Over the last two decades Oprah Winfrey's journey has taken her from talk show queen to - as Time Magazine has asserted - "one of the most important figures in popular culture." Through her talk show, magazine, website, seminars, charity work, and public appearances, her influence in the social, economic, and political arenas of American life is considerable and until now, largely unexamined.. In "The Age of Oprah," media scholar and journalist Janice Peck traces Winfrey's growing cultural impact and illustrates the fascinating parallels between her road to fame and fortune and the political-economic rise of neoliberalism in this country. While seeking to understand Oprah's ascent to near iconic status that she enjoys today, Peck's book provides a fascinating window into the intersection of American politics and culture over the past quarter century.

Since first going on the air in 1972, HBO has continually attempted to redefine television as we know it. Today, pay television (and HBO in particular) is positioned as an alternative to network offerings, consistently regarded as the premier site for what has come to be called "quality television." This collection of new essays by an international group of media scholars argues that HBO, as part of the leading edge of television, is at the center of television studies' interests in market positioning, style, content, technology, and political economy. The contributors focus on pioneering areas of analysis and new critical approaches in television studies today, highlighting unique aspects of the "HBO effect" to explore new perspectives on contemporary television from radical changes in technology to dramatic shifts in viewing habits. It's Not TV provides fresh insights into the "post-television network" by examining HBO's phenomenally popular and pioneering shows, including The Sopranos, The Wire, Six Feet Under, Sex and the City as well as its failed series, such as K Street and The Comeback. The contributors also explore the production process itself and the creation of a brand commodity, along with HBO's place as a market leader and technological innovator. Contributors: Kim Akass, Cara Louise Buckley, Rhiannon Bury, Joanna L. Di Mattia, Blake D. Ethridge, Tony Kelso, Marc Leverette, David Marc, Janet McCabe, Conor McGrath, Shawn McIntosh, Brian L. Ott, Avi Santo, Lisa Williamson Foreword by Toby Miller Marc Leverette is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at Colorado State University. He is author of Professional Wrestling, the Myth, the Mat, and American Popular Culture and co-editor of Zombie Culture: Autopsies of the Living Dead and Oh My God, They Deconstructed South Park! Those Bastards! Brian L. Ott is Associate Professor of Media Studies at Colorado State University. He is author of The Small Screen: How Television Equips Us to Live in the Information Age. Cara Louise Buckley is a lecturer at Emerson College.

Digital Signage Broadcasting is a perfect introduction to this new world of opportunities for media professionals in all areas. Whether you are in engineering, IT, advertising, or management, you will gain knowledge on the operations of digital signage systems, content gathering, customer billing, and much more on this new exciting media.
This book includes coverage of basic elements, examples of advanced digital signage applications, as well as traffic capacity calculations that may be guidance when choosing means of distribution as physical media, broadband or satellite. Digital Signage Broadcasting helps you discover the fascinating possibilities of this new convergence medium with hundreds of author-created color 3D illustrated graphics and real-life photographs showing the capability and future of digital signage.
* Complete with full-color illustrations and real-world examples
* Covers technology, operations, content, and more
* Global insights and perspective for worldwide implementation

The significant changes that have swept the television industry over the last two decades, most notably a shift to deregulation in broadcast media, prompt a discussion on how to ensure that meaningful content is available to the viewer. "Television and Public Policy" analyzes the current state of television systems in a selected group of countries by exploring the political, economic, and technological factors that have shaped the sector in such a short span of time. Consequently, by positioning the television sector within issues of media policy and the regulatory framework, the book questions what these trends mean for television, and the historical, political, and cultural role in our societies.
" "
"Television and Public Policy" distinguishes itself in several ways:
*It is a global project in its comparative scope and subject area. Contributors represent countries including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, India, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
*It is contemporary and filled with information largely absent in current literature.
*It offers original analysis of the contemporary television sector.
" "
This book speaks" "to a broad range of academics, postgraduate, and undergraduate students, and can serve as a key resource for courses ranging from media studies, to development studies, international relations, and law.

The significant changes that have swept the television industry over the last two decades, most notably a shift to deregulation in broadcast media, prompt a discussion on how to ensure that meaningful content is available to the viewer. "Television and Public Policy" analyzes the current state of television systems in a selected group of countries by exploring the political, economic, and technological factors that have shaped the sector in such a short span of time. Consequently, by positioning the television sector within issues of media policy and the regulatory framework, the book questions what these trends mean for television, and the historical, political, and cultural role in our societies.
" "
"Television and Public Policy" distinguishes itself in several ways:
*It is a global project in its comparative scope and subject area. Contributors represent countries including Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, India, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
*It is contemporary and filled with information largely absent in current literature.
*It offers original analysis of the contemporary television sector.
" "
This book speaks" "to a broad range of academics, postgraduate, and undergraduate students, and can serve as a key resource for courses ranging from media studies, to development studies, international relations, and law.

