Two remarkable events occurred during 1976: The debut of Saturday Night Live and the Presidential Election pitting Gerald Ford against Jimmy Carter. Both events had profound and enduring influence on shaping the country America is today. When Saturday Night Live premiered, the show's impact was evident very quickly, as it grabbed huge ratings and several Emmy Awards in its first season; made household names of its seven original stars; and had a remarkable influence on popular and political culture with its mix of music, comedy, and live theater. In April of 1976, while he was in the midst of a fight for the Republican presidential nomination and his political survival, President Gerald Ford gave his press secretary, Ron Nessen, permission to become the first politician to guest host NBC's Saturday Night. In addition to Nessen, the President also appeared on the show, via video tape, to introduce his press secretary and to offer a comic counterpunch to Chevy Chase's signature line, "I'm Chevy Chase and you're not," at the beginning of "Weekend Update." Ever since Nessen's and Ford's appearances, it has become a rite of passage for politicians with a national profile, or those with a desire to have a national presence, to appear on Saturday Night Live, and the show's treatment of those politicians and many political topics has had a continuing impact on Americans' feelings and discussions about politics. This book is the first to examine the ground-shaking collision of SNL and Presidential Politics when it all began.

Creating Reality in Factual Television analyzes the uneasy interaction between economics, culture, and professional ethics in reality and documentary television storytelling. Through the "frankenbite," an editorial tool that extracts and re-orders the salient elements or single words of a statement, interview, or exchange into a revealing confession or argument, the book explores how and why editors manipulate truth in factual television. The author considers how the editing of documentary television is increasingly following reality television's dictate to entertain instead of inform, how the "real" and the "truth" fall victim to the demand to "tell entertaining stories," and how editors must compromise their professional ethics as a result. Drawing on interviews with 75 North American and European editors that explore their experiences and opinions of reality and documentary television practices, and their views on their responsibilities and loyalties in the field, Creating Reality in Factual Television illuminates the real and potential ethical dilemmas of editorial decision making, the context in which decisions are made, and how editors themselves validate the editing choices to themselves and others. Addressing a dramatic development in contemporary media ecology - the age of "alternative facts" - this book is a useful research tool for scholars and students of documentary film, media literacy, genre studies, media ethics, affect theory, and audience perception.

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 comprehensive reference to TV cartoon shows covers some 75 years. In the decade or so since the first edition, the industry has grown and expanded to previously unimagined heights, thanks in great part to the upsurge of cable TV services catering to animation fans. In the ten-year period since the first edition, nearly 450 new cartoon series premiered in the U.S. Alphabetically arranged by title, the book discusses each cartoon show in detail, providing full production credits and offering commentary on such elements as development, characters, style, and the show's significance in the overall scheme of television animation.

For seven seasons, AMC's Mad Men captivated audiences with the story of Don Draper, an advertising executive whose personal and professional successes and failures took viewers on a roller coaster ride through America's tumultuous 1960s. More than just a television show about one of advertising's "bad boys," the series investigates the principles of the American regime, exploring whether or not the American Dream is a sustainable vision of human flourishing and happiness. This collection of essays investigates the show's engagement with the philosophic and political foundations of American democracy.

A fascinating exploration of the most significant superhero films and television shows in history, from the classic serial Adventures of Captain Marvel to the Disney+ hit show WandaVision. In The 100 Greatest Superhero Films and TV Shows, Zachary Ingle and David M. Sutera celebrate over eighty years of superhero cinema and television. Featuring blockbusters such as Black Panther and The Dark Knight, Ingle and Sutera also include lesser-known yet critically acclaimed shows like The Boys, cult films such as The Toxic Avenger, and foreign series like Astro Boy to provide a well-rounded perspective of the genre. All one hundred selections are evaluated based on qualities such as plot and character development, adherence to the original source materials, technological innovations, and social impact. The entries cover both live-action and animated films and TV series, and almost a third of the entries are not associated with Marvel or DC--a testament to the genre's variety in its eighty-year history. The 100 Greatest Superhero Films and TV Shows includes an analysis of the superhero's evolution and its relevance to the feminist movement, auteur theory, convergence culture, critical race theory, and more. Featuring more than 80 photographs alongside the authors' selections, the diverse entries are sure to inspire debate and entertain all fans of superhero movies and television shows.

