* Provides an unusually pluralistic discussion of cinematic digital television that presents a less value-laden set of definitions than other books in the field have; * Breaks new ground in the much-contested field of cinematic television but will also be accessible enough to be used for teaching upper-level undergraduate and postgraduate students; * Each chapter includes contemporary case studies from a variety of global contexts, including Midnight Diner, Sacred Games, Twin Peaks and Russian Doll to clearly demonstrate the ideas discussed.

The essays in this anthology study Israeli television, its different forms of representation, audiences and production processes, past and present, examining Israeli television in both its local, cultural dynamics, and global interfaces. The book looks at Israeli television as a creator, negotiator, guardian and warden of collective Israeli memory, examining instances of Israeli original television exported and circulated to the US and the global markets, as well as instances of American, British, and global TV formats, adapted and translated to the Israeli scene and screen. The trajectory of this volume is to shed light on major themes and issues Israeli television negotiates: history and memory, war and trauma, Zionism and national disillusionment, place and home, ethnicity in its unique local variations of Ashkenazim and Mizrahim, immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia, Israeli-Arabs and Palestinians, gender in its unique Israeli formations, specifically masculinity as shaped by the military and constant violent conflict, femininity in this same context as well as within a complex Jewish oriented society, religion, and secularism. Providing multifaceted portraits of Israeli television and culture in its Middle Eastern political and local context, this book will be a key resource to readers interested in media and television studies, cultural studies, Israel, and the Middle East.

The Wild Wild West premiered on CBS in 1965, just as network dominance of television Westerns was waning and the global James Bond phenomenon was in full force. Described as "James Bond on horseback," the series was like nothing else on TV before or since-a genre hybrid that followed the adventures of 1870s Secret Service agents James West and Artemus Gordon, on special assignment from President Ulysses S. Grant. The show featured clever gadgets and costumes, carefully choreographed action and fight sequences, and stories that melded elements of Western, science fiction, fantasy, espionage and detective genres. This book provides in-depth critical analysis of a unique, eclectic series considered one of the primary influences on steampunk subculture.

There is an entire generation of culture junkies that grew up on Nickelodeon in the '90s. While the network, primarily aimed at children, first started to get its footing in the '80s, it was the '90s where Nick became the defining voice in entertainment for kids. For the first time ever, in this book, the entire expanse of '90s Nickelodeon has been collected in one place. A mix of personal reflection and media criticism, it delves into the history of each show with humor and insight. It revisits shows such as Rugrats, Clarissa Explains It All, and Legends of the Hidden Temple, one by one. More than an act of nostalgia, this book looks critically at the '90s Nick catalog, covering the good, the bad, and the weird.

- 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.

Laugh along with Michael McIntyre as he lifts the curtain on his life in his long-awaited new autobiography.

Michael’s first book ended with his big break at the 2006 Royal Variety Performance. Waking up the next morning in the tiny rented flat he shared with his wife Kitty and their one-year-old son, he was beyond excited about the new glamorous world of show business. Unfortunately, he was also clueless . . .

In A Funny Life, Michael honestly and hilariously shares the highs and the lows of his rise to the top and desperate attempts to stay there. It’s all here, from his disastrous panel show appearances to his hit TV shows, from mistakenly thinking he’d be a good chat show host and talent judge, to finding fame and fortune beyond his wildest dreams and becoming the biggest-selling comedian in the world. Along the way he opens his man drawer, narrowly avoids disaster when his trousers fall down in front of three policemen and learns the hard way why he should always listen to his wife.

Michael has had a silly life, a stressful life, sometimes a moving and touching life, but always A Funny Life.

