This essential text provides a detailed account of the complex character of modern television. Covering issues ranging from television's historical development to its impact on culture and society in general, the text provides an insightful analysis of television's strengths and limitations. The book's scope and clarity make it an ideal text for all media students, as well as others, interested in the historical, cultural and social contexts of broadcasting.

While not a production study, this book attempts to provide an insight into the inner workings of the television industry. As such its central concern is with processes, not texts or techniques or histories. "Television Industries" focuses on the essential elements of the industry: the policy and regulatory frameworks, the swiftly changing world of video production technology, all of which provides the backdrops against which broadcasters shape and sell their products. The book also examines the working practices of scheduling, budgeting, selling advertising air-time and so forth. Where issues may be familiar to readers (for example debates around public service broadcasting) the entries aim to be explanatory and fresh. Of course, it's not possible to cover every aspect of what is a complex and ever changing industry. Nonetheless, the aim is to provide a starting point for students and new scholars as they start to research into the nature of the broadcasting industry. Hence, this volume is extensively cross-referenced, to guide the reader as they tease out for themselves some of the complexity of this industry. There are several other elements that are distinctive about this volume. Perhaps the most striking of these is its blend of contributions from the UK and US. This book will raise as many questions as it provides answers. It aims to make a contribution to the on-going debates in the now well-established world of television studies with fresh perspectives on some familiar, and some not so familiar, landscapes. Fully illustrated, "Television Industries" is intended as an authoritative and accessible guide to the inner workings of the television industry.

Long before cable, satellite dishes, prepackaged syndication, infomercials, and reality shows, there was a brand of entertainment that has today nearly vanished from the airwaves: local TV. From Bozo and Oopsy the clowns to the cheesy antics of Sir Graves Ghastly to Soupy Sales, Detroit TV was a smorgasbord of exuberant, quirky personalities and one-of-a-kind television shows. These vintage programs belong to a dying breed of homemade talent overshadowed by our racier but woefully monochromatic and bland diet of sports figures, musicians, and Hollywood celebrities. Based on actual interviews with the people who made Detroit TV, Gordon Castelnero's ""TV Land - Detroit"" reawakens the emotional attachment and nostalgia our community has for these shows, bringing the characters and the programs back to life. From the glamorous Rita Bell to the campy and kooky Sir Graves Ghastly, the zany Soupy Sales to the opinionated and often confrontational Lou Gordon and the gruff-voiced and somnolent George Pierrot, Castelnero describes a quintessentially American yet nearly extinct folk celebrity that's been replaced by slick productions, big budgets, ironic and edgy program values, and gargantuan egos.

Ted Turner revolutionized television. Foreseeing cable's potential in its infancy, he parlayed a tiny UHF station in Atlanta into a national superstation, invented CNN, and transformed sports teams and the MGM film library into lucrative programming. Ken Auletta, the most respected media journalist in America, enjoyed unparalleled access to the outspoken and defiant Turner in writing this book (named one of BusinessWeek's Top Ten Books of 2004), capturing the visionary businessman as he built and lost his improbable empire."

Offers a first look at the all-Arab news network and its controversial role in the Arab world. Al-Jazeera, the independent, all-Arab television news network based in Qatar, emerged as ambassador to the Arab world in the events following September 11, 2001. Arabic for the island, Al-Jazeera has scooped the western media conglomerates many times. With its exclusive access to Osama Bin Laden and members of the Taliban, its reputation was burnished quickly through its exposure on CNN. During the 2003 war in Iraq, Al-Jazeera seemed to be everywhere, reporting dramatic stories and images, even as it strived to maintain its independence as an international free press news network. Al-Jazeera sheds light on the background of the network: how it operates, the programs it broadcasts, its effects on Arab viewers, the reactions of the West and Arab states, the implications for the future of news broadcasting in the Middle East, and its struggle for a free press and public opinion in the Arab world.

The past few decades have witnessed profound changes in the structure, content, technology, regulation, and cultural forms of European television industries. Television in Europe operates in an increasingly globalized communications market characterized by commercialization, fragmentation, and transnational ownership. While these changes offer vast opportunities to both organizations and consumer-citizens in terms of access and choice, they also bring about uncertainties about the future shape of the medium. How will television be funded in the future? Will public broadcasting survive in the modern era? Will consumers respond to technological developments? How can regulation encourage investment, uphold quality, and effectively address concentration of media ownership? What is Europe's position within a global television marketplace?
"European Television Industries "addresses these issues in the context of developments in technology, changing ownership patterns, legislative change, and the much heralded likelihood of convergence between telecommunications, broadcasting, and computing. Concentrating on the historical, economic, cultural, technological, and political factors behind change, the book provides an opportunity to construct a conceptual and analytical base on which to judge future developments in television in Europe.

