This book examines the professional activity of public television journalists in Poland operating in the still unstable system of a post-communist state, to demonstrate how the media can work in the public interest to strengthen democracy Drawing on in-depth interviews with Telewizja Polska (TVP) journalists, the author shows how public television in Poland has become highly politicised and commercialised, and must defend against constant attacks on its autonomy Adding an important perspective on recently-developed media systems, this book will be an important resource for scholars and students of journalism, media studies, media industries, politics and media history

This book offers a detailed analysis of the Islamic Republic of Iran's approach towards human rights in the media. It looks at the state-owned and state-controlled Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), employing content analysis and multimodal critical discourse analysis to explore its underlying strategies in portraying the international rights norms. The book also features analysis of surveys and interviews of recent Iranian migrants to determine the extent to which the Iranian public is aware of human rights principles and their views on whether and how the international rights norms are portrayed on IRIB.

This book examines the development of television broadcasting in Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea. It explores the policy regimes guiding the development of television broadcasting as a powerful institution and the extent to which new forms of television have become part of each country's contemporary media mix. It analyses the interests involved in key policy decisions, the institutional dynamics promoting or inhibiting new media markets, and the relative importance in the different countries of cable, satellite, digital broadcasting, and the use of the Internet for purposes associated with television broadcasting. The nature of television regimes in each of the three countries is very different, and the contrasting situations provide great insights into how television is developing, and how it could develop further, both in East Asia and worldwide.

-examines the relationship between Brexit and its comedy, exploring how Brexit and comedy are connected in both Leave and Remain discourse -argues that both populism and comedy are rhetorical in nature and so are linked through their semantic structure and communicative potential -the author analyses the populism that has emerged from those incongruities in the form of ironic, ambiguous and dichotomous discourse -provides not just an advance in our understanding of political satire but also a clearer description of the nature of populism

This book offers a systematic study of media education in Latin America. As spending on technological infrastructure in the region increases exponentially for educational purposes, and with national curriculums beginning to implement media related skills, this book makes a timely contribution to new debates surrounding the significance of media literacy as a citizen's right. Taking both a topical and country-based approach, authors from across Latin America present a comprehensive perspective of the region and address issues such as the political and social contexts in which media education is based, the current state of educational policies with respect to media, organizations and experiences that promote media education.

As entertaining as it is enlightening, Creating Dialogue for TV: Screenwriters Talk Television presents interviews with five Hollywood professionals who talk about all things related to dialogue - from naturalistic style to the building of characters to swearing and dialect. Screenwriters/showrunners David Mandel (Curb Your Enthusiasm, Veep), Jane Espenson (Buffy, Battlestar Galactica, Once Upon a Time), Robert Berens (Supernatural), Sheila Lawrence (Gilmore Girls, Ugly Betty, The Marvelous Mrs Maisel), and Doris Egan (Tru Calling, House, Reign) field a linguist's inquiries about the craft of writing dialogue. This book is for anyone who has ever wondered what creative processes and attitudes lie behind the words they encounter when tuning into their favourite television show. It provides direct insights into Hollywood writers' knowledge and opinions of how language is used in television narratives, and in doing so shows how language awareness, attitudes and the craft of using words are utilised to create popular TV series. The book will appeal to students and teachers in screenwriting, creative writing and linguistics as well as lay readers.

Accolades such as "the best TV show of the twentieth century" or "the longest-running scripted series on American prime-time television" have elevated The Simpsons to the pop culture pantheon, while also suggesting the very vintage character of the program. But the label "The Simpsons" refers not just to a show that seems to belong to a bygone television era, it implies a rich narrative universe, including a set of iconic figures, familiar across continents and generations. Through the lens of transmedia studies, Understanding The Simpsons traces the franchise's trajectory, exploring how one of the most popular comedy series of all time has redefined the intersections between corporate media and participatory culture, as the kernel of its cult meaning.