Into the Newsroom provides a rigorous investigation into the everyday rituals that are performed in the television newsroom, and offers a unique suggestion that news is both a highly haphazard and yet technologically complicated process of deliberate construction involving the interweaving of reflexive professional journalists as well as developing, unpredictable technologies. Arguing specifically for a recognition and an exploration of technological agency, this book takes the reader on an exciting journey into the digital newsroom, using exclusive observation and interviews from those journalists working on the BBC's recent pilot project of local television news as part of its empirical evidence. This is an essential introduction for both those seeking to understand news processes at the level of every day routines and practices, and for those students and scholars who are eager to adopt new and challenging ways to theorise news as practice.

Into the Newsroom provides a rigorous investigation into the everyday rituals that are performed in the television newsroom, and offers a unique suggestion that news is both a highly haphazard and yet technologically complicated process of deliberate construction involving the interweaving of reflexive professional journalists as well as developing, unpredictable technologies. Arguing specifically for a recognition and an exploration of technological agency, this book takes the reader on an exciting journey into the digital newsroom, using exclusive observation and interviews from those journalists working on the BBC's recent pilot project of local television news as part of its empirical evidence. This is an essential introduction for both those seeking to understand news processes at the level of every day routines and practices, and for those students and scholars who are eager to adopt new and challenging ways to theorise news as practice.

As radio developed in the early 1920s, the focus for most people was the AM band and stations such as KDKA, the first broadcast station. There was, however, another broadcast method that was popular among many early enthusiasts - shortwave radio. As is true today, the transmission of news and entertainment programs over shortwave frequencies permitted reception over great distances. For many in America and beyond, shortwave was an exciting aspect of the new medium. Some still tune the shortwave bands to enjoy the programming. Others pursue broadcasts for the thrill of the hunt. This book fully covers shortwave broadcasting from its beginning through World War II. A technical history examining the medium's development and use tells the story of a listener community that spanned the globe. Included are overviews of the primary shortwave stations operating worldwide in the 1930s, along with clubs and competitions, publications and prizes. A rich collection of illustrations includes many QSLs, the cards that stations sent to acknowledge receipt of their transmissions and that are much prized by long-distance collectors.

HDTV and the Transition to Digital Broadcasting bridges the gap between non-technical personnel (management and creative) and technical by giving you a working knowledge of digital television technology, a clear understanding of the challenges of HDTV and digital broadcasting, and a scope of the ramifications of HDTV in the consumer space.

Topics include methodologies and issues in HD production and distribution, as well as HDTV's impact on the future of the media business. This book contains sidebars and system diagrams that illustrate examples of broadcaster implementation of HD and HD equipment. Additionally, future trends including the integration of broadcast engineering and IT, control and descriptive metadata, DTV interactivity and personalization are explored.

This Book Gives You:

• Clear explanations of the technologies you need to understand to talk with engineers and other broadcast technology professionals
• A great starting place for those desiring a career in broadcasting in any discipline management, creative or technical
• A historical and technical overview of DTV, HDTV, standards, and organizations

Cinzia Padovani takes an in-depth look at Italian public service broadcasting, covering its history, its role in Italian society, its relationship to the political party system, and its influence on cultural and linguistic unification in Italy. Tracing the history and development of Italian public television broadcaster Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI) to the present, Padovani challenges traditional views by asserting that parties' 'interference' in RAI has, at times, strengthened the role of public service broadcasting and that partisan journalism has even enhanced democratic potential.

This book offers a history of Japanese television audiences and the popular media culture that television helped to spawn. In a comparatively short period, the television industry helped to reconstruct not only postwar Japanese popular culture, but also the Japanese social and political landscape. During the early years of television, Japanese of all backgrounds, from politicians to mothers, debated the effects on society. The public discourse surrounding the growth of television revealed its role in forming the identity of postwar Japanese during the era of high-speed growth (1955 - 1973) that saw Japan transformed into an economic power and one of the world's top exporters of television programming.