In transcending territorial boundaries, satellite television has the potential to liberate viewers from government controls on national media. Why is this potential liberation yet to be fully realized in the Middle East? This dynamic book explores the development through the 1990s into the 21st century of cross-border television in the Middle East, exploring issues at the heart of the international political economy of communication. With much attention currently focused on media reform in the Middle East, this is a timely book, relevant to Media and Communications Studies, Middle Eastern Studies and international relations.

In transcending territorial boundaries, satellite television has the potential to liberate viewers from government controls on national media. Why is this potential liberation yet to be fully realized in the Middle East? This dynamic book explores the development through the 1990s into the 21st century of cross-border television in the Middle East, exploring issues at the heart of the international political economy of communication. With much attention currently focused on media reform in the Middle East, this is a timely book, relevant to Media and Communications Studies, Middle Eastern Studies and international relations.

"Radio in the Global Age "offers a fresh, up-to-date, and wide-ranging introduction to the role of radio in contemporary society. It places radio, for the first time, in a global context, and pays special attention to the impact of the Internet, digitalization and globalization on the political-economy of radio. It also provides a new emphasis on the links between music and radio, the impact of formatting, and the broader cultural roles the medium plays in constructing identities and nurturing musical tastes.

Individual chapters explore the changing structures of the radio industry, the way programmes are produced, the act of listening and the construction of audiences, the different meanings attached to programmes, and the cultural impact of radio across the globe. David Hendy portrays a medium of extraordinary contradictions: a cheap and accessible means of communication, but also one increasingly dominated by rigid formats and multinational companies; a highly 'intimate' medium, but one capable of building large communities of listeners scattered across huge spaces; a force for nourishing regional identity, but also a pervasive broadcaster of globalized music products; a 'stimulus to the imagination', but a purveyor of the banal and of the routine. Drawing on recent research from as far afield as Africa, Australasia and Latin America, as well as from the UK and US, the book aims to explore and to explain these paradoxes - and, in the process, to offer an imaginative reworking of Marshall McLuhan's famous dictum that radio is one of the world's 'hot' media.

"Radio in the Global Age "is an invaluable text for undergraduates and researchers in media studies, communicationstudies, journalism, cultural studies, and musicology. It will also be of interest to practitioners and policy-makers in the radio industry.

During the Cold War, one of America's most powerful weapons struck a major blow against tyranny every day over the airwaves. Radio Liberty became a critical source of information for listeners within the Soviet Union, broadcasting in Russian and more than a dozen other languages, and covering all aspects of Soviet life.

Sparks of Liberty provides an insider's look at the origins, development, and operation of Radio Liberty. Gene Sosin, a key executive with the station for thirty-three years, combines vivid eyewitness reports with documents from his personal archives to offer the first complete account of Radio Liberty, tracing its evolution from Stalin's death to the demise of the USSR, to its current role in the post-Soviet world.

Sosin describes Radio Liberty's early efforts to cope with KGB terrorism and Soviet jamming, to minimize interference from the CIA, and to survive pressure exerted by J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who considered Radio Liberty a deterrent to detente. The insider's perspective sheds important light on world affairs as Sosin tells how, over the years, Radio Liberty took the advice of experts on Soviet politics to adapt the content and tone of its messages to changing times.

The book is rich in anecdotes that bring home the realities of the Cold War. Sosin tells how famous Western political figures, educators, and writers broadcast messages about workers' rights, artistic freedom, and unfettered scholarly inquiry--and also how, beginning in the late 1960s, Radio Liberty beamed the writings of Soviet dissidents back into the country. During these tumultuous years, Sosin and his associates saturated the airwaves with the words of Sakharov, Solzhenitsyn, and others, while many dissidents who had emigrated from the Soviet Union joined Radio Liberty to help strengthen its credibility among listeners. Radio Liberty ultimately became the most popular station from the West, its influence culminating with the crucial support of Gorbachev and Yeltsin during the attempted coup against them in August 1991.

As Radio Liberty entered the post-Soviet era, it became a model for the Russian media. It is now a voice for democratic education in the post-Soviet nations--broadcasting from Prague, with local bureaus in several major cities of the former Soviet Union. Capturing the work and legacy of this enterprise with authority and exhilaration, Sparks of Liberty is a testament to an enterprise that saw its message realized and continues to broadcast a message of hope.

