Focusing on British, French and Russian television news coverage of Islam as a security threat, this book provides the first comparative account of how television broadcasting in different geo- and socio-political environments integrates discourses on Islam into nationally oriented, representational systems.

Alison Horbury investigates the reprisal of the myth of Persephone - a mother-daughter plot of separation and initiation - in post-feminist television cultures where, she argues, it functions as a symptom expressing a complex around the question of sexual difference - what Lacan calls 'sexuation', where this question has been otherwise foreclosed.

Hit show "Paranormal State" chronicles the extraordinary life of Ryan Buell and the other members of the Paranormal Research Society (PRS) as they seek to find the truth behind terrifying real life mysteries, hauntings, and ghosts. Stone-cold investigators of the supernatural and seekers of the unknown, they have dedicated their lives to working beside countless amounts of families who seem to suffer from the effects of paranormal experiences. In this behind-the-scenes look, Ryan takes readers inside the cases from the show. Revealing new facts, and discussing never-before-seen cases, "Paranormal State" explores the intriguing mysteries surrounding each case and the difficult decisions faced by Ryan and PRS in the field, as well as their struggles with faith (their own and that of those they're helping). Readers and die-hard fans will finally get to see how Ryan and PRS have evolved, both from the beginning and through the advent of the show. Connecting the dots and finding out why these 'hauntings' may occur in the first place, Ryan and his team have saved families. "Paranormal State" is the official guide to their fascinating and frightening endeavours.

Burns and Thompson help to remedy the lack of a forum for current research on television by bringing together, in this volume, some of the best recent research in television studies. This work will begin to fill the gap in literature on television studies as a discipline. In compiling these 13 papers, the editors maintain a balance of timely interest and lasting relevance. The contributors study the texts of current TV dramatic and comic series, such as Dallas and Cheers, as well as current trends in nonfiction TV, such as network and local news coverage. Each analysis of a specific television text is complimented with rigorous theoretical argumentation. Students and scholars of communications and television criticism will find Television Studies valuable reading. The book begins with a two-chapter debate primarily seeking a definition of `television studies.' The debate includes a critical examination of the capitalist institutions that dominate television as an industry. Further chapters discuss dramatic television series; an examination of the development of the lengthy serial text of Dallas, and structural analysis of the pilot episode of Cheers. The book contains five essays on nonfiction television, including an insiders view of the production and promotion of local TV news and an analysis of CBS and ABC's TV news coverage of South Africa over a two week period in 1987. In a final essay, conventional wisdom about `the audience' is refuted.

Tony Garnett is the first book-length study of one of the most respected and prolific producers working in British television. From ground-breaking dramas from the 1960s such as Up the Junction and Cathy Come Home to the 'must see' series in the 1990s and 2000s such as This Life and The Cops, Garnett has produced some of the most important and influential British television drama. This book charts Garnett's career from his early days as an actor to his position as executive producer and head of World Productions. Drawing on personal interviews, archival research, contextual analysis and selected case studies, Tony Garnett examines the ways in which Garnett has helped to define the role of the producer in British television drama. Arguing that Garnett was both a key creative and political influence on the work he produced and an enabler of the work of others, the book traces his often combative relationships with broadcasting institutions (especially the BBC). Garnett's distinctive contribution to the development of a social realist aesthetic in British TV drama is also examined, from the documentary-inspired single plays of the 1960s and 70s to the subversion of genre within popular drama series of the 1990s and 2000s. Additionally, the study discusses the films he made for the cinema and considers some of the ways in which Garnett's experiments in film technology - 16 mm in the 1960s, digital video in the 1990s - have shaped his creative output. Tony Garnett will be of interest to all levels of researchers and students of British television drama, media and film.