The Children's Television Community presents a cutting-edge analysis of the children's television community-the organizations, major players, and approaches to programming-and gives an overview of the history, current state, and future of children's programming. Leading children's television professionals and distinguished academicians come together in this volume to take a distinctive behind-the-scenes look at how children's television is created, programmed, and sold. This thought-provoking work emphasizes the various actors whose creative, financial, political, and critical input go into children's television, and addresses advocacy for children's television from multiple approaches. By blending these diverse perspectives, editor J. Alison Bryant offers readers a comprehensive picture of children's television. Highlights include: * a community level approach to understanding children's television; * perspectives from colleagues in various aspects of the media industry; and * an eye-opening analysis of how decision-making affects what children are exposed to through television. The Children's Television Community is highly informative for educators, industry professionals, and practitioners in media, developmental psychology, and education.

This book is the first to offer a global perspective on the unique contemporary media phenomenon of transnational television channels. It is also the first to compare their impact in different regions of the globe. Revealing great richness and diversity across some of the world's main geocultural regions (Europe, the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, Greater China and Latin America), international contributors with in-depth industry knowledge examine the place of these channels in the process of globalization, their impact on the nation-state and on regional culture and politics. The book also considers audiences and geocultural TV markets, providing new ways of thinking about the emerging transnational media order.

Radio Modernism marries the fields of radio studies and modernist cultural historiography to the recent 'ethical turn' in literary and cultural studies to examine how representative British writers negotiated the moral imperative for public service broadcasting that was crafted, embraced, and implemented by the BBC's founders and early administrators. Weaving together the institutional history of the BBC and developments in ethical philosophy as mediated and forged by writers such as T. S. Eliot, H. G. Wells, E. M. Forster, and Virginia Woolf, Todd Avery shows how these and other prominent authors' involvement with radio helped to shape the ethical contours of literary modernism. In so doing, Avery demonstrates the central role radio played in the early dissemination of modernist art and literature, and also challenges the conventional assertion that modernists were generally elitist and anti-democratic. Intended for readers interested in the fields of media and cultural studies and modernist historiography, this book is remarkable in recapturing for a twenty-first-century audience the interest, fascination, excitement, and often consternation that British radio induced in its literary listeners following its inception in 1922.

Fought when radio was first introduced, the Press-Radio war was an attempt on the part of print journalists to block the emergence of radio news. For nearly a decade, the newspapers of America fought to keep broadcast journalism off the air, exerting various forms of economic, regulatory, and legal pressure against new competitors. This study traces the stages and forms of institutional self-defense utilized by the press. Far more than mere battles to protect profits, media wars are fights to preserve the institutional power that derives from controlling the channels of communication.

This succinct overview explains conglomeration and regulation in the film and television industries, covering its history as well as the contemporary scene. Former producer William M. Kunz shows how the current structure of these industries has evolved and how this structure impacts the production and distribution of cultural products. Providing a critical view without taking a political stance, Kunz focuses on film and TV in order to give an in-depth portrait of these industries and their dynamic relationship to each other. Ideal as a supplement for a variety of media courses_such as media and society, policy, economics, and criticism_this student-friendly text includes synopses of key media regulations and policies, discussion questions, a glossary, and interesting sidebars.

This succinct overview explains conglomeration and regulation in the film and television industries, covering its history as well as the contemporary scene. Former producer William M. Kunz shows how the current structure of these industries has evolved and how this structure impacts the production and distribution of cultural products. Providing a critical view without taking a political stance, Kunz focuses on film and TV in order to give an in-depth portrait of these industries and their dynamic relationship to each other. Ideal as a supplement for a variety of media courses_such as media and society, policy, economics, and criticism_this student-friendly text includes synopses of key media regulations and policies, discussion questions, a glossary, and interesting sidebars.

Examining anew the notions of media imperialism and globalization of media, this book disrupts the generalised consensus in media scholarship that globalization of media has put an end to media imperialism. One elemental aspect of media imperialism is the structural dependency of television systems in the global South on the imperial North. Taking India and Pakistan as its case studies, this book views globalization of media as the unleashing of processes that have translated into the liberalization of air waves and privatization of television systems whereby commercialization of television is privileged over public interest television. Additionally, it argues that the globalization of media has contributed to corruption, tabloidization, and marginalization of subaltern classes in the Indian and Pakistani media.

Religious programming has been on the airwaves since broadcasting began, but today it is one of the fastest growing categories in radio. This book examines the progression of Christian radio from its beginnings on tiny local stations (like WCAL from St. Olaf's College in Minnesota) to its presence on network and satellite radio of today. The author notes the factors that brought Christian music into the mainstream and discusses how network policies and regulations affected the development of Christian radio. Also considered are the changing demographics that have contributed to the success of Christian broadcasting. Major Christian networks and their evangelical missions are discussed, along with such programs A Money Minute, Life on the Edge and Focus on the Family, which offer practical topical advice for today's Christian. The final chapter considers the future of Christian radio.