Since the 1970s, American society has provided especially fertile ground for the growth of the Christian right and its influence on both political and cultural discourse. In "Stations of the Cross" political theorist Paul Apostolidis shows how a critical component of this movement's popular culture--evangelical conservative radio--interacts with the current U.S. political economy. By examining in particular James Dobson's enormously influential program, "Focus on the Family"--its messages, politics, and effects--Apostolidis reveals the complex nature of contemporary conservative religious culture.
Public ideology and institutional tendencies clash, the author argues, in the restructuring of the welfare state, the financing of the electoral system, and the backlash against women and minorities. These frictions are nowhere more apparent than on Christian right radio. Reinvigorating the intellectual tradition of the Frankfurt School, Apostolidis shows how ideas derived from early critical theory--in particular that of Theodor W. Adorno--can illuminate the political and social dynamics of this aspect of contemporary American culture. He uses and reworks Adorno's theories to interpret the nationally broadcast "Focus on the Family," revealing how the cultural discourse of the Christian right resonates with recent structural transformations in the American political economy. Apostolidis shows that the antidote to the Christian right's marriage of religious and market fundamentalism lies not in a reinvocation of liberal fundamentals, but rather depends on a patient cultivation of the affinities between religion's utopian impulses and radical, democratic challenges to the present political-economic order.
Mixing critical theory with detailed analysis, "Stations of the Cross" provides a needed contribution to sociopolitical studies of mass movements and will attract readers in sociology, political science, philosophy, and history.

Since the 1970s, American society has provided especially fertile ground for the growth of the Christian right and its influence on both political and cultural discourse. In "Stations of the Cross" political theorist Paul Apostolidis shows how a critical component of this movement's popular culture--evangelical conservative radio--interacts with the current U.S. political economy. By examining in particular James Dobson's enormously influential program, "Focus on the Family"--its messages, politics, and effects--Apostolidis reveals the complex nature of contemporary conservative religious culture.
Public ideology and institutional tendencies clash, the author argues, in the restructuring of the welfare state, the financing of the electoral system, and the backlash against women and minorities. These frictions are nowhere more apparent than on Christian right radio. Reinvigorating the intellectual tradition of the Frankfurt School, Apostolidis shows how ideas derived from early critical theory--in particular that of Theodor W. Adorno--can illuminate the political and social dynamics of this aspect of contemporary American culture. He uses and reworks Adorno's theories to interpret the nationally broadcast "Focus on the Family," revealing how the cultural discourse of the Christian right resonates with recent structural transformations in the American political economy. Apostolidis shows that the antidote to the Christian right's marriage of religious and market fundamentalism lies not in a reinvocation of liberal fundamentals, but rather depends on a patient cultivation of the affinities between religion's utopian impulses and radical, democratic challenges to the present political-economic order.
Mixing critical theory with detailed analysis, "Stations of the Cross" provides a needed contribution to sociopolitical studies of mass movements and will attract readers in sociology, political science, philosophy, and history.

?A must read for any advertisers. A well-designed experiment that sheds light on the critical issue of the effect of audience program involvement on advertising effectiveness.? ?Jerry Wind, Director, The Wharton School ?Uncover the Hidden Power of Television Programming does exactly that?demonstrates that consumer involvement in a program can mean the difference between a commercial?s success and it being unwept, unmourned, and unremembered. This is another tool that advertisers and their agencies can use to obtain more mileage from their campaigns.? -Jack Connors, CEO, Hill, Holiday Communications ?The work that Clancy and Lloyd describe in this clearly-written and definitive book could-and should-change the way advertisers and their agencies think about (and buy) media. Advertisers who take the lessons of this study to heart will never buy television and print media the same way again. Clancy and Lloyd?s concept of the CPMI?s (cost per thousand people involved) is to CPM?s as cruise missiles are to artillery? -John Bernbach, CEO, The Bernbach ?With all the hype and nonsense predicting the death of traditional media, it?s refreshing and important to understand the factual intelligence Kevin J. Clancy and David W. Lloyd offer to advertisers and agencies alike.? -Allen Rosenshine, Chairman/CEO, BBDO Worldwide This ground-breaking book shows that television (and print) can be much more powerful advertising vehicles than has ever been supposed?a key issue in a time of fragmenting audiences?by measuring the involvement level of viewers in television programs, newspapers, and magazines. The original research reported in this book finds that the more involved viewers are in a television programs, the greater the impact of the advertising carried by the program. Since advertisers buy programs based on audience size and composition (e.g., demographics), and since these factors have little to do with viewer involvement, advertisers are missing a significant opportunity to improve the effectiveness of their adverting. As television audiences continue to fragment and commercial costs continue to rise, the book?s message grows even more important to television advertisers. Uncover the Hidden Power of Television Programming provides insight into how an advertiser can make the firm?s advertising dollars work harder and smarter.