Housework and Gender in American Television: Coming Clean examines representations of housework and their relationships with gender in sixty of the most popular television shows of the 1950s through the 1980s, searching for trends, similarities, inconsistencies, and meaning. Much of the critical scholarship addressing mid-century televised housework claims that domestic activities marginalize female characters, removing them from scenes involving important familial discussions and placing them in devalued positions. This book challenges the notion that housework functions primarily as a mechanism through which female characters are marginalized, devalued, invisible, or passive, and instead proposes a different reading of housework in television, one that brings to the fore the loving, sacrificial, and active qualities so crucial and foundational to housework activity in both representation and reality. These qualities, in turn, attach a strength to female characters, and male characters when applicable, that is often ignored in standard feminist analyses of television. This study reveals roughly twenty trends established in four decades of televised housework, from the housewives of the fifties, to the witches and genies of the sixties, to the elimination of male domestic labor in the seventies, to the dominance of male housekeepers in the eighties.

Few contemporary television shows have been subjected to the critical scrutiny that has been brought to bear on David Lynch and Mark Frost's Twin Peaks since its debut in 1990. Yet the series, and the subsequent film, Fire Walk With Me, are sufficiently rich that it's always possible for a close analysis to offer something new - and that's what Franck Boulegue has done with Twin Peaks: Unwrapping the Plastic. Through Boulegue's eyes, we see for the first time the world of Twin Peaks as a coherent whole, one that draws on a wide range of cultural source material, including surrealism, transcendental meditation, Jungian psychoanalysis, mythology, fairy tales, and much, much more. The work of a scholar who is also a fan, the book should appeal to any hardcore Twin Peaks viewer.

This book discusses the role of television drama series on a global scale, analyzing these dramas across the Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa. Contributors consider the role of television dramas as economically valuable cultural products and with their depictions of gender roles, sexualities, race, cultural values, political systems, and religious beliefs as they analyze how these programs allow us to indulge our innate desire to share human narratives in a way that binds us together and encourages audiences to persevere as a community on a global scale. Contributors also go on to explore the role of television dramas as a medium that indulges fantasies and escapism and reckons with reality as it allows audiences to experience emotions of happiness, sorrow, fear, and outrage in both realistic and fantastical scenarios.

Cowboy Bebop is one of the most beloved anime series of all time, and if you ask its fans why, you can expect to hear about its music. Composer Yoko Kanno created an eclectic blend of jazz, rock, lullabies, folk and funk (to list just a few) for Cowboy Bebop's many moods and environments. Cowboy Bebop's blend of science fiction, westerns and gangster films promised to be "the work which becomes a new genre itself," and only Kanno's score could deliver. In this volume of 33 1/3 Japan, musicologist Rose Bridges helps listeners make sense of the music of Cowboy Bebop. The book places it within the context of Bebop's influences and Kanno's larger body of work. It analyzes how the music tells Spike, Faye, Jet and the rest of the crew's stories. Cowboy Bebop and its music are like nothing else, and they deserve a guide to match. 33 1/3 Global, a series related to but independent from 33 1/3, takes the format of the original series of short, music-basedbooks and brings the focus to music throughout the world. With initial volumes focusing on Japanese and Brazilian music, the series will also include volumes on the popular music of Australia/Oceania, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and more.

This turn-of-the-century moment - when queer love has become increasingly visible in both popular culture and socio-political realms - provides an ideal occasion for a critical examination of same-sex love stories in the media. Focusing primarily on film and televisual texts from the ten years before and after the millennium, the essays collected in Queer Love in Film and Television ask how recent films and television programs play with, imitate, subvert, mock, critique, and queer the romantic narrative conventions so common in Western culture. The collection follows the trajectory of the conventional romance narrative, from the pursuit of romantic love to the creation of families, and then it pushes further, into marginal regions where conventional narratives fail to venture, and then turns back to consider how that narrative is itself transformed (or queered) through adaptation.

In the early 1950s, when television networks did not broadcast regular programming before 11 a.m., radio and newspapers were the most popular and reliable ways for Americans to get their morning news. Then, Sylvester (Pat) Weaver, vice president of programming at NBC, pitched a bold new concept to the network: a two-hour early morning news show that would run Monday through Friday starting at 7 a.m. By developing Today, Weaver filled a programming void before viewers even realized there was one-and revolutionized the viewing habits of millions. In The Today Show: Transforming Morning Television, Cathleen M. Londino provides an entertaining and informative look at the first twenty-five years of NBC's innovative program, from 1952 through 1977. Focusing on Today's broadcast history, the personalities instrumental to the show's success, and the show's contributions to the entertainment industry, this account illustrates how the evolution of Today closely paralleled the development of the broadcast industry and rise of the major networks. In addition to chronicling the show's history, the author profiles some of the key players both behind and in front of the camera, including Dave Garroway, Barbara Walters, Tom Brokaw, and Jane Pauley. The vision of morning news developed by Weaver more than sixty years ago endured far beyond his wildest expectation, establishing a model that would eventually be adopted not only by competing networks but also by television programmers around the globe. The Today Show: Transforming Morning Television is a fascinating account of the unprecedented success of this influential program and will appeal to anyone interested in television history.

