Television Personalities offers an exciting, engaging approach to studying and understanding the most prominent and popular performers in television and celebrity culture. It is an original, indispensable guide for undergraduate and postgraduate students of media, television and celebrity studies, as well as those interested in digital culture more widely.

Meet the Robertsons in this personal behind-the-scenes look at the stars of the exploding A&E(R) show "Duck Dynasty"(R).
What do faith, family, ducks, and money have in common? The well-known stars of A&E's hit show "Duck Dynasty"--Korie and Willie Robertson From Louisiana's bayou comes the story of how the Robertson family went from eating fried bologna sandwiches to consuming fine filet mignon.
Part redneck logic, part humorous family stories, combined with family-business tips and faith, this book is the inside sneak peek for everything you wanted to know about being a Robertson. You'll find out things about this lovable family that you won't see on the popular TV show--such as how the family survived while Miss Kay worked days and left the boys in the care of eight-year-old older brother Alan. You'll get to know the beautiful Korie Robertson--how she met Willie, what their dating days were like, and how she juggles being a mom to their children, a wife to Willie, and an active partner in the family business. In addition, you'll get a taste of the Robertson clan's famous food, through recipes included in each chapter, and you'll see childhood photos of Willie and Korie, photos of Willie before the beard, and photos of their children and all of the Robertson clan.

Television Studies: The Basics is a lively introduction to the study of a powerful medium. It examines the major theories and debates surrounding production and reception over the years and considers both the role and future of television.

Topics covered include:

• broadcasting history and technology
• institutions and ownership
• genre and content
• audiences

Complete with global case studies, questions for discussion, and suggestions for further reading, this is an invaluable and engaging resource for those interested in how to study television.

During the fertile decade 1955-65 the television institution emerged in a form which would be familiar for the next half century: this book attends to two aspects of its formation. The first entails the production strategies, programmes, schedules, and emergent generic modes as these were invented through a process of trial and error, allied to a close attention to building the mass audience - in short the question of how television invented itself. The second aspect concerns the place of women and the concept 'feminine' in the new institution. Television offered women access to the public sphere in ways that were potentially disruptive of the order prevailing in mid-1950s Britain. Apart from new employment opportunities, images of women and definitions of the feminine were purveyed nightly to an heterogeneous audience of millions, an audience that was itself under construction throughout the period. Through close attention to three discrete areas of programming (women's programmes, news and current affairs, and popular drama), the book aims to convey a sense of the excitement entailed in establishing the institution and to ask where and how it may have posed challenges to the prevailing patriarchal hegemony. Hence the productive interplay of two terms, television and the feminine, both of which were evolving rapidly during the period, is explored in the context of the contemporary discursive climate.

The first and only guide to the beloved and star-studded Star Trek: The Animated Series. The first and only guide to the beloved and star-studded Star Trek: The Animated Series, the in-canon (mostly) continuation of the iconic Star Trek: Original Series. Star Trek was left for dead in 1969, after the cancellation of The Original Series (TOS). However, even though new adventures of the Enterprise and its crew were not being produced, it remained in the zeitgeist due to syndication and fan-run conventions. As a result, Star Trek became more popular and led to Gene Roddenberry and Filmation Studios continuing the Enterprise's original five-year mission on Saturday morning television. Star Trek: The Animated Series (TAS) was a critical success, airing 22 episodes over two seasons and earning the franchise its first Emmy Award in 1975. The show featured the voices of almost the entire original cast, including William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, along with TOS writers Dorothy Fontana ("Journey to Babel"), David Gerrold ("The Trouble with Tribbles"), acclaimed science-fiction author Larry Niven, and many more. This book is the first officially dedicated to TAS, and provides fans with behind-the-scenes production documents, never-before-seen art, and all-new interviews with the people who produced the Enterprise's new animated adventures. Star Trek: The Official Guide to The Animated Series reveals the efforts it took to translate TOS into animated form, includes a Databank encyclopedia of new and returning characters, ships, and planets, as well as trivia, bloopers, and TAS's connections to other Star Trek shows.

Explore the creation of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, Netflix's highly-anticipated new prequel series from The Jim Henson Company, with this all-access look at the show's journey to the screen. Set many years before the events of The Dark Crystal, Jim Henson's classic 1982 movie, The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance returns to the world of Thra with an all-new adventure. When three Gelfling discover the horrifying secret behind the Skeksis' power, they set out on an epic journey to ignite the fires of rebellion and save their world. Revealing the incredible creative process behind the new series, this book will show how Jim Henson's Creature Shop, legendary character and costume designer Brian Froud, and director Louis Leterrier brought Thra and its characters to life alongside the artists and puppeteers who are continuing the legacy of the original film. Filled with exclusive cast and crew interviews, concept art, set photography, puppet designs and more, this is the definitive exploration of The Jim Henson Company's epic return to Thra.

The past decade has seen an explosion of lifestyle makeover TV shows. Audiences around the world are being urged to 'renovate' everything from their homes to their pets and children while lifestyle experts on TV now tell us what not to eat and what not to wear. Makeover television and makeover culture is now ubiquitous and yet, compared with reality TV shows like Big Brother and Survivor, there has been relatively little critical attention paid to this format. This exciting collection of essays written by leading media scholars from the UK, US and Australia aims to reveal the reasons for the huge popularity and influence of the makeover show. Written in a lively and accessible manner, the essays brought together here will help readers 'make sense' of makeover TV by offering a range of different approaches to understanding the emergence of this popular cultural phenomenon. Looking at a range of shows from The Biggest Loser to Trinny and Susannah Undress, essays include an analysis of how and why makeover TV shows have migrated across such a range of TV cultures, the social significance of the rise of home renovation shows, the different ways in which British versus American audiences identify with makeover shows, and the growing role of lifestyle TV in the context of neo-liberalism in educating us to be 'good' citizens. This book was published as a special issue of Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies.