As the dominant form of electronic mass communication in the United States from the 1930s into the 1950s, radio helped to forge a modern continental nation. It fused myriad subcultures?heavily rural, ethnic, and immigrant?into a national identity, unifying the nation in the face of the Depression and war. Later, federal deregulation allowed the radio of the ?Golden Age, ? 1926?1952, to devolve into a chain-dominated, satellite-fed plaything of Wall Street. Today, radio has the highest profit ratio of all the media outlets?and Golden Age traditions of programming taste, diversity, balance, and localism are a legacy squandered. This anecdote-rich sweep of radio history, from its birth as Marconi's ?wireless telegraph? through its current status under deregulation, analyzes the changing medium's social, political, and cultural impact. It casts new light on many topics, including the roles of women and African Americans, programming sources outside the Hollywood-Broadway nexus, and arguments about Amos ?n? Andy?once the hit that jump-started radio's young networks, now a controversial remnant of a bygone era. The book is augmented with more than sixty photos, extensive source notes, and a bibliography.

Research Paradigms, Television, Social Behavior is a unique book that is designed to provide an understanding of television research from both the quantitative and qualitative perspectives. The volume provides a systematic analysis of the various research paradigms used in the study of television, and focuses on the integration of quantitative and qualitative methodologies as a means for understanding the complexities associated with this medium. The book is useful for both undergraduate and graduate students because it presents information in a straightforward and engaging style, as well as provides concrete step-by-step examples of how to conduct major research and evaluation projects involving this medium. The book is also important for seasoned scholars and researchers, as well as professionals in the media industry.

In an effort to halt increasing media competition and decreasing audience shares, Branding has become the new mantra among television station and network executives. Branding TV: Principles and Practices second edition goes beyond the jargon of branding to explain the essential principles underlying successful branding and offers many practical strategies to measure, build and manage television brand equity. For instructional purposes, the book pays particular attention to the local commercial TV station and its news franchise.
Written by broadcast professionals with years of experience, this book shows how the notions of branding are no more prevalent than in the battle for dominance in local news. The practical suggestions in the book will help the savvy manager understand and take advantage of branding in their efforts to move their property to the forefront in the marketplace.
* Includes definitions of branding concepts, ways to measure brand equity, and a discussion of legal considerations
*Published with the National Association of Broadcasters-one of the leading broadcast organizations
* Author team has more than 50 years combined experience!
* Second edition is fully revised to include transition to digital, ownership consolidation, and the marketing relationship between stations and networks

Taking a comparative approach, this text examines the processes of globalization by analyzing television case histories in Japan, China and Hong Kong. The text illustrates how television is becoming increasingly global. The conditions of the television industry, of the production of the news, and in particular of the public service broadcaster appear in a symbolic role, metaphors for the reconfiguration of relationships between the global and the local. the three case histories on interviews with key participants in exemplar events: Japanese attempts to set up a rival to CNN and to internationalize NHK; CCTV's defence of its dominant position, under pressure from upheavals in both Chinese society and the government bureaucracy; and the establishment, sale and erratic progress of Rupert Murdoch's STAR TV. gap in the media studies literature as well as making a major contribution to comparative research in Asia.

Cinzia Padovani takes an in-depth look at Italian public service broadcasting, covering its history, its role in Italian society, its relationship to the political party system, and its influence on cultural and linguistic unification in Italy. Tracing the history and development of Italian public television broadcaster Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI) to the present, Padovani challenges traditional views by asserting that parties' "interference" in RAI has, at times, strengthened the role of public service broadcasting and that partisan journalism has even enhanced democratic potential.

"Computers in Broadcast and Cable Newsrooms: Using Technology in Television News Production" takes readers through the use of computers and software in the broadcast/cable newsroom environment. Author Phillip O. Keirstead began writing about television news technology decades ago in an effort to help television news managers cope with technological change. In this text, he demonstrates the myriad ways in which today's journalism is tied to technology, and he shows how television news journalists rely on varied and complex technologies to produce timely, interesting, and informative broadcasts. Using a hands-on, practical approach to cover the role computers play in various parts of the newsroom, the volume will be of great practical value to undergraduate and graduate students in advanced broadcast/news television courses.