In On Living with Television, Amy Holdsworth examines the characteristics of intimacy, familiarity, repetition, and duration that have come to exemplify the medium of television. Drawing on feminist television studies, queer theory, and disability studies as well as autobiographical life-writing practices, Holdsworth shows how television shapes everyday activities, from eating and sleeping to driving and homemaking. Recounting her own life with television, she offers a sense of the joys and pleasures Disney videos brought to her disabled sister, traces how bedtime television becomes part of a daily routine between child and caregiver, explores her own relationship to binge-eating and binge-viewing, and considers the idea of home through the BBC family drama Last Tango in Halifax. By foregrounding the ways in which television structures our relationships, daily routines, and sense of time, Holdsworth demonstrates how television emerges as a potent vehicle for writing about life.

During the "Must See TV" 1990s, Americans enjoyed such immensely popular sitcoms as Friends, Seinfeld, Home Improvement and The Drew Carey Show. Shows that did not make the ratings cut numbered in the hundreds-the emergence of new networks and cable channels airing original programming resulted in a vast increase in short-lived sitcoms over the previous decade. Some of these "flops" were actually quite good and deserved a better fate. The author revisits them all-along with the "dramedies" of the day-with detailed entries providing production and broadcast information, along with critical analyses, and recollections by cast and crew members. A subsection highlights sitcoms that returned for an abbreviated second season. Dozens of cast and crew photographs are included.

This book advances research about China by providing an updated narrative of its entertainment life in the beginning of China's twenty-first century. As the rest of the world continues to pay keen attention to developments in China's politics, economy, and culture, the book provides insights on fascinating new developments in contemporary Chinese popular culture-including its reality television, family dramas centered around younger generations' life struggles, and social media. Furthermore, Entertainment and Politics in Contemporary China is the first book to apply the theoretical innovation of an aesthetic public sphere in examining closely the linkages between China's political life and activities in the country's culture sphere. Since concepts of public sphere and democracy largely took root from the West, Wu argues that this case study of China promises valuable insights about entertainment's role in the formation of citizenship and building of a civil society, which remains a site of great contention in Western theories and empirical efforts.

During its 33-season run, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood (1968-2001) left an indelible mark on millions of children and their caregivers. With television, Fred Rogers found the perfect medium for disseminating his prosocial messages to a mass audience of young people, helping them to better understand themselves and their world. Perhaps no series in the history of children's television has done more to develop the identity and ethics of the child. More than a decade after Rogers' death, he continues to attract an audience online. Yet despite the show's lasting impact it has been largely ignored by scholars. This collection of new essays focuses on Rogers' contribution to children's lives and media and to American culture. The contributors discuss his stance on the individual and the perception of self, his ideas about meaningful participation in a community and his use of television to accomplish his goals. At a time when the demands of a highly technological, media-dense world have diminished our capacity to listen carefully and to be present to others, Rogers' ideas still resonate.

Fred Rogers was an international celebrity. He was a pioneer in children's television, an advocate for families, and a multimedia artist and performer. He wrote the television scripts and music, performed puppetry, sang, hosted, and directed Mister Rogers' Neighborhood for more than thirty years. In his almost nine-hundred episodes, Rogers pursued dramatic topics: divorce, death, war, sibling rivalry, disabilities, racism. Rogers' direct, slow, gentle, and empathic approach is supported by his superior emotional strength, his intellectual and creative courage, and his joyful spiritual confidence. The Green Mister Rogers: Environmentalism in "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" centers on the show's environmentalism, primarily expressed through his themed week "Caring for the Environment," produced in 1990 in coordination with the twentieth anniversary of Earth Day. Unfolding against a trash catastrophe in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, Rogers advances an environmentalism for children that secures children in their family homes while extending their perspective to faraway places, from the local recycling center to Florida's coral reef. Rogers depicts animal wisdom and uses puppets to voice anxiety and hope and shows an interconnected world where each part of creation is valued, and love is circulated in networks of care. Ultimately, Rogers cultivates a practical wisdom that provides a way for children to confront the environmental crisis through action and hope and, in doing so, develop into adults who possess greater care for the environment and a capacious imagination for solving the ecological problems we face.

