Concerns about the effects of television on young children are a recurrent focus of public controversy. Yet amid all the anxiety, children's voices are rarely heard. In this book, one of Britain's leading television researchers investigates children's own perspectives on what they find frightening, moving and upsetting. From "Nightmare on Elm Street" to "My Girl," from "The Colour Purple" to "The News at Ten," what children find upsetting is often difficult to predict. David Blackburn gives a detailed insight into children's responses to horror films, to "weepies" and soap operas, to news and to "reality programmes." He looks at how they learn to cope with their feelings about such material, and how their parents help or hinder them in doing so. This study offers a new approach to studying the role of television in children's lives, and should be of interest to parents and teachers, as well as policy makers and educationalists.

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.

"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.

In this timely examination of television and American identity, Cummins and Gordon take readers on an informed walk through the changes that TV has already wrought-and those still likely to confront us. Commercial television in America is less than 60 years old, yet it has had an enormous impact on what we like, what we do, what we know, and how we think. A family transplanted from the 1940s to the present day would certainly be stunned by a fundamentally different world: instead of gathering in the living room for a shared evening of radio, they would be scattered around the house to indulge their individual interests on one of a hundred cable channels; instead of a society with rigid racial and ethnic divisions, they would see people of different ethnicities in passionate embraces; and certainly they would see a very different set of values reflected across the board. They would, in sum, find themselves in an unrecognizable America, one both reflected in and shaped by television, a medium that has been shown to have an unprecedented influence on our lives both for better and for worse. By focusing on the development of television within the cultural context that surrounds it, and drawing on such phenomena as quiz shows, comedy hours, the Kennedy assassination, the Olympics, sitcoms, presidential ads, political debates, MTV, embedded journalism, and reality TV, the authors reveal television's impact on essential characteristics of American life. They cover topics as diverse as politics, crime, medicine, sports, our perceptions, our values, our assumptions about privacy, and our unquenchable need for more "things." In addition, they consider the future of the medium in the light of theproliferation of programming options, the prevalence of cameras and receivers in our lives, the growing links between TV and computers, and the crossed boundaries of television throughout the world.

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.

- Seeks to bridge the divide between scholarly work on critical aesthetics vs. audience expectations in relation to film and television studies. - Draws on a comprehensive and original data-set from a national survey that examined audience perceptions of film genres and television formats, associated viewing patterns, and the current usage of streaming and other newer moving image adjuncts. - Reflects on how the pandemic has impacted viewing patterns and genre and format expectations moving forward.

"A raw glimpse" (Entertainment Weekly) into her lifelong battle with personal demons and near-fatal addictions--and reveals the shattering truth behind her complex, secretive, and damaging history with her father, the legendary John Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas.
Not long before her fiftieth birthday, Mackenzie Phillips made headlines with her arrest for drug possession at Los Angeles International Airport; the actor-musician-mother had been on her way to a reunion of "One Day at a Time, "the hugely popular '70s sitcom on which she once starred as the lovable rebel Julie Cooper.
Born into rock-and-roll royalty, flying in Learjets to the Virgin Islands at five, making pot brownies with Donovan at eleven, Mackenzie grew up in an all-access kingdom of hippie freedom and heroin cool. As a rising Hollywood star herself, she joined the nonstop party in the hedonistic pleasure dome of her father's making, and a rapt TV audience watched as Julie Cooper wasted away before their eyes. By the time Mackenzie discovered how deep and dark her father's trip was going, it was too late.
As an adult, she has paid dearly for a lifetime of excess, working tirelessly to reconcile her wonderful, terrible past and the pull of her magnetic father. By sharing her journey toward redemption and peace, the star who turned up "High on Arrival "has finally come back down to earth--to stay.

Winner of the 2015 Gordon Burn Prize and the 2015 CWA Non-Fiction Dagger Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and the James Tait Black Prize Dan Davies has spent more than a decade on a quest to find the real Jimmy Savile, and interviewed him extensively over a period of seven years before his death. In the course of his quest, he spent days and nights at a time quizzing Savile at his homes in Leeds and Scarborough, lunched with him at venues ranging from humble transport cafes to the Athenaeum club in London and, most memorably, joined him for a short cruise aboard the QE2. Dan thought his quest had come to an end in October 2011 when Savile's golden coffin was lowered into a grave dug at a 45-degree angle in a Scarborough cemetery. He was wrong. In the last two and a half years, Dan has been interviewing scores of people, many of them unobtainable while Jimmy was alive. What he has discovered was that his instincts were right all along and behind the mask lay a hideous truth. Jimmy Savile was not only complex, damaged and controlling, but cynical, calculating and predatory. He revelled in his status as a Pied Piper of youth and used his power to abuse the vulnerable and underage, all the while covering his tracks by moving into the innermost circles of the establishment.