After World War II, when thousands of African Americans left farms, plantations, and a southern way of life to migrate north, African American disc jockeys helped them make the transition to the urban life by playing familiar music and giving them hints on how to function in northern cities. These disc jockeys became cultural heroes and had a major role in the development of American broadcasting. This collection of interviews documents the personalities of the pioneers of Black radio, as well as their personal struggles and successes. The interviewees also define their roles in the civil rights movement and relate how their efforts have had an impact on how African Americans are portrayed over the air.

The Untouchables television series was produced at the high point of the US film series drama in the early 1960s. The series featured the crusade of Federal agent Eliot Ness (played by Robert Stack) against the Prohibition era underworld of "Scarface" Al Capone. The long-running series featured early roles from a variety of screen personalities (such as Leslie Nielson, Peter Falk, James Coburn, Charles Bronson, Leonard Nimoy, Robert Redford, and Robert Duvall) as well as established Hollywood players (Lee van Cleef, Lee Marvin, Patricia Neal, Barbara Stanwyck, and Dorothy Malone). The show set new standards for TV action and pioneered a more adventurous approach to the representation of violence on TV, which in turn provoked considerable controversy as well as acclaim. Tise Vahimagi details in this text the development of the "Gangster" genre and "The Untouchables'" relations to American cinema and television of the 1950s and 1960s, offering a sidelight onto the social and political event of the period. This book also includes illustrations and detailed credits providing a full production history for followers of of the series.

This unique and timely guide offers teachers an introduction to using cable television in the classroom. Randi Stone, a 1996 Continental Cablevision National Cable Educator Award Winner, shares her experience in teaching with cable TV. The book caters for novices and teachers already using cable who are looking for new ideas.

From the first notions of 'seeing by electricity' in 1878, through the period of the first demonstration of rudimentary television in 1926 and up to 1940, when war brought the advance of the technology to a temporary halt, the development of television gathered about it a tremendous history. Following the discovery of the photo-conductive effect, numerous schemes for television were suggested but it was in the wake of Baird's early demonstrations that real industrial interest developed and the pace of progress increased. Much research and development work was undertaken in the UK, the US, Germany and France. By 1936 television technology had advanced to the point where high definition broadcasting was realistic. This meticulous and deeply researched book presents a balanced and thorough international history of television from 1878 to 1940, considering the factors - technical, commercial and social - that influenced and led to the establishment of public services in many countries. Highly illustrated throughout, this is a major book in the study of history of science, technology and media.

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.

For more than fifty years Red Barber was the voice of baseball. The game was broadcast sporadically until the late 1930s, when Barber burst into prominence by bringing it home to radio listeners, play by play. More than half a century later, he could still be heard, broadcasting over National Public Radio from his retirement home in Tallahassee. Announcing for the Brooklyn Dodgers and later for the New York Yankees, he became a legend long before his death in 1992. Red's story reveals the growth and changes in baseball over the years, the demands of sportscasting, and the difference between radio and television reporting. Here is Red giving major play-by-plays of his own life and career with characteristic wit and integrity.

Every day millions of Americans tune in to a newscast on one of their local television stations to learn what is new in their community. In fact, more people watch local news than network news, but surprisingly little is known about the early days of television when stations across the country searched for ways to do news in the new medium. In Broadcasting the Local News, Lynn Boyd Hinds, a former Pittsburgh broadcaster, introduces us to one station--KDKA-TV--which literally invented television news in Pittsburgh.

Television came to Pittsburgh in 1949 when WDTV (the forerunner of KDKA-TV) went on the air. Whereas many television stations in the United States began reading news on the air only to comply with FCC requirements, WDTV treated news seriously from day one with its first regular program, a local news show called "Pitt Parade." Today KDKA is still highly regarded among journalists for its news programming.

Although television news may seem familiar to us, it was anything but familiar to the men and women of early television. Hinds shows how they borrowed liberally from newspapers, radio, motion picture newsreels, theater, and even magazines to create, by trial and error, suitable ways to present the news. Rather than instantly replacing radio, television news moved slowly from the "rip and read" radio-style format, which simply duplicated what came over the wire services and was in the newspapers, to the conventions of local newscasts we take for granted today--live remotes, lead and feature stories, sports and weather, all brought together by an in-studio anchor.

Pittsburghers will recognize many familiar names in Hinds's account--Bill Burns, Paul Long, Florence Sando, Eleanor Schano, and others--veterans of Pittsburgh broadcasting whom Hinds has interviewed for this book. The story they tell is the story of dozens of other stations across the country. In the process, they tell us much about the early history of television in America.