The international success of Downton Abbey has led to a revived interest in period dramas, with older programs like The Forsyte Saga being rediscovered by a new generation of fans whose tastes also include grittier fare like Ripper Street. Though often criticized as a form of escapist, conservative nostalgia, these shows can also provide a lens to examine the class and gender politics of both the past and present. In Upstairs and Downstairs: British Costume Drama Television from The Forsyte Saga to Downton Abbey, James Leggott and Julie Anne Taddeo provide a collection of essays that analyze key developments in the history of period dramas from the late 1960s to the present day. Contributors explore such issues as how the genre fulfills and disrupts notions of "quality television," the process of adaptation, the relationship between UK and U.S. television, and the connection between the period drama and wider developments in TV and popular culture. Additional essays examine how fans shape the content and reception of these dramas and how the genre has articulated or generated debates about gender, sexuality, and class. In addition to Downton Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs, other programs discussed in this collection include Call the Midwife, Danger UXB, Mr. Selfridge, Parade's End, Piece of Cake, and Poldark. Tracing the lineage of costume drama from landmark productions of the late 1960s and 1970s to some of the most talked-about productions of recent years, Upstairs and Downstairs will be of value to students, teachers, and researchers in the areas of film, television, Victorian studies, literature, gender studies, and British history and culture.

I was Top Gear's script editor for 13 years and all 22 series. I basically used to check spelling and think of stupid gags about The Stig. I also got to hang around with Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May. It didn't feel like something you should get paid for. From the disastrous pilot show of 2002 to the sudden and unexpected ending in 2015, working on Top Gear was quite a rollercoaster ride. We crossed continents, we made space ships, we bobbed across the world's busiest shipping lane in a pick-up truck. We also got chased by an angry mob, repeatedly sparked fury in newspapers, and almost killed one of our presenters. I realised that I had quite a few stories to tell from behind the scenes on the show. I remembered whose daft idea it was to get a dog. I recalled the willfully stupid way in which we decorated our horrible office. I had a sudden flashback to the time a Bolivian drug lord threatened to kill us. I decided I should write down some of these stories. So I have. I hope you like them. And now, a quote from James May: 'Richard Porter has asked me to "write a quote" for his new book about the ancient history of Top Gear. But this is a ridiculous request. How can one "write a quote"? Surely, by definition, a quote must be extracted from a greater body of writing, for the purpose of illustrating or supporting a point in an unrelated work. I cannot "write a quote" any more than I could "film an out-take". 'Porter, like Athens, has lost his marbles.'

After Charmed ended in 2006, witches were relegated to sidekicks of televisual vampires or children's programs. But during the mid-2010s they began to resurface as leading characters in shows like the immensely popular The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, the Charmed reboot, Salem, American Horror Story: Coven, and the British program, A Discovery of Witches. No longer sweet, feminine, domestic, and white, these witches are powerful, diverse, and transgressive, representing an intersectional third-wave feminist vision of the witch. Featuring original essays from noted scholars, this is the first critical collection to examine witches on television from the late 2010s. Situated in the aftermath of the #MeToo movement, essays examine the reemergence and shifting identities of TV witches through the perspectives of intersectional gender studies, hauntology, politics, morality, monstrosity, violence, queerness, disabilities, rape, ecofeminism, linguistics, family, and digital humanities.

The choices that individuals make in moments of crisis can transform them. By focusing on fictional characters trapped on fictional islands, the book examines how individuals react when forced to make hard choices within the liminal space of a "prison" island. At stake is the perception of choice: do characters believe that they have the power to choose, or do they think that they are at the mercy of fate? The results reveal certain patterns-psychological, historical, social, and political--that exist across a variety of popular/public cultures and time periods. This book focuses on how the interplay between liminality and the Locus of Control theory creates dynamic sites of negotiated meaning. This psychological concept has never before been used for literary analysis. Offered here as an alternative to the defects of Freudian psychology, the Locus of Control theory has been proven reliable in thousands of studies, and the results have been found, with few exceptions, to be consistent in both women and men. That consistency is explored through close readings of islands found in popular culture books, films, and television shows, with suggestions for future research.

The Ritz Brothers were a popular comedy trio in vaudeville, nightclubs, movies and television for more than four decades. Today largely overlooked among the classic comedy pantheon, they have been acknowledged as inspirations by such comics as Mel Brooks, Milton Berle, Jerry Lewis and Sid Caesar. This first full-length study of their work examines all the Ritz Brothers' feature films and short subjects 1934-1976, and their television appearances, with background information from the Twentieth Century-Fox archives. Contemporaneous and modern-day reviews and critiques are included.