In Tonight at Six, veteran journalist Michael Olesker paints an intimate, behind-the-scenes picture of local television news as few have ever seen it. He describes the long slide of a medium that was once assumed to be the golden future of American journalism, but is now widely considered an afterthought for viewers seeking serious news coverage. In his two decades as a nightly on-air commentator at Baltimore's WJZ-TV, Olesker watched as the station tumbled from pre-eminence as one of the country's top-rated local affiliates-where the on-air news personalities included the two top-ranked anchors in the country, plus a young woman named Oprah Winfrey-to inglorious runner-up in its own market. Tonight at Six offers a personal look at many of those public news personalities. But it's also a story about the decline of all TV news: how commercial considerations, short-sighted management, and the constant pressure of ratings forced the dumbing-down of local news programs around the country. It's the true story of how television stations purporting to cover the stories of huge metropolitan areas-their governors, mayors, city and county councils, school systems, police, criminal courts, neighborhoods, and more-quietly attempt this with no more than a handful of reporters. How do they do it? As Olesker explains, they don't. "While this account eviscerates three Baltimore network affiliates, the sad truth is that they are no worse-and no better-than all local TV news operations. Olesker paints a high-definition picture of the facade beneath the facade." Ira R. Allen Former UPI Reporter and White House Correspondent

They have taken the form of immigrants, invaders, lovers, heroes, cute creatures that want our candy or monsters that want our flesh. For more than a century, movies and television shows have speculated about the form and motives of alien life forms. Movies first dipped their toe into the genre in the 1940s with Superman cartoons and the big screen's first story of alien invasion (1945's The Purple Monster Strikes). More aliens landed in the 1950s science fiction movie boom, followed by more television appearances (The Invaders, My Favorite Martian) in the 1960s. Extraterrestrials have been on-screen mainstays ever since. This book examines various types of the on-screen alien visitor story, featuring a liberal array of alien types, designs and motives. Each chapter spotlights a specific film or TV series, offering comparative analyses and detailing the tropes, themes and cliches and how they have evolved over time. Highlighted subjects include The Eternals, War of the Worlds, The X-Files, John Carpenter's The Thing and Attack of the 50-Foot Woman.

"Hitch Your Antenna to the Stars" is the first cultural and industrial history of early television stardom. Susan Murray argues that television stars were central to the growth and development of American broadcasting. They were used not only to promote programs and the sale of television sets and advertised consumer goods, but also to established network identities. Through profiles of well-known performers including Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Jackie Gleason, and Lucille Ball, she shows how the television industry gave birth to the idea of TV stars and established a system of star production and management notably different from the Hollywood star system of the studio era.

An exciting new strand in The Television Series, the 'Moments in Television' collections celebrate the power and artistry of television, whilst interrogating key critical concepts in television scholarship. Each 'Moments' book is organised around a provocative binary theme. Complexity / simplicity addresses the idea of complex TV, examining its potential, limitations and impact upon creative and interpretative practices. It also reassesses simplicity as an alternative criterion for evaluation. Complexity and simplicity persuasively illuminate the book's chosen programmes in new ways. The book explores an eclectic range of TV fictions, dramatic and comedic. Contributors from diverse perspectives come together to expand and enrich the kind of close analysis most commonly found in television aesthetics. Sustained, detailed programme analyses are sensitively framed within historical, technological, institutional, cultural, creative and art-historical contexts. -- .

An exciting new strand in The Television Series, the 'Moments in Television' collections celebrate the power and artistry of television, whilst interrogating key critical concepts in television scholarship. Each 'Moments' book is organised around a provocative binary theme. Sound / image reassesses the synergy between televisual images, and sounds and music, as a key creative interaction warranting closer attention. Through close scrutiny of visual and sonic elements, the book's chosen programmes are persuasively illuminated in new ways. The book explores an eclectic range of TV fictions, dramatic and comedic. Contributors from diverse perspectives come together to expand and enrich the kind of close analysis most commonly found in television aesthetics. Sustained, detailed programme analyses are sensitively framed within historical, technological, institutional, cultural, creative and art-historical contexts. -- .

An exciting new strand in The Television Series, the 'Moments in Television' collections celebrate the power and artistry of television, whilst interrogating key critical concepts in television scholarship. Each 'Moments' book is organised around a provocative binary theme. Substance / styleoffers fresh perspectives on television's essential qualities and aesthetic significance. It reassesses the synergy between substance and style, highlighting the potential for meaning to arise through their integration. The book's chosen programmes are persuasively illuminated in new ways. The book explores an eclectic range of TV fictions, dramatic and comedic. Contributors from diverse perspectives come together to expand and enrich the kind of close analysis most commonly found in television aesthetics. Sustained, detailed programme analyses are sensitively framed within historical, technological, institutional, cultural, creative and art-historical contexts. -- .

