Cable television, on the brink of a boom in the 1970s, promised audiences a new media frontier-an expansive new variety of entertainment and information choices. Music video, 24-hour news, 24-hour weather, movie channels, children's channels, home shopping, and channels targeting groups based on demographic characteristics or interests were introduced.

Cable Visions looks beyond broadcasting's mainstream, toward cable's alternatives, to critically consider the capacity of commercial media to serve the public interest. It offers an overview of the industry's history and regulatory trends, case studies of key cable newcomers aimed at niche markets (including Nickelodeon, BET, and HBO Latino), and analyses of programming forms introduced by cable TV (such as nature, cooking, sports, and history channels).

Mere clothing is transformed into desirable fashion by the way it is represented in imagery. Fashion's Double examines how meanings are projected onto garments through their representation, whether in painting, photography, cinema or online fashion film, conveying identity and status, eliciting fascination and desire. With in-depth case studies including the work of Nick Knight and Helmut Newton, film examples such as The Hunger Games, music video Girl Panic by Duran Duran, and much more, this book analyses the interrelationship between clothing, identity, embodiment, representation and self-representation. Written for students and scholars alike, Fashion's Double will appeal to anyone studying fashion, cultural studies, art theory and history, photography, sociology, and film.

A Functional Analysis of Political Television Advertisements examines theory and research on election advertisements. William Benoit employs the Functional Theory of Political Campaign Discourse to understand the nature or content of television spots in election campaigns. Beginning with a look at American presidential spots from 1952-2012, Benoit investigates the three functions-acclaims, attacks, and defenses-and the topics of policy and character for these groups of political commercials. The following chapters are devoted to reporting similar data on presidential primary advertisements, presidential third party spots, other theories including Issue Ownership Theory and Functional Federalism Theory, as well as nonpresidential and non-U.S. election advertising. Benoit considers the data, discusses the development of political advertising over time, and finally, presents areas for further research. This book is a uniquely comprehensive examination of the value and use of television spots in political election rhetoric.

How is The Simpsons a satirical artwork engaged with important social, political, and cultural issues? Matthew A. Henry offers the first comprehensive understanding of the show as a satire and explores the ways in which The Simpsons participates in the so-called "culture war" debates taking place in American society. Situating The Simpsons within the framework of satirical humor in American media, the tradition of the nuclear family sitcom, and the history of the Fox Television network, this book explores American culture thematically, examining how the show satirically engages with issues of race and ethnicity, national identity, gender and sexuality, social and economic class, and religion.

"Cylons in America" is the first collection of critical studies of Battlestar Galactica (its 2003 miniseries, and the ongoing 2004 television series), examining its place within popular culture and its engagement with contemporary American society.With its fourth season due to air in January 2008, the award-winning Battlestar Galactica continues to be exceptionally popular for non-network television, combining the familiar features of science fiction with direct commentary on life in mainstream America. "Cylons in America" is the first collection of critical studies of Battlestar Galactica (its 2003 miniseries, and the ongoing 2004 television series), examining its place within popular culture and its engagement with contemporary American society.Battlestar Galactica depicts the remnants of the human race fleeing across space from a robotic enemy called the Cylons. The fleet is protected by a single warship, the Battlestar, and is searching for a "lost colony" that settled on the legendary planet "Earth." Originally a television series in the 1970s, the current series maintains the mythic sense established with the earlier quest narrative, but adds elements of hard science and aggressive engagement with post-9/11 American politics. "Cylons In America" casts a critical eye on the revived series and is sure to appeal to fans of the show, as well as to scholars and researchers of contemporary television.

Representing a detailed analysis of footballers' wives and their role in contemporary British culture, this books explores how the generic and stereotypical 'Wag' has been created by newspaper and magazine coverage, auto/biographies and influential television programmes.

He's been depicted as a serious thinker, a master of deduction, a hopeless addict, a bare-knuckle fighter. His companion is abumbler, a sympathetic equal, someone helpless in the face of his friend's social inadequacies. Sherlock Holmes and John Watson remain the most-adapted fictional characters of all time. In 2010, when Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman stepped into the roles, they managed to meld many previous incarnations into two glorious performances. Over Sherlock's first three seasons, the BAFTA-winning series created by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat has brought new life to stories almost 130 years old and created a worldwide fandom unlike any other. Investigating Sherlock, written by bestselling author NikkiStafford, examines each episode through in-depth and fun analysis, exploring the character development and cataloguingevery subtle reference to the original stories. Containing revealing exclusive interviews from experts of the Sherlock Holmesphenomenom, and with biographies of Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, as well as Arthur Conan Doyle.