This is the first full-length study of the screenwriter Troy Kennedy Martin, whose work for film and television includes Z Cars, The Italian Job, Kelly's Heroes, The Sweeney, Reilly - Ace of Spies and Edge of Darkness. With a career spanning six decades Troy Kennedy Martin has seen the rise and fall of the television dramatist, making his debut in the era of studio-based television drama in the late 1950s prior to the transition to filmed drama (for which he argued in a famous manifesto) as the television play was gradually replaced by popular series and serials, for which Kennedy Martin did some of his best work. Drawing on original interviews with Kennedy Martin and his collaborators, as well as extensive research at the BBC Written Archives Centre and the British Film Institute Library (which holds a Special Collection of Troy Kennedy Martin's scripts), the book provides a comprehensive analysis of the film and television career of one of Britain's leading screenwriters, whose work includes many adaptations as well as original scripts and screenplays. Also included is a chapter examining Kennedy Martin's significant contribution to innovative and experimental television drama - his 1964 'Nats Go Home' polemic and the six-part serial, Diary of a Young Man, plus his 1986 MacTaggart Lecture which anticipated recent developments in television style and technology. Written in an easily accessible style, this book will appeal to anyone with an interest in television drama, screenwriting, and the history of British television over the last fifty years.

This is the first-ever critical work on Jack Rosenthal, the award-winning British television dramatist. His career began with Coronation Street in the 1960s and he became famous for his popular sitcoms, including The Lovers and The Dustbinmen. During what is often known as the golden age' of British television drama, Rosenthal wrote such plays as The Knowledge, The Chain, Spend, Spend, Spend and P'tang, Yang, Kipperbang, as well as the pilot for the series London's Burning. This study offers a close analysis of all Rosenthal's best-known works, drawing on archival material as well as interviews with his collaborators and cast members. It traces the events that informed his writing, ranging from his comic take on the permissive society' of the 1960s, through to recession in the 1970s and Thatcherism in the 1980s. Rosenthal's distinctive brand of humour and its everyday surrealism is contrasted throughout with the work of his contemporaries, including Dennis Potter, Alan Bleasdale and Johnny Speight, and his influence on contemporary television and film is analysed. Rosenthal is not usually placed in the canon of Anglo-Jewish writing but the book argues this case by focusing on his prize-winning Plays for Today The Evacuees and Bar Mitzvah Boy. This book will appeal to students and researchers in Television, Film and Cultural Studies, as well as those interested in contemporary drama and Jewish Studies. -- .

Television is changing almost beyond recognition. In the battle for consumers, social media sites, smart phones and tablets have become rivals to traditional linear TV. However, audiences and producers are also embracing mobile platforms to enhance TV viewing itself. This book examines the emerging phenomenon of the second screen: where users are increasingly engaging with content on two screens concurrently. The practice is transforming television into an interactive, participatory and social experience. James Blake examines interactive television from three crucial angles: audience motivation and agency, advances in TV production and the monetisation of second screen content. He also tracks its evolution by bringing together interviews with more than 25 television industry professionals - across the major UK channels - including commissioning editors, digital directors, producers and advertising executives. These reveal the successes and failures of recent experiments and the innovations in second screen projects. As the second screen becomes second nature for viewers and producers, the risks and opportunities for the future of television are slowly beginning to emerge. Television and the Second Screen will offer students and scholars of television theory, industry professionals and anyone with an abiding interest in television and technology, an accessible and illuminating guide to this important cultural shift.

Investigating the leading drama genres of different television eras in both Britain and the US, this book traces the evolution of television drama from the 'high culture' aspirations and technical limitations of its early days to the intense commercial competition that informs the creation of television drama today.

Women's soap opera viewing has long been thought of by feminists and nonfeminists as an unproductive waste of time. Blumenthal takes the opposing view, arguing that women's "indulgence" in these programs is actually liberating. In overcoming the social opposition to the stigma attached to the feminine content and style, and engaging in soap opera viewing, women celebrate their femininity, particularly their gendered identification with romance, relationality, intuitiveness, talkativeness, and other aspects of emotionality. This book will be of interest to academics in the areas of sociology, women's studies, and media studies.

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.