"Ralph Engelman's history of the growth of public radio and television in America is timely, compelling, and instructive. Very useful for citizens who take seriously the need for public use of the public airwaves, which we need to remember, the people own but do not control." --Ralph Nader, Director, The Center for the Study of Responsive Law "There is no cynicism or stridency in Ralph Engelman's definitive history of public broadcasting's failure to fulfill its promise, only documentation of the immense problems endemic to government and corporate sponsored mass media. For models of hope, this volume acknowledges the civic discourse that has thrived in the margins of public broadcasting--in the independent community and in the homespun programming of the public access movement." --Dee Dee Halleck, Cofounder, Paper Tiger Television & Deep Dish TV "Public Radio and Television in America by Ralph Engelman effectively navigates the complex, controversial, and often maddening history of public broadcasting as a political and cultural force. Always more important than its audience size in America, public broadcasting's promise and problems, as well as its heroes and villains, are treated effectively and well in this solid and critical analysis. The book is compact, yet sufficiently substantive and blessedly well written and well documented." --Everette E. Dennis, Executive Director, Freedom Forum Media Studies Center, editor, Media Studies Journal "Ralph Engelman's Public Radio and Television in America is a chilling description of how noncommercial broadcasting is the tragic victim of conservative corporate politics that have spent most of this century trying to cripple and kill it." --Ben H. Bagdikian, former Dean, Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California,

Television can be imagined in a number of ways: as a profuse flow of images, as a machine that produces new social relationships, as the last lingering gasp of Western metaphysical thinking, as a stuttering relay system of almost anonymous messages, as a fantastic construction of time. Richard Dienst engages each of these possibilities as he explores the challenge television has posed for contemporary theories of culture, technology, and media. Five theoretical projects provide Still Life in Real Time with its framework: the cultural studies tradition of Raymond Williams; Marxist political economy; Heideggerian existentialism; Derridean deconstruction; and a Deleuzian anatomy of images. Drawing lessons from television programs like Twin Peaks and Crime Story, television events like the Gulf War, and television personalities like Madonna, Dienst produces a remarkable range of insights on the character of the medium and on the theories that have been affected by it. From the earliest theorists who viewed television as a new metaphor for a global whole, a liberal technology empty of ideological or any other content, through those who saw it as a tool for consumption, making time a commodity, to those who sense television's threat to being and its intimate relation to power, Dienst exposes the rich pattern of television's influence on philosophy, and hence on the deepest levels of contemporary experience. A book of theory, Still Life in Real Time will compel the attention of all those with an interest in the nature of the ever present, ever shifting medium and its role in the thinking that marks our time.

?There can be no political sovereignty without culture sovereignty.? So argued the CBC in 1985 in its evidence to the Caplan/Sauvageau Task Force on Broadcasting Policy. Richard Collins challenges this assumption. He argues in this study of nationalism and Canadian television policy that Canada's political sovereignty depends much less on Canadian content in television than has generally been accepted. His analysis focuses on television drama, at the centre of television policy in the 1980s.

Collins questions the conventional image of Canada as a weak national entity undermined by its population's predilection for foreign television. Rather, he argues, Canada is held together, not by a shared repertoire of symbols, a national culture, but by other social forces, notably political institutions.

Collins maintains that important advantages actually and potentially flow from Canada's wear national symbolic culture. Rethinking the relationships between television and society in Canada may yield a more successful broadcasting policy, more popular television programming, and a better understanding of the links between culture and the body politic.

As the European Community moves closer to political unity, the Canadian case may become more relevant to Europe, which, Collins suggests, already fears the ?Canadianization? of its television. He maintains that a European multilingual society, without a shared culture or common European audio-visual sphere and with viewers watching foreign television, can survive successfully as a political entity ? just as Canada has.

The crucial decade for the development of the domestic wireless was 1924-34. At the beginning of the period most receivers in Britain were crystal sets, but by the end nearly all sets were on the mains, using valves and mostly with superhet circuits-broadly the same as those in use today. This book describes the broadcasting trends and receiver developments in Europe and America, and includes a detailed account of wireless development in Britain. The vital changes in radio valves are described, and the book concludes with a fascinating account of the rise and fall of home construction of wireless receivers from kits of parts. In the early years it was a nationwide activity. By the end of the decade it had virtually died out. Sets had become too complex for the amateur and commercially produced sets were almost as cheap as construction kits. The author has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the subject. Much of the information comes from his private collection of papers and early magazines, complete with their advertisements - material that is not generally available in public collections. The crucial decade is likely to prove the definitive work on the subject. It is essential reading for those interested in the history of wireless and the development of its technology.