Based on the hit AMC television series, this cookbook is packed with lifesaving tips and unique recipes inspired by The Walking Dead. The Walking Dead: The Official Cookbook details the skills and recipes you need to survive (while avoiding being eaten) during a walker apocalypse. Inspired by the hit AMC television series, the book features recipes for meals featured on the show, plus food and drinks inspired by key characters and locations, along with expert information on foraging, hunting wild game, and outdoor cooking. Including familiar treats like Carl's pudding, Carol Peletier's baked goods, and Hershel's spaghetti, this is the ultimate gift for fans and walker-wary survivalists alike.

Cooke's pioneering book discusses changes in televisual style in British television drama from the 1950s to the early 21st century. Taking dinner table scenes as a recurring motif, each chapter analyses the construction of the scene in terms of camerawork, editing, dialogue and performance, exploring how decisions made by the director and members of the production team contribute to the narrative meaning of the scene. The scenes analysed come from single plays, series and serials, including Nineteen Eighty-Four, Coronation Street, Middlemarch, This Life and Teachers. Accompanied by frame grabs to illustrate the analysis, each drama is discussed in relation to changes in production practices, technology, aesthetic preferences, and social and institutional change. Written in a clear and accessible style, the book is pertinent for anyone interested in how British television drama has changed, stylistically, from the live era of the 1950s to the fast-paced, high-tech dramas of the 2000s.

This volume explores how television has been a significant conduit for the public consumption of changing ideas about children, childhood, and national identity, via a critical examination of programs that prominently feature children and youth in international television The chapters connect relevant cultural attitudes within their respective countries to an analysis of children and/or childhood in international children's programming The collection addresses how international children's programming in global and local context informs changing ideas about children and childhood, including notions of individual and citizen identity formation Offering new insights into childhood and television studies, this book will be of great interest to graduate students, scholars, and professionals in television studies, childhood studies, media studies, cultural studies, popular culture studies, and American studies

This book explores the relatively new genre of 'Quality Telefantasy' and how it has broadened TV taste cultures by legitimating and mainstreaming fantastical content. It also shows how the rising popularity of this genre marks a distinct and significant development in what kinds of TV are culturally dominant and critically regarded. By expanding and building on the definition of US Quality TV, this book brings together a number of popular science fiction, fantasy and horror TV series, including Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead and Westworld, as case studies which demonstrate the emergence of the Quality Telefantasy genre. It looks at the role of technology, including internet recap culture and subscription video on demand distribution, in Quality Telefantasy's swift emergence, and analyses its success internationally by considering series created outside the US like Kingdom (South Korea, Netflix) and Dark (Germany, Netflix). The book argues that Quality Telefantasy series should be considered a part of the larger Quality TV super-genre, and that the impact they are having on the global TV landscape warrants further investigation as it continues to evolve. This is a valuable text for students and scholars studying or undertaking research in the areas of television studies, new media and pop-cultural studies.

Written in an accessible, conversational tone, this book demonstrates how to efficiently multitask in the contemporary broadcast digital newsroom while remaining true to journalistic ethics. Each chapter includes specialised insights from experienced news industry professionals to mentor the reader and provide guidance on key skills including storytelling, pitching, video production, interviewing, and managing social media. Additional online resources provide students with step-by-step instructions for commonly used editing software: Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Avid and DaVinci Resolve.

Stories of time travel have been part of science fiction since H. G. Wells sent his nameless hero hurtling into Earth's distant future in The Time Machine. Time travel enables the storyteller to depict alternate realities, bring fictional characters face to face with historical figures, and depict moral and ethical dilemmas in which millions of lives (or the world as we know it) are at stake. From Doctor Who and Quantum Leap to the multiple incarnations of Star Trek, time travel has been a staple of science fiction television for more than fifty years. Time-Travel Television: The Past from the Present, the Future from the Past surveys the whole range of time travel stories on the small screen. The essays in this collection explore time travel series both familiar (Babylon 5, Stargate SG-1) and forgotten (The Time Tunnel, Voyagers!), as well as time-travel themed episodes and arcs in series where it is not central, such as Red Dwarf, Lost, and Heroes. Contributors to this volume consider some of the classic themes of time-travel stories: the promise (and peril) of "fixing" the past, the chance to experience (and choose) possible futures, and the potential for small changes to have great effects. Exploring time travel as a teaching tool, as a vehicle for moral lessons, and as a background for high adventure, this book offers new perspectives on many familiar programs and the first serious study of several unjustly neglected ones. Time-Travel Television is essential reading for science fiction scholars and fans, and for anyone interested in the many ways that television brings the fantastic into viewers' living rooms.