"It Came From the 1950s" is an eclectic, witty and insightful collection of essays predicated on the hypothesis that popular cultural documents provide unique insights into the concerns, anxieties and desires of their times. The essays explore the emergence of "Hammer Horror" and the company's groundbreaking 1958 adaptation of "Dracula"; the work of popular authors such as Shirley Jackson and Robert Bloch, and the effect that 50s food advertisements had upon the poetry of Sylvia Plath; the place of special effects in the decade's science fiction films; and 1950s Anglo-American relations as refracted through the prism of the 1957 film "Night of the Demon."

Celebrate the greatest television show of all time with this definitive tribute to The Wire. Twenty years after the debut of The Wire, HBO's landmark crime drama remains one of the most celebrated and beloved television shows of all time. Now, this deluxe coffee table book tells the story of a historic production, through candid, never before-seen photography from the HBO archives. The visual story of The Wire is narrated by all-new interviews with creator David Simon, and key cast and crew members, including Dominic West, Wendell Pierce, Sonja Sohn, Lance Reddick, Michael B. Jordan, and Idris Elba. Unmatched in its depth, this prestige volume is the ultimate retrospective of the greatest television show of all time.

An analysis of African American televangelists as cultural icons Through their constant television broadcasts, mass video distributions, and printed publications, African American religious broadcasters have a seemingly ubiquitous presence in popular culture. They are on par with popular entertainers and athletes in the African American community as cultural icons even as they are criticized by others for taking advantage of the devout in order to subsidize their lavish lifestyles. For these reasons questions abound. Do televangelists proclaim the message of the gospel or a message of greed? Do they represent the "authentic" voice of the black church or the Christian Right in blackface? Does the phenomenon reflect orthodox "Christianity" or ethnocentric "Americaninity" wrapped in religious language? Watch This! seeks to move beyond such polarizing debates by critically delving into the dominant messages and aesthetic styles of African American televangelists and evaluating their ethical implications.

A comprehensive look at the history of African Americans on television that discusses major trends in black TV and examines the broader social implications of the relationship between race and popular culture as well as race and representation. Previous treatments of the history of African Americans in television have largely lacked theoretical analysis of the relationship between representations and social contexts. African Americans on Television: Race-ing for Ratings fills the existing void by supplying fundamental history with critical analyses of the racial politics of television, documenting the considerable effect that television has had on popular notions of black identity in America since the inception of television. Covering a spectrum of genres-comedy, drama, talk shows, television movies, variety shows, and reality television, including shows such as Good Times, The Oprah Winfrey Show, and Chappelle's Show-this insightful work traces a cultural genealogy of African Americans in television. Its chronological analysis provides an engaging historical account of how African Americans entered the genre of television and have continued to play a central role in the development of both the medium and the industry. The book also tracks the shift in the significance of African Americans in the television market and industry, and the changing, but enduring, face of stereotypes and racism in American television culture.

"The Television Studies Reader" brings together key writings in the growing field of television studies, providing an invaluable overview of the development of the field, and addressing issues of industry, genre, audiences, production and ownership, and representation.
The "Reader" charts the ways in which television and television studies are being redefined to include new and "alternative" forms and technologies such as cable television, direct satellite/digital broadcasting, home video, video art, video/digital applications on the internet, interactive TV, video surveillance, and converging media. It explores the recent boom in reality TV and includes discussions of television programs and practices from around the world. The "Reader" comprises 44 foundational and cutting-edge articles from an international cast of contributors, situating the study of television in relation both to its global reach and to the many and varied local contexts of its production and reception, and laying out a wide array of approaches to the study of the changing phenomenon of television around the world. The essays are organized in seven themed sections: * Institutions of Television * Spaces of Television * Modes of Television * Making Television * Social Representation on Television * Watching Television * Transforming Television Key features include a comprehensive bibliography and a list of further reading.

Cue & Cut is a 'practical approach to working in television studios' for anyone who might want to work in that medium. It's full of useful information about kit, and how you would use it to create multi-camera content. Written by a multi-camera producer-director with years of drama and teaching experience, it presents both a way of handling studios and a source of information about how things have changed from the days of monochrome to HD tapeless modes - with some thoughts on 3D HDTV The book is firmly based in first-hand teaching experience and experience of producing, direction, floor managing (and so on) and on working with top flight Actors, Writers, Musicians, Designers of all disciplines and Sound and Camera crews, both at the BBC and in ITV. The book will certainly cover multi-camera aspects of Undergraduate, HND and B.Tech courses and should be useful to those on short courses, whether practical or post-graduate. -- .

A Critique of Judgment in Film and Television is a response to a significant increase of judgment and judgmentalism in contemporary television, film, and social media by investigating the changing relations between the aesthetics and ethics of judgment.