This book explores vampire narratives that have been expressed across multiple media and new technologies. Stories and characters such as Dracula, Carmilla and even Draculaura from Monster High have been made more "real" through their depictions in narratives produced in and across different platforms. This also allows the consumer to engage on multiple levels with the "vampire world," blurring the boundaries between real and imaginary realms and allowing for different kinds of identity to be created while questioning terms such as "author," "reader," "player" and "consumer." These essays investigate the consequences of such immersion and why the undead world of the transmedia vampire is so well suited to life in the 21st century.

Even as the major superhero film franchises appear to be exhausting their runs The Umbrella Academy demonstrates that the superhero genre is still extremely effective at creating role models with lasting psychological resonance and allegories with extraordinary emotional impact. These essays give a voice to the misunderstood family members of The Umbrella Academy in the comic book series and its highly popular Netflix adaptation. They explore different forces like individualism, identity, family, and feminism. One of the most striking features that unites these concepts is the linkage between violence with voice, as well as violence's aestheticized depiction.

It's a Wonderful Life is an American film classic celebrated for its inspirational character. Famously shown during the holiday season, it brings families together in the spirit of mutual love and support. It tells the story of George Bailey, who turns suicidal one Christmas Eve after decades of frustration and sacrifice in which his dreams are repeatedly shattered for the good of others. George is convinced that his life is anything but wonderful. Enter Clarence, his guardian angel, who must find a way to get George to appreciate his family, friends, and all the good he does in life. Clarence does find a way and George returns to his family at film's close. This might seem like a fairy-tale ending, but it is anything but convincing, which should come as no surprise since the film rehearses an ontological war between contending parties with rival conceptions of what it means to lead a meaningful life. It is a rather one-sided conflict as George finds himself more or less alone in the world. He has been trying to escape his hometown his entire life in order to pursue his Promethean vision in the wider world. To prevent this, God dispatches Clarence to get George to heel. He resorts to a kind of transcendental terrorism to force George to return home and believe it was his own idea. Yet what does it say about a form of life when it resorts to such means to prevail in an existential contest? From a Nietzschean perspective, it is possible to illuminate the film's extraordinary cruelty. Despite appearances, George's restoration is temporary at best and there is every reason to believe that eventually he will try to take his life again. Tragically, George must leave Bedford Falls and those who love him must insist that he go.

Since the emergence of on-demand streaming platforms, television as a storytelling medium has drastically changed, blurring the lines between TV and cinema. Traditionally, television relied on narrative forms and genres that were highly formulaic, striving to tease the viewer onward with a series of cliffhangers while still maintaining viewer comprehension. Now, on platforms such as Netflix, the lack of commercial breaks and the practice of "binge-watching" have led to a new type of television flow that urges viewers to see and consume a series as a whole and not as a fragmented narrative. This book examines the structuring methods of 13 Netflix original horror series, including Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Stranger Things, Hemlock Grove, The Haunting of Hill House, and Santa Clarita Diet. Although these shows use television as the medium of storytelling, they are structured according to the classical rules of film.

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.

Students will find this book interesting and relevant as it offers the most up-to-date accounts of the Korean Wave examples and interdisciplinary analyses, including the 2019 film Parasite, the Korean boy band BTS and recent TV dramas, such as Kingdom (2019, 2020), Crash Landing on You (2020) and Mr. Sunshine (2018). With it's coverage of film, TV and popular music, this collection will have interdisciplinary appeal and can be used on courses in Korean and Asian studies as well as film, media, and cultural industries. Includes scholars from a range of disciplines and a series of case studies from Asia, the USA, Europe and the Middle East.

Students will find this book interesting and relevant as it offers the most up-to-date accounts of the Korean Wave examples and interdisciplinary analyses, including the 2019 film Parasite, the Korean boy band BTS and recent TV dramas, such as Kingdom (2019, 2020), Crash Landing on You (2020) and Mr. Sunshine (2018). With it's coverage of film, TV and popular music, this collection will have interdisciplinary appeal and can be used on courses in Korean and Asian studies as well as film, media, and cultural industries. Includes scholars from a range of disciplines and a series of case studies from Asia, the USA, Europe and the Middle East.