This book explores the relationship between multiplicity and representation of non-European and European-American cultures, with a focus on comics and superheroes. The author employs a combination of research methodologies, including close reading of transmedia texts and interviews with transmedia storytellers and audiences, to better understand the way in which diverse cultures are employed as agents of multiplicity in transmedia narratives. The book addresses both commercial franchises such as superhero narratives, as well as smaller indie projects, in an attempt to elucidate the way in which key cultural symbols and concepts are utilized by writers, designers, and producers, and how these narrative choices affect audiences - both those who identify as members of the culture being represented and those who do not. Case studies include fan fiction based on Marvel's Black Panther (2018), fan fiction and art created for the Moana (2016) and Mulan (2020) films, and creations by both U.S.-based and international indie comics artists and writers. This book will appeal to scholars and students of new media, narrative theory, cultural studies, sociocultural anthropology, folkloristics, English/literary studies, and popular culture, transmedia storytelling researchers, and both creators and fans of superhero comics.

This book considers the ways in which Black directors, screenwriters, and showrunners contend with the figure of the would-be White ally in contemporary film and television. White Lies and Allies in Contemporary Black Media examines the ways in which prominent figures such as Issa Rae, Spike Lee, Justin Simien, Jordan Peele, and Donald Glover centralize complex Black protagonists in their work while also training a Black gaze on would-be White allies. Emily R. Rutter highlights how these Black creators represent both performative White allyship and the potential for true White antiracist allyship, while also examining the reasons why Black creators utilize the white ally trope in the wider context of the film and television industries. During an era in which concerns with White liberal complicity in anti-Black racism are of paramount importance, Rutter explores how these films and televisions shows, and their creators, contribute to the wider project of dismantling internal, interpersonal, ideological, and institutional White hegemony. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Film and Media Studies, Television Studies, American Studies, African American Studies, and Popular Culture.

This book was partly born of frustration - personal frustration with how complicated the simple act of trying to watch TV can be, and the professional frustration of being around almost twenty years of television-, advertising-, and technology-industry floundering with how to better reach TV audiences.The internet, we argue, is finally ready to change all that. Not in the way most people think and experts talk about incessantly - Jetsons-like visions of TV everywhere anytime. While it can do that, the internet can also do something much more powerful for viewers, programmers, and advertisers alike: allow viewers to discover and organize what they really want to watch.Solving that problem is worth billions. Not only because it will extend the lifecycle of so-called linear TV, but it can extend and improve television's economic returns while simultaneously seizing the strategic high ground for the transition to the day when television and the internet become one.That's what this book is about- why it's a problem worth solving, how to go about solving it, and how today's television industry will benefit from stepping in where cable companies, phone companies, and their technology suppliers are failing miserably.Aimed primarily at Hollywood, this book is for studio, network, and channel executives, producers, show runners, ad agency strategists ("digital" or otherwise), media buyers, and executives at ratings/measurement companies. We describe how Hollywood can both extend the life of so-called linear television and control the transition to internet-delivered TV, while building upon existing "starter" digital assets such as Hulu, or channel- and program-specific web properties and applications.Finally, this book is also a wake-up call to internet content and technology companies to take a fresh look at an old problem, using a comparatively new, low-cost set of approaches produced by the "Web 2.0" and cloud computing waves which emerged over the last several years.

In response to the growing scope and popularity of wedding-related offerings and the media attention given to celebrity and royal weddings, The Bride Factory critically examines various bridal media outlets, artifacts, and the messages they convey about women today. The book departs from conventional wisdom and other treatments of the bridal industry as a scholarly topic by revealing how media portray women in modern American society, and how these portrayals reflect feminism and femininity and illustrate the hegemony created by these media. The book discusses the portrayal of women as brides in media coverage throughout history; the various forms of wedding media, including print, television, and the Internet; how bridal media forward ideals of feminine beauty; how reality wedding programs depict brides - and the new "bridezilla" - as agents of control over their perfect day; the role of men in wedding planning; and the extent to which the white wedding ideal is embraced or resisted, with special attention given to alternative wedding media. Cohesive and multidisciplinary in its approach, The Bride Factory is the first major publication to shed critical light on bridal media and their feminist implications.

