Re-viewing Television History

Re-viewing Television History
Author: Helen Wheatley
Publisher: I.B. Tauris
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2007-10-24
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN:

Written by leading scholars in the field, this book is an internationally relevant, cutting-edge reassessment of both current methods and practices in television historiography and of assumptions about television history itself. The book focuses on debates about the canon, on institutions, texts and audiences, and the interconnections between these distinct areas. Through discussions and case studies, it covers a wide selection, from television's approaches to immigration and natural history to economic histories of television, the framing of television aesthetics, and problems in constructing a television canon. Each section opens with the editor's overview of the historical research and an appendix details the main research resources for television historians in the UK.

History on Television

History on Television
Author: Ann Gray
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2013
Genre: History
ISBN: 0415580382

This interdisciplinary study of history programming identifies and examines different genres employed by producers and tracks their commissioning, production, marketing and distribution histories. With comparative references to other European nations and North America, the authors focus on British history programming over the last two decades and analyse the relationship between the academy and media professionals. They outline and discuss often-competing discourses about how to 'do' history and the underlying assumptions about who watches history programmes. History on Television considers recent changes in the media landscape, which have affected to a great degree how history in general, and whose history in particular, appears onscreen.

What Were They Thinking?

What Were They Thinking?
Author: David Hofstede
Publisher: Watson-Guptill Publications
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2004
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780823084418

TV is never short of bad ideas, as demonstrated in a guide to one hundred of television's most memorable blunders and bloopers, arranged in a count-down format and including information on each incident that seeks to answer the question of "Why did this happen?" Original.

Was It Yesterday?

Was It Yesterday?
Author: Matthew Leggatt
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2021-06-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1438483503

Bringing together prominent transatlantic film and media scholars, Was It Yesterday? explores the impact of nostalgia in twenty-first century American film and television. Cultural nostalgia, in both real and imagined forms, is dominant today, but what does the concentration on bringing back the past mean for an understanding of our cultural moment, and what are the consequences for viewers? This book questions the nature of this nostalgic phenomenon, the politics associated with it, and the significance of the different periods, in addition to offering counterarguments that see nostalgia as prevalent throughout film and television history. Considering such films and television shows as La La Land, Westworld, Stranger Things, and American Hustle, the contributors demonstrate how audiences have spent more time over the last decade living in various pasts.

Television Histories

Television Histories
Author: Gary R. Edgerton
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2014-10-17
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 081315829X

From Ken Burns's documentaries to historical dramas such as Roots, from A&E's Biography series to CNN, television has become the primary source for historical information for tens of millions of Americans today. Why has television become such a respected authority? What falsehoods enter our collective memory as truths? How is one to know what is real and what is imagined—or ignored—by producers, directors, or writers? Gary Edgerton and Peter Rollins have collected a group of essays that answer these and many other questions. The contributors examine the full spectrum of historical genres, but also institutions such as the History Channel and production histories of such series as The Jack Benny Show, which ran for fifteen years. The authors explore the tensions between popular history and professional history, and the tendency of some academics to declare the past "off limits" to nonscholars. Several of them point to the tendency for television histories to embed current concerns and priorities within the past, as in such popular shows as Quantum Leap and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. The result is an insightful portrayal of the power television possesses to influence our culture.

Milwaukee Television History

Milwaukee Television History
Author: Dick Golembiewski
Publisher:
Total Pages: 520
Release: 2008
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN:

"Milwaukee - not New York, Chicago or Los Angeleswas the scene of a number of television firsts: The Journal Company filed the very first application for a commercial TV license with the FCC in 1938. The first female program director and news director in a major market were both at Milwaukee stations. The city was a major battleground in the VHF vs. UHF war that began in the 1950s. The battle to put an educational TV station on the air was fought at the national, state and local levels by the Milwaukee Vocational School. WMVS-TV was the first educational TV station to run a regular schedule of colorcasts, and WMVT was the site of the first long-distance rest of a digital over-theair signal." "This detailed story of the rich history of the city's television stations since 1930 is told through facts, anecdotes, and quotations from the on-air talent, engineers, and managers who conceived, constructed, and put the stations on the air. Included are discussions of the many locally-produced shows - often done live - that once made up a large part of a station's broadcast day. Through these stories - some told here for the first time - and the book's extensive photographic images, the history of Milwaukee television comes alive again for the reader." "From the first early tests using mechanical scanning methods in the 1930s, through the first successful digital television tests, the politics, conflicts, triumphs, and failures of Milwaukee's television stations are described in fascinating detail." --Book Jacket.