This book argues that recent developments in contemporary comedy have changed not just the way we laugh but the way we understand the world. Drawing on a range of contemporary televisual, cinematic and digital examples, from Seinfeld and Veep to Family Guy and Chappelle's Show, Holm explores how humour has become a central site of cultural politics in the twenty-first century. More than just a form of entertainment, humour has come to play a central role in the contemporary media environment, shaping how we understand ideas of freedom, empathy, social boundaries and even logic. Through an analysis of humour as a political and aesthetic category, Humour as Politics challenges older models of laughter as a form of dissent and instead argues for a new theory of humour as the cultural expression of our (neo)liberal moment.

Mad Men, using the historical backdrop of the many events that came to demarcate the 1960s, has presented a beautifully-styled rendering of this tumultuous decade, while teasing out a number of themes that resonate throughout the show and connect to the contemporary discourses that dominate today's political landscape. The chapters of this book analyze the most important dimensions explored on the show, including issues around gender, race, prejudice, the family, generational change, the social movements of the 1960s, our understanding of America's place in the world, and the idea of work in the post-war period. Mad Men and Politics provides the reader with an understanding not only of the topics and issues that can be easily grasped while watching, but also contemplates our historical perspective of the 1960s as we consider it through the telescope of our current condition.

Hand-Made Television explores the ongoing enchantment of many of the much-loved stop-frame children's television programmes of 1960s and 1970s Britain. The first academic work to analyse programmes such as Pogles' Wood (1966), Clangers (1969), Bagpuss (1974) (Smallfilms) and Gordon Murray's Camberwick Green (1966), Trumpton (1967) and Chigley (1969), the book connects these series to their social and historical contexts while providing in-depth analyses of their themes and hand-made aesthetics. Hand-Made Television shows that the appeal of these programmes is rooted not only in their participatory address and evocation of a pastoral English past, but also in the connection of their stop-frame aesthetics to the actions of childhood play. This book makes a significant contribution to both Animation Studies and Television Studies; combining scholarly rigour with an accessible style, it is suitable for scholars as well as fans of these iconic British children's programmes.

This book is an examination of the central role of incumbency in the televised world of American presidential elections and analyzes how an individual incumbent, Bill Clinton, influenced the recurring and predictable patterns of televised news in ways that secured his reelection. Dover advances a theoretical perspective on the importance of incumbency and links it to the institutional and rhetorical features of the presidential office. He describes how television news media responds to incumbency by depicting a strong incumbent, one who leads in the polls and eventually wins, as a statesman deserving of reelection, and by showing a weak incumbent, one who trails in the polls and eventually loses, as a troubled politician unqualified for office. Professor Dover demonstrates that the uniquely appearing events of the 1996 Campaign were not unique, but were instead additional manifestations of the recurring patterns by which incumbency and television news operate in American politics. Clinton became a strong incumbent before the election began and TV news media responded predictably. After examining how Clinton became a strong incumbent by defeating the Republicans in a highly televised series of battles in 1995 over Medicare and the federal budget, he then describes how the news media responded to Clinton's strength by directing attention to the most divisive aspects of the Republican nomination campaign while presenting Clinton as a statesman. He also examines the general election campaign from the same perspective, while demonstrating how TV news media constantly depicted Clinton as a likely winner while focusing on Dole as the probable loser. An important analysis for all students and researchers of presidential elections and political journalism.

Most histories of Soviet cinema portray the 1970s as a period of stagnation with the gradual decline of the film industry. This book, however, examines Soviet film and television of the era as mature industries articulating diverse cultural values via new genre models. During the 1970s, Soviet cinema and television developed a parallel system of genres where television texts celebrated conservative consensus while films manifested symptoms of ideological and social crises. The book examines the genres of state-sponsored epic films, police procedural, comedy and melodrama, and outlines how television gradually emerged as the major form of Russo-Soviet popular culture. Through close analysis of well-known film classics of the period as well as less familiar films and television series, this groundbreaking work helps to deconstruct the myth of this era as a time of cultural and economic stagnation and also helps us to understand the persistence of this myth in the collective memory of Putin-era Russia. This monograph is the first book-length English-language study of film and television genres of the late Soviet era.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