Recent years have seen a renewed interest in the relationship between the news, media and death. Driven by a perceived ubiquity of death and dying on television, in newspapers and on the internet, many scholars have attempted to more closely examine aspects of this coverage. The result is that there now exists a large body of scholarly work on death in the news, yet what has been lacking is a comprehensive synthesis of the field. This book seeks to close this gap by analyzing the scholarship on death in the news by way of a thematic approach. It provides a historical overview, looks at the conditions of production, content and reception, and also analyzes emerging trends in the representation of death online. This fascinating account provides a much needed overview of what we currently know about death in the news and provides food for thought for future studies in the field.

Shaw argues that journalism should focus on deconstructing the underlying structural and cultural causes of political violence such as poverty, famine and human trafficking, and play a proactive (preventative), rather than reactive (prescriptive) role in humanitarian intervention.

The 2010 General Election represented a pathbreaking contest in Political Communication. The TV debates changed forever the feel of the campaign. This book brings together key commentators, analysts and polling experts to present readers with a unique and valuable insight into the development of political communication in British Politics.

A stimulating treatment of an area of public life which is a subject of continuing debate and controversy. This volume covers the years in which ITV faced more challenges than at any time in its history and its regulator, the IBA, was subject to political pressures so extreme that they brought about its abolition and rebirth as the Independent Television Commission. The book gives detailed accounts, based on documents not previously available and interviews with over sixty senior figures in the industry, of the changes and controversies of the period. Highlights include: the conflict with government over the programme Death on the Rock , the battle with the BBC for possession of the rights to Dallas , the financial crisis at ITN, the impact of the Peacock Committee Report and the 1990 White Paper on Broadcasting, as well as detailed accounts of the broadcasters' and the regulator's battle with the government over the Broadcasting Bill and the subsequent 'auction' of ITV licences.

"Reality Television, Affect and Intimacy" shifts current discussions of media and reality from the informative to the affective, from knowledge to feelings. In reality television, Misha Kavka argues, everyday 'reality' is the ground for an experience of immediacy, or televisual intimacy, that is self-evidently mediated and performed. The book explores this paradox by conceptualising the relation between affect and media. For Kavka, affect matters because the feelings generated across the screen are real in a material way. Investigating such concepts as publicity and privacy in reality TV families, performance technologies in "Big Brother," arranged marriages in romance reality TV, and gender, race and sexuality in "Survivor" and "Project Runway," she argues that affect is the core reality of a public sphere that is reconfigured by its viewing patterns. Renewing attention to the complexities of affective intimacies, this book offers the rich realities of feeling as a critical alternative to traditional communication models.

The definitive, behind-the-scenes look at the most popular sitcom of the last decade, The Big Bang Theory, packed with all-new, exclusive interviews with the producers and the entire cast.

The Big Bang Theory is a television phenomenon. To the casual viewer, it’s a seemingly effortless comedy, with relatable characters tackling real-life issues, offering a kind of visual comfort food to its millions of dedicated fans. But the behind-the-scenes journey of the show from a failed pilot to a global sensation is a fascinating story that even the most die-hard fans don’t know in its entirety.

The Big Bang Theory:The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series is a riveting, entertaining look at the sitcom sensation, with the blessing and participation of co-creators Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, executive producers Steve Molaro and Steve Holland, as well as Johnny Galecki, Jim Parsons, Kaley Cuoco, Simon Helberg, Kunal Nayyar, Melissa Rauch, Mayim Bialik, and more. Glamour senior editor Jessica Radloff, who has written over 150 articles on the series (and even had a cameo in the finale!), gives readers an all-access pass to its intrepid producing and writing team and beloved cast. It’s a story of on-and-off screen romance told in hilarious and emotional detail, of casting choices that nearly changed everything (which even some of the actors didn’t know until now), of cast members bravely powering through personal tragedies, and when it came time to announce the 12th season would be its last, the complicated reasons why it was more difficult than anyone ever led on.

Through hundreds of hours of interviews with the sitcom’s major players, Radloff dives into all this and much more. The book is the ultimate celebration of this once-in-a-generation show and a must-have for all fans.