Television

Television
Author: Anthony Smith
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 320
Release: 1998
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN:

From its earliest beginnings, television was destined to become one of the great new forces at work in the twentieth century. This new edition (which includes six completely new chapters) greatly expands the original and unique historical coverage of this most influential cultural phenomenon. Written by a distinguished international team of specialists, the book describes the history of television from its technical conception in the nineteenth century right through to the bewildering multi-media developments of the present. Alongside this historical account, chapters provide important discussion of the central debates affecting television world-wide, from America, Canada, and Britain to Europe, Scandinavia, Japan, China, South Asia, the Arab world, Australia, Africa, and the Third World. All genres of programme making--news, sport, drama, comedy--are examined in the light of key questions: how viewing practices affect particular societies; how standards of taste and decency are arrived at; the influence of television of government power; the role of public service broadcasting; and the relationship of television to terrorism and violence. A thought-provoking Epilogue ponders the likely impact and influence of television in the coming years. This book is accessibly written and is a major exploration of the world's most dominant medium. QUOTES FROM THE FIRST EDITION `Those who wish to take a close look at the way television has affected the lives of people in other countries as well as their own will find all the information they need here . . . a work which will earn its keep in the reference libraries, but also merits a place on the bookshelves of individuals.' THES `For those desiring to fully understand the medium that has dominated the later twentieth century.' The Business of Film `What a terrific assembly of contributors to document an international story of television . . . so many outstanding features in this book . . . an important addition to documenting the global story of television in a single volume.' Journalism History

History on Television

History on Television
Author: Ann Gray
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2013-01-03
Genre: History
ISBN: 1135115427

In recent years non-fiction history programmes have flourished on television. This interdisciplinary study of history programming identifies and examines different genres employed by producers and tracks their commissioning, production, marketing and distribution histories. With comparative references to other European nations and North America, the authors focus on British history programming over the last two decades and analyse the relationship between the academy and media professionals. They outline and discuss often-competing discourses about how to ‘do’ history and the underlying assumptions about who watches history programmes. History on Television considers recent changes in the media landscape, which have affected to a great degree how history in general, and whose history in particular, appears onscreen. Through a number of case studies, using material from interviews by the authors with academic and media professionals, the role of the ‘professional’ historian and that of media professionals – commissioning editors and producer/directors - as mediators of historical material and interpretations is analysed, and the ways in which the ‘logics of television’ shape historical output are outlined and discussed. Building on their analysis, Ann Gray and Erin Bell ask if history on television fulfils its potential to be a form of public history through offering, as it does, a range of interpretations of the past to and originating from or including those not based in the academy. Through consideration of the representation, or absence, of the diversity of British identity – gender, ethnicity and race, social status and regional identities – the authors substantially extend the scope of existing scholarship into history on television History on Television will be essential reading for all those interested in the complex processes involved in the representation of history on television.

A History of Shakespeare on Screen

A History of Shakespeare on Screen
Author: Kenneth S. Rothwell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2004-10-28
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780521543118

This edition of A History of Shakespeare on Screen updates the chronology to 2003, with a new chapter on recent films.

A Critical History of Doctor Who on Television

A Critical History of Doctor Who on Television
Author: John Kenneth Muir
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 504
Release: 2007-10-19
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0786437162

Since its inception in November 1963, the British science fiction television series Doctor Who has exerted an enormous impact on the world of science fiction (over 1,500 books have been written about the show). The series follows the adventures of a mysterious "Time Lord" from the distant planet Gallifrey who travels through time and space to fight evil and injustice. Along the way, he has visited Rome under the rule of Nero, played backgammon with Kublai Khan, and participated in the mythic gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Predating the Star Trek phenomenon by three years, Doctor Who seriously dealt with continuing characters, adult genre principles and futuristic philosophies. Critical and historical examinations of the ideas, philosophies, conceits and morals put forth in the Doctor Who series, which ran for 26 seasons and 159 episodes, are provided here. Also analyzed are thematic concepts, genre antecedents, the overall cinematography and the special effects of the long-running cult favorite. The various incarnations of Doctor Who, including television, stage, film, radio, and spin-offs are discussed. In addition, the book provides an extensive listing of print, Internet, and fan club resources for Doctor Who.