In October 1957, Screen Gems made numerous horror movies available to local television stations around the country as part of a package of films called Shock Theater. These movies became a huge sensation with TV viewers, as did the horror hosts who introduced the films and offered insight--often humorous--into the plots, the actors, and the directors. This history of hosted horror walks readers through the best TV horror films, beginning with the 1930s black-and-white classics from Universal Studios and ending with the grislier color films of the early 1970s. It also covers and the horror hosts who presented them, some of whom faded into obscurity while others became iconic within the genre.

This book explores the ways in which the political and social power structures between filmmaker and protagonist are manifested in the aesthetics of documentary film. Using a synthesis of filmmaking practice and critical theories from the fields of cultural studies and political philosophy, the research devises methodological approaches to the analysis of documentaries in light of the political and material conditions of their emergence. By exploring filmmaking practice and placing it in the context of wider theories pertaining to issues of power structures and representation, it sheds light on the different aspects which must be considered when approaching the analysis of a documentary film for its ideological and political content.

Examining the ways in which the BBC constructed and disseminated British national identity during the second quarter of the twentieth century, this book is the first study that focuses in a comprehensive way on how the BBC, through its radio programs, tried to represent what it meant to be British. The BBC and national identity in Britain offers a revision of histories of regional broadcasting in Britain that interpret it as a form of cultural imperialism. The regional organization of the BBC, and the news and creative programming designed specifically for regional listeners, reinforced the cultural and historical distinctiveness of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. The BBC anticipated, and perhaps encouraged, the development of the hybrid "dual identities" characteristic of contemporary Britain. -- .

- your essential guide to getting yourself on to television - covers every genre, from reality show to makeover and quiz - full of practical advice from the industry on getting noticed and winning auditions 'teach yourself Get on TV' gives you everything you need to find, apply for and take part in any reality programme, quiz or talk show. It explains every different type of show to you, but most importantly gives you lots of practical advice from industry insiders on what to say in an application, how to audition, what to expect and how to cope with life before, during and after your15 minutes of fame.

Television is the most powerful system of images in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Nonetheless, TV has attained only little philosophical attention so far, especially compared to other (visual) media such as film. This book looks at TV as what happens on the screen and beyond it; which is mainly the operation of switching images. It therefore proposes a new definition of TV as the first picture that can be switched on, off, and over, which stresses that TV is more tactile than visual. Through the operation of switching, TV figures the world from within and as the course of its figuration. This is grasped here by the term of "ontography". Through the ongoing interlacing and bridging of "TV 1.0" (the image is being switched) and "TV 2.0" (the image is a switch), TV exponentially increases the production and circulation of images. It transforms the world and itself from an analogue state to a digital one and from central perspectivism to pluri-perspective. In terms of time, through switching and the switch, it develops and reworks new temporal orderings, such as instantaneity, synchronicity, flow, and seriality. TV makes its own history. In space, it creates a mediasphere as its habitat and hence new forms of being-in-the-world, of proximity and distance, and scale. Anthropologically, it works on what a subject and an object is, on what makes the human being, and ontographically, how it is possible that there is something at all instead of nothing: through switch-images.

Television has always augmented its dramatic and variety programming with sports. After covering wrestling and boxing matches for several years, ABC added the hugely popular Roller Derby between 1949 and 1951, and later, college and pro football. Today, there is a multitude of pay and cable networks devoted exclusively to baseball, football, golf, hockey, tennis, ice-skating, and auto racing. Rather than focusing on live sports broadcasts, however, this book chronicles the history of sports-themed comedies and dramas, to see how our national fictions have affected our authentic sports experiences, and vice versa.