Though it started as a British television show with a small but devoted fan base, Doctor Who has grown in popularity and now appeals to audiences around the world. In the fifty year history of the program, Doctor Who's producers and scriptwriters have drawn on a dizzying array of literary sources and inspirations. Elements from Homer, classic literature, gothic horror, swashbucklers, Jacobean revenge tragedies, Orwellian dystopias, Westerns and the novels of Agatha Christie and Evelyn Waugh have all been woven into the fabric of the series. One famous storyline from the mid-1970s was rooted in the Victoriana of authors like H. Rider Haggard and Arthur Conan Doyle, while another was a virtual remake of Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda-with robots In Doctor Who and the Art of Adaptation: Fifty Years of Storytelling, Marcus Harmes looks at five decades of the show's frequent exploration of other sources to create many memorable episodes.In this volume, Harmes observes that adaptation in Doctor Who was not just a matter of transferring literary works to the screen, but of bringing a diversity of texts into dialogue with the established mythology of the series as well as with longstanding science fiction tropes. In this process, original stories are not just resituated, but transformed into new works. Harmes considers what this approach reveals about adaptation, television production, the art of storytelling, and the long-term success and cultural resonance enjoyed by Doctor Who. Doctor Who and the Art of Adaptation will be of interest to students of literature and television alike, and to scholars interested in adaptation studies. It will also appeal to fans of the series interested in tracing the deep cultural roots of television's longest-running, and most literate, science-fiction adventure.

The globalizing world needs responsible young generations who will be agents of social development; so universities are faced with the need to design innovative educational approaches and include academic learning courses that encourage young students to develop awareness and critical thinking. The opportunities to share love, kindness and respect with the local people and all living beings and to exchange ideas, experiences, different perspectives and perceptions through interaction with the students of a university in a different country help to develop mutual learning.

When Northern Exposure first aired on television in 1990, viewers were introduced to the small fictional town of Cicely, Alaska, and its quirky yet endearing citizens. During its run, Northern Exposure received critical acclaim, winning two Peabody Awards, seven Primetime Emmy Awards and two Golden Globes. Though the show was cancelled after six seasons, it has had a profound impact on contemporary television. In Northern Exposure: A Cultural History, Michael Samuel revisits the cult television series and celebrates its legacy, from its surreal narrative to its diverse onscreen representations. Covering the show's production history, characters, individual episodes, fan culture, and critical response, Samuel reveals Northern Exposure's wide cultural impact during its time on air and ever since. Complete with an exploration of the town where the series was shot and a comprehensive guide to all 110 episodes, Northern Exposure: A Cultural History is the perfect companion to this classic series. A fascinating and accessible retrospective, this book recalls a cultural moment in American television defined by a series that wasn't afraid to push boundaries.

This collection analyzes twenty-first-century American television programs that rely upon temporal and narrative experimentation. These shows play with time, slowing it down to unfold the narrative through time retardation and compression. They disrupt the chronological flow of time itself, using flashbacks and insisting that viewers be able to situate themselves in both the present and the past narrative threads. Although temporal play has existed on the small screen prior to the new millennium, never before has narrative time been so freely adapted in mainstream television. The essayists offer explanations for not only the frequency of time play in contemporary programming, but the implications of its sometimes disorienting presence.

Drawing upon the fields of cultural studies, television scholarship, and literary studies, as well as overarching theories concerning postmodernity and narratology, "Time in Television Narrative" offers some critical suggestions. The increasing number of of television programs concerned with time may stem from any and all of the following: recent scientific approaches to quantum physics and temporality; new conceptions of history and posthistory; or trends in late-capitalistic production and consumption, in the new culture of instantaneity, or in the recent trauma culture amplified after the September 11 attacks. In short, these televisual time experiments may very well be an aesthetic response to the climate from which they derive. These essays analyze both ends of this continuum and also attend to another crucial variable: the television viewer watching this new temporal play.