pandemic? Perhaps most importantly though, did the distinct televisual environment of the 2020s bring with it markedly new ways for audiences to understand ‘old’ shows? The New Audience for Old TV is the first book to investigate how audiences re-read and re-interpret resurgent shows when watching in new cultural contexts. Based on a series of original research interviews with young fans, it considers how new contexts of interpretation, including the COVID-19 pandemic, Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD), and post #MeToo gender politics, informed the unique experience of watching. Using the metaphor of the anamorphic painting, it introduces the analytical framework of a ‘retrospective reading’ to reveal the new meanings that are being made available for ‘old’ TV. Ultimately, The New Audience for Old TV uncovers fresh insights into audiences’ experiences with ‘prestige’ TV and the new avenues of meaning-making in the age of streaming.

The Aesthetics of Nostalgia TV

The Aesthetics of Nostalgia TV PDF Author: Alex Bevan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501331426
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
The Aesthetics of Nostalgia TV explores the aesthetic politics of nostalgia for 1950s and 60s America on contemporary television. Specifically, it looks at how nostalgic TV production design shapes and is shaped by larger historical discourses on gender and technological change, and America's perceived decline as a global power. Alex Bevan argues that the aesthetics of nostalgic TV tell stories of their own about historical decline and progress, and the place of the baby boomer television suburb in American national memory. She contests theories on nostalgia that see it as stagnating, regressive, or a reversion to outdated gender and racial politics, and the technophobic longing for a bygone era; and, instead, argues nostalgia is an important form of historical memory and vehicle for negotiating periods of historical transition. The book addresses how and why the shows construct the boomer era as a placeholder for gender, racial, technological, and declensionist discourses of the present. The book uses Mad Men (AMC, 2007-2015), Ugly Betty (ABC, 2006-2010), Desperate Housewives (ABC, 2004-2012), and film remakes of 1950s and 60s family sitcoms as primary case studies.