"Staiger's" Blockbuster TV" artfully balances formal analysis, inflected with and informed by various theoretical perspectives, of four different sitcoms with an examination of their reception. "JUMPCUT"

"Staiger offers a radical counter-approach to traditional film-centered analysis."
--"Jump Cut"

Archie Bunker. Jed. Laverne and Shirley. Cliff Huxtable. Throughout the entire history of American prime-time television only four sitcoms have been true blockbusters, with Nielsen ratings far above the second- and third-rated programs. Weekly, millions of Americans of every age were making a special effort to turn on the set to see what Archie, Jed, Laverne, and Cliff were doing that week. The wild popularity of these shows--"All in the Family," "The Beverly Hillbillies," "Laverne & Shirley" (and its partner "Happy Days"), and "The Cosby Show"--left commentators bewildered by the tastes and preferences of the American public. How do we account for the huge appeal of these sitcoms, and how does it figure into the history of network prime-time television?

Janet Staiger answers these questions by detailing the myriad factors that go into the construction of mass audiences. Treating the four shows as case studies, she deftly balances factual explanations (for instance, the impact of VCRs and cable on network domination of TV) with more interpretative ones (for example, the transformation of "The Beverly Hillbillies" from a popular show detested by the critics, to a blockbuster after its elevation as the critics' darling), and juxtaposes industry-based reasons (for example, the ways in which TV shows derive success fromplacement in the weekly programming schedule) with stylistic explanations (how, for instance, certain shows create pleasure from a repetition and variation of a formula).

Staiger concludes that because of changes in the industry, these shows were a phenomenon that may never be repeated. And while the western or the night-time soap has at times captured public attention, Blockbuster TV maintains that the sitcom has been THE genre to attract people to the tube, and that without understanding the sitcom, we can't properly understand the role of television in our culture.

A history of American and British television drama, this book charts how the two production systems have moved closer together since the 1970s: both observe each other to drive innovation, and both continuously turn to each other to find new markets and new production partners. Although earlier collaborations exist, this increased transnationalisation of US and UK television drama has intensified since the 1970s as the increased number of channels and new technologies such as the internet and cable and satellite have led to stronger competition. Examining genres as diverse as period drama, the mini-series, the super-soaps of Dallas and Dynasty, crime drama and the recent spout of celebrated British and American quality drama, this book investigates how marketing campaigns within the press continually return these dramas into the realm of the nations they represent.

Children today are growing up in a world of global media, in which the voices of many cultures compete for attention. Increasing numbers of children are also citizens of the globe: they live in multicultural societies, many have migrated themselves and live within active diasporic and transnational networks. The authors offer a fresh perspective on the relationships between media, globalisation and contemporary childhood.

"Justice Performed: Courtroom TV Shows and the Theaters of Popular Law" is the first study of the reality TV genre to trace its theatrical legacy, connecting the phenomenon of the daytime TV shows to a long history of theatrical trials staged to educate audiences in pedagogies of citizenship. It examines how judge TV fulfills part of law's performative function: that of providing a participatory spectacle the public can recognize as justice. Since it debuted in 1981 with "The People's Court," which made famous its star jurist, Judge Joseph A. Wapner, dozens of judges have made the move to television. Unlike the demographics in actual courts, most TV judges are non-white men and women hailing from diverse cultural and racial backgrounds. These judges charge their decisions with personal preferences and cultural innuendos, painting a very different picture of what justice looks like. Drawing on interviews with judge TV judges, producers and production staff, as well as the author's experience as a studio audience member, the book scrutinizes the performativity of the genre, the needs it meets and the inherent ideological biases about race, gender and civic instruction.

What is the real nature of television, and what is its place in contemporary society and culture? In a provocative rethinking of the medium and its ensuing effects, this book argues that we have misunderstood television and have thus contributed to a distorted view of art and culture in the 20th century. During the final quarter of this century both in academic and popular circles, we have spread wildly exaggerated claims about television's undermining of human consciousness and behavior. Television has become a scapegoat for all sorts of societal and cultural ills. The arguments presented by many researchers on behalf of the ill-effects of TV are fundamentally weak and flawed. On the eve of the 21st century, the claimed distinctions between high art and popular culture have become a final, hopeless repository of pedantry. Television can be understood only by viewing it as an art form, and measuring its role in society and culture in concert with the first principles of human reason and liberty.