Welcome to the glam and fab world of Sam Faiers - star of the hit TV programme The Only Way is Essex. Read on to find out what it takes to be a REAL Essex Girl. The Oxford Dictionary definition of an 'Essex Girl': A brash, materialistic young woman of a type supposedly found in Essex or surrounding areas in the south-east of England. The Sam Faiers definition of an 'Essex Girl': A stylish, hard-working, big-hearted and family-minded young woman found in Brentwood or nearby areas (and Marbs). At the start of 2010 Sam Faiers was a normal 19-year-old girl from Brentwood: she was working in a local bank, plotting a glamour modelling career and planning what outfit to wear to Sugar Hut. Then the first episode of TOWIEaired, and suddenly Sam was catapulted into a world of champagne cocktails, TV studios, nightclubs and paparazzi. In Living Life the Essex Way, Sam lifts the lid on her childhood, her rise to fame and her beauty regime, as well as her dating rules, dealing with instant fame, the men in her life and what really goes on behind the scenes on the hit ITV2 show.

Explores Males and Nonbinary Trans Representation on Television Explores Trans representation on audience attitudes Looks at television from the last decade

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

"Doctor Who "is the longest running science fiction television series in the world and is regularly watched by millions of people across the globe. While its scores of fans adore the show with cult-like devotion, the fan-contributors to this book argue that there is an uncharted dimension to Doctor Who. Bringing together diverse perspectives on race and its representation in "Doctor Who," this anthology offers new understandings of the cultural significance of race in the programme - how the show's representations of racial diversity, colonialism, nationalism and racism affect our daily lives and change the way we relate to each other.

An accessible introduction to critical race theory, postcolonial studies and other race-related academic fields, the 23 contributors deftly combine examples of the popular cultural icon and personal reflections to provide an analysis that is at once approachable but also filled with the intellectual rigor of academic critique.

"Television News Anchors" is a collection of 35 major articles and essays which are divided into three sections: "The Early Years, " the rise of American television news, which was largely accidental; "The Present: Issues" ethical issues in television news and "The Present: Faces" major profiles of Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, Dan Rather and 19 other major television news people. "Television News Anchors" contains a Timeline of the development of television news; an Annotated Bibliography and an Index. This book is an essential guide to understanding those who give us our daily dose of broadcast news and the issues they face. 310 pp.

This all-new edition of the best-selling guide The TV Showrunner's Roadmap provides readers with the tools for creating, writing, and managing your own hit streaming series. Combining his 30+ years as a working screenwriter and professor, industry veteran Neil Landau expertly unpacks essential insights to the creation of a successful show and takes readers behind the scenes with exclusive and enlightening interviews with showrunners from some of TV's most lauded series, including Fargo, Better Call Saul, Watchmen, Insecure, Barry, Money Heist, Succession, Ozark, Schitt's Creek, Euphoria, PEN15, and many more. From conception to final rewrite, The TV Showrunner's Roadmap is an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to create a series that won't run out of steam after the first few episodes. This groundbreaking guide features an eResource with additional interviews and bonus materials. So grab your laptop, dig out that stalled spec script, and buckle up. Welcome to the fast lane.

The soap opera, one of U.S. television's longest-running and most influential formats, is on the brink. Declining ratings have been attributed to an increasing number of women working outside the home and to an intensifying competition for viewers' attention from cable and the Internet. Yet, soaps' influence has expanded, with serial narratives becoming commonplace on most prime time TV programs. "The Survival of Soap Opera" investigates the causes of their dwindling popularity, describes their impact on TV and new media culture, and gleans lessons from their complex history for twenty-first-century media industries.

The book contains contributions from established soap scholars such as Robert C. Allen, Louise Spence, Nancy Baym, and Horace Newcomb, along with essays and interviews by emerging scholars, fans and Web site moderators, and soap opera producers, writers, and actors from ABC's "General Hospital," CBS's "The Young and the Restless" and "The Bold and the Beautiful," and other shows. This diverse group of voices seeks to intervene in the discussion about the fate of soap operas at a critical juncture, and speaks to longtime soap viewers, television studies scholars, and media professionals alike.

Drawing upon the existing scholarship of period drama and emerging research into new media ecologies, instigated by television streaming services such as Netflix, this book establishes a critical framework for understanding the representation of nationhood and cultural identity in television drama. By formalising the term 'post-heritage' the book proposes a methodology which recognises the interplay of traditional and innovative elements within period drama productions. The book applies this critical perspective to popular British period drama productions from the 2010s, with examples including The Crown, the 'society dramas' of Upstairs Downstairs and Downton Abbey, Steven Knight's Dickens adaptations, and Stephen Poliakoff's recent oeuvre, to demonstrate the benefits of evaluating period drama as part of twenty-first century television's developments. It challenges the assumptions around characteristics and ideological purpose that period drama discourse often contends with, and offers new perspectives on understanding the past through televisual representations. This book will be important reading for students and scholars of television studies, film studies, and cultural studies.

Online television streaming has radically changed the ways in which programs are produced, disseminated and watched. While the market is largely globalized with some platforms streaming in multiple countries, audiences are fragmented, due to a large number of choices and often solitary viewing. However, streaming gives new life to old series and innovates conventions in genre, narrative and characterization. This edited collection is dedicated to the study of the streaming platforms and the future of television. It includes a plethora of carefully organized and similarly structured chapters in order to provide in-depth yet easily accessible readings of major changes in television. Enriching a growing body of literature on the future of television, essays thoroughly assess the effects new television media have on institutions, audiences and content.