Sports dominate the television landscape today, and still the demand for more is so great that pay and cable networks continue to find funding and success, even when devoted exclusively to a single sport. But this is really nothing new: television has always augmented its dramatic and variety programming with sports. Live sports have had a tremendous impact on what we see on television, and on how we see it. Rather than focusing on live sports broadcasts, however, this book takes a critical look at sports-themed comedies and dramas, to see how our authentic sports affect our national fictions as well. From the character studies that supplement Olympic coverage, to nightly highlight reels, to reality programming on ESPN, sports both echo and help shape the myths that pervade our culture. "Sports on Television" covers the changing relationship between live sports broadcasts and television dramas, as well as the important technological developments and cultural shifts that have changed the way we view the reality of sports.

In 1949, after covering wrestling and boxing matches for several years, ABC added the hugely popular Roller Derby, and later moved on to college and pro football, where humble beginnings have since developed into a national obsession. In the early sixties Jimmy Stewart played a disgraced baseball player in "Flashing Spikes"-which was also one of the rare ventures into television for veteran director John Ford. On HBO the Yankees have been the subject of both "61*" - about Roger Maris's quest to top Babe Ruth's home run record - and "The Bronx Is Burning," about the 1977 Yankees team. And there have been sports-themed TV sitcoms as well, such as "Sports Night," Aaron Sorkin's critically lauded but commercially unsuccessful project, which preceded his work on "The West Wing." Meanwhile "American Gladiators"--a strange blend of canned programming and authentic athletic endeavor that in effect puts television audiences in an arena with what amounts to professional athletes--is quickly becoming one of the most popular shows on primetime. Here, Marill gives due time to all of these unique projects.

Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street is one of the most inventive American films of the 1980s. Its sleeper success bred a series of film sequels and a syndicated television program while its villain, Freddy Krueger, became a Hollywood horror icon for the ages. In the four decades since its release, Craven's creation and subsequent franchise has become firmly established as a pop culture institution and a celebrated symbol of American cinema. This book takes readers on an engrossing journey through the history, production and themes of the Nightmare on Elm Street film series and its spin-off TV show, Freddy's Nightmares. It reveals new stories about the franchise's history and dives into some of the themes and ideas that tend to be overlooked. The book has a foreword by production designer Mick Strawn and exclusive interviews with cast and crew, including legendary Freddy Krueger actor Robert Englund; directors Jack Sholder, Chuck Russell, Mick Garris, Tom McLoughlin, Lisa Gottlieb, and William Malone; cinematographers Jacques Haitkin, Roy H. Wagner, and Steven Fierberg; and many more.

What is a television series? A widespread answer takes it to be a totality of episodes and seasons. Luca Bandirali and Enrico Terrone argue against this characterization. In Concept TV: An Aesthetics of Television Series, they contend that television series are concepts that manifest themselves through episodes and seasons, just as works of conceptual art can manifest themselves through installations or performances. In this sense, a television series is a conceptual narrative, a principle of construction of similar narratives. While the film viewer directly appreciates a narrative made of images and sounds, the TV viewer relies on images and sounds to grasp the conceptual narrative that they express. Here lies the key difference between television and film. Reflecting on this difference paves the way for an aesthetics of television series that makes room for their alleged prolixity, their tendency to repetition, and their lack of narrative closure. Bandirali and Terrone shed light on the specific ways in which television series are evaluated, arguing that some apparent flaws of them are, indeed, aesthetic merits when considered from a conceptual perspective. Hence, to maximize the aesthetic value of television series, one should not assess them in the same framework in which films are assessed but rather in this new conceptual framework.

Monty Python rides again. Those malicious rumours that they were washed up, pooped out, time expired (usually started by them) simply aren't true. With the launch of the sell-out show 'Monty Python Live (mostly)', the great, hugely influential comedy group geared up anew, surprising even more generations. This revised and updated edition charts the course of a revolution in British comedy and will appeal to die-hard fans and new recruits alike. The world of Python, its ear finely tuned to the absurd, was that rare beast: absolute originality. This tribute to the inspired collective genius of John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin and the late Graham Chapman, is based on personal reminiscences and exclusive interviews with each of them. It recounts, with many illustrations from the archives, their pre-Pythonic lives, their meeting, it's impact and the aftermath. They have come a long way over the years since then. Today, Gwen Dibley would hardly know them (were she still alive). The book is a faithful chronicle of the people and events who engendered a revolution in comedy.