Do the news media have any role in the transformation of war and warfare? A constellation of labels by academics and practitioners have been coined in the last twenty years to describe the new forms of a phenomenon as old as the human race. However, this book claims that it remains to be fully understood what the specific role of the news media is in this process. It argues that the news media, old and new alike, alter the cognitive and strategic environment of the actors of war and politics and change the way these interact with one another. Building on a four-dimensional definition of power and focusing on the role of television, this book recognises the importance of interactions upon the understanding of any social phenomenon. It suggests that the nature of war is changing partly because it is no longer just a matter of linear strategic interactions but also, and mainly, of 'mediated' ones.

This volume brings together a range of voices from across the global environmental media community to build a comparative international set of perspectives on 'green' film and television production. Through this, it provides a necessary intervention in environmental media studies that actively foregrounds media infrastructure, production, policy, and labour - that is, the management and practice of media production cultures. Due to its immense sociocultural influence and economic resources, the global screen media industry is at the forefront of raising awareness for the political and social issues resulting from accelerated environmental instability. However, the 21st century relationship between screen media and the environment has another face that demands urgent scrutiny. The advent of the digital age and the vast electrical and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) infrastructures required to support digital production, distribution, and archiving has resulted in the rapid expansion and diversification of the industry's resource use, infrastructure construction, energy dependency, and consequent waste and emissions production. Addressing these structures is essential to alleviating their environmental and social impact and ensuring that the industry's rhetoric on environmental responsibility is reflected in its practice. As a mitigating counterbalance to the above trends, there has been a heightenedpush for sustainability measures along various lines of industry management, policy, and practice. These initiatives-including the cultural values they reflect, the political economies that form their logic, the managerial and marketing tactics that orchestrate them, and the environmental realities of their implementation-form the central object of inquiry for this collection.

This history of public television over the last twenty years shows how powerful political actors and the budget process in the United States have severely restricted the strategic behavior and programming of public TV. This hard-hitting story fills a real void in the literature on the subject and should be required reading for station managers, broadcasters, students and professionals in communications, and public policymakers. The ancillary text with its analysis of organizations theory and models is intended also for undergraduate and graduate students in mass media and communications, public policy, and organizational behavior. This practical analysis of public television funding, organization, and programming opens with an overview of organizations theory and a discussion of two models of organizational behavior. A brief history of public TV policy follows with a description of critical developments under the last four American presidents. The legislative history of the Corporation of Public Broadcasting demonstrates the effects of the budgetary process in TV programming, employment diversity, and services to different audiences. The case study closes with an evaluation of public television in terms of organizational strengths and weaknesses and offers practical suggestions for reform.

This unique book investigates the tug-of-war between the free market economy and authoritative state regulation in Chinese culture after 1989. Contextualizing close textual readings of cinematic and television texts, both officially sanctioned and independently made, Wing Shan Ho illuminates the complex process in which cultural producers and consumers negotiate with both the state and the market in articulating new forms of subjectivity. Ho examines the types of Chinese subjects that the state applauds and aggrandizes in contrast to those that it condemns and attempts to eliminate. Her focus on the socialist spirit exposes inherent contradictions in the current Chinese project of nation-building. This comparative study shines a harsh light on these cultural products and on much more: the confluence between commerce and politics and popular culture, the interaction between state and individuals in popular culture, and the complexity of governmentality in an era of globalization.

Breaking Bad: Critical Essays on the Contexts, Politics, Style, and Reception of the Television Series, edited by David P. Pierson, explores the contexts, politics, and style of AMC's original series Breaking Bad. The book's first section locates and addresses the series from several contemporary social contexts, including neo-liberalism, its discourses and policies, the cultural obsession with the economy of time and its manipulation, and the epistemological principles and assumptions of Walter White's criminal alias Heisenberg. Section two investigates how the series characterizes and intersects with current cultural politics, such as male angst and the re-emergence of hegemonic masculinity, the complex portrayal of Latinos, and the depiction of physical and mental impairment and disability. The final section takes a close look at the series' distinctive visual, aural, and narrative stylistics. Under examination are Breaking Bad's unique visual style whereby image dominates sound, the distinct role and use of beginning teaser segments to disorient and enlighten audiences, the representation of geographic space and place, the position of narrative songs to complicate viewer identification, and the integral part that emotions play as a form of dramatic action in the series.