When Ozzie Nelson died in 1975, he was no longer a household name. For a guy who had created the longest-running TV sitcom in history, invented the rock video, and fronted one of the most successful big bands of the 1930s, it's baffling that Nelson has faded so far from American media memory. Larger than life offscreen-an attorney, college football star, cartoonist, songwriter, major band leader-Ozzie created a smaller-than-life TV persona, the bumbling average Dad who became known to the rock generation (which included his teen idol son Rick Nelson) as the essence of blandness. But America also saw Ozzie as their iconic Dad: not a "father knows best," since his pontifications usually proved flawed by the end of each episode, but the father who tried his best. This book is the only full-length biography of Ozzie Nelson since he published his memoirs in 1973. It treats the big band and early TV icon with affection and hints that American pop culture may owe more to Ozzie than is generally acknowledged.

This book examines the position of black and mixed-race characters in Irish film culture. By exploring key film and television productions from the 1990s to the present day, the author uncovers and interrogates concepts of Irish identity, history and nation. In 2009, Ireland had the highest birth rate in Europe, with almost 24 per cent of births attributed to the 'new Irish'. By 2013, 17 per cent of the nation was foreign-born. Ireland has always been a culturally diverse space and has produced a series of high-profile mixed-race stars, including Phil Lynott, Ruth Negga and Simon Zebo, among others. Through an analysis of screen visualizations of the black Irish, this study uncovers forgotten histories, challenges the perceived homogeneity of the nation, evaluates integration, and considers the future of the new Ireland. It makes a creative and significant theoretical contribution to scholarly work on the relationship between representation and identity in Irish cinema. This book was the winner of the 2011 Peter Lang Young Scholars Competition in Irish Studies.

Despite the powerful anti-political impulses that have pervaded Italian society in recent years, Italian cinema has sustained and renewed its longstanding engagement with questions of politics, both in the narrow definition of the term, and in a wider understanding that takes in reflections on public life, imaginary, and national identity. This book explores these political dimensions of contemporary Italian cinema by looking at three complementary strands: the thematics of contemporary political film from a variety of perspectives; the most prominent directors currently engaged in this filone; and case studies of the films that best represent this engagement. Conceived and edited by two Italian film scholars working in radically different academic settings, Italian Political Cinema brings together a wide array of critical positions and research from Italy, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. The tripartite structure and international perspective create a volume that is an accessible entry-point into a subject that continues to attract critical and cultural attention, both inside and outside of academia.

This is the HARDBACK version. From 2000 to its final episode in 2007, Gilmore Girls raised the bar for television writing, redefined the dramatic comedy, and cultivated a dedicated fan base not seen since the heights of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. However, unlike Buffy, little has been published about what went on behind-the-scenes of Gilmore Girl. Until now. The Gilmore Girls Companion provides the first detailed account of the creation of this groundbreaking series, based on dozens of exclusive interviews with the actors and behind-the-camera talent who brought Stars Hollow to life. Also check out the blog at http: //gilmoregirlsbook.wordpress.com/ . Over 500 pages

When we think about the "pictures in our heads" that media create and perpetuate, what images are we truly referencing? Issues of media stereotypes and representation (both past and present) are crucial to advancing media literacy. Media Stereotypes: From Ageism to Xenophobia becomes one-stop shopping for synthesizing what we know within the composite of stereotyping research in the United States. Utilizing a cast of top American scholars with deep roots in asking stereotype-based questions, this book is essential reading for those wishing to understand what we know about past and present media representations as well as those wishing to take the baton and continue to advance media stereotyping research in the future. Winner of the 2021 BEA Textbook Award!