Creating Television

Creating Television
Author: Robert Kubey
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 516
Release: 2004-05-20
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1135694281

Creating Television brings television and its creators to life, presenting fascinating in-depth interviews with the creators of American TV. Having interviewed more than 100 television professionals over the course of his 15 years of research, Professor Robert Kubey presents here the 40 conversations that provide the most illuminating insights about the industry and the people working in it. These interviews bring television's creators to life, revealing their backgrounds, work, and thoughts about the audience and the television programs they create. Each interview tells a compelling tale of an individual's struggles and successes within a complex collaborative and highly commercial medium, offering readers rare insights on the human component in television's development. Featured in this volume are actors, agents, writers, directors, producers, and executives, representing television's earliest days through to the present day. Spanning shows from I Love Lucy and The Tonight Show through to Seinfeld, The Simpsons, and The Sopranos, these creators share the stories of how they gained entry to the industry and built their careers, offering readers a rare opportunity to meet, up close, the people involved in creating many of the most famous and successful programs in the medium's history, and linking the creators' personal histories to the television programs they create. With its unique insights on the people responsible for making television, this volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers in television history, sociology of culture, human creativity, television production, media studies, and mass media ethics. It will also be a popular reader for undergraduate and graduate students in courses addressing television, mass culture, media and society, American Studies, creativity, television history, and media ethics.

The Future of Television

The Future of Television
Author: Pamela Douglas
Publisher:
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2015
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9781615932146

The book's journey into the future of television begins with “You Are Here,” delving into “The Great Convergence” of television and Internet and the vortex of change we all inhabit now. Then, glancing back, we explore “The Old World” of broadcast television to understand how we got to this moment of transition. Next, traveling “Between Worlds,” we visit cable television and see how the boundaries between network, cable, and Internet are mutating. After that, we enter “The New World” that ranges from empires like Netflix and Amazon down to Kickstarter-funded web series, and all the creative expressions that abound. Finally, we look ahead to the “Far Frontier” of interactivity and transmedia and a distant, fantastic future. All these experiences are focused on how a writer, producer, director, or entrepreneur can use the emerging possibilities to create original television now and in the coming decade.

Television Development

Television Development
Author: Bob Levy
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2019-01-18
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0429013434

Development is a large and central part of the American TV industry, and yet the details of how it works – who makes development decisions and why, where ideas for new shows come from, even basics like the differences between what TV studios and TV networks do – remain elusive to many. In this book, lecturer and acclaimed television producer Bob Levy offers a detailed introduction to television development, the process by which the Hollywood TV industry creates new scripted series. Written both for students and industry professionals, Television Development serves as a comprehensive introduction to all facets of the development process: the terminology, timelines, personnel and industrial processes that take a new TV project from idea to pitch to script to pilot to series. In addition to describing these processes, Levy also examines creative strategies for successful development, and teaches readers how to apply these strategies to their own careers and speak the language of development across all forms of visual storytelling. Written by the renowned producer responsible for developing and executive producing Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars, Television Development is an essential starting point for students, executives, agents, producers, directors and writers to learn how new series are created. Accompanying online material includes sample pitches, pilot scripts, and other development documents. A companion website for the book is available here: https://www.tvboblevy.com/

Creating Preschool Television

Creating Preschool Television
Author: J. Steemers
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2010-02-24
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0230274609

Small children are regularly captivated by programmes made especially for them – ranging from classics like Sesame Street to more recent arrivals such as Blues Clues and Teletubbies . This book examines the industry interests behind preschool television, and how commercial, creative and curricular priorities shape and inform what is produced.

Making Television

Making Television
Author: Robert Thompson
Publisher: Praeger
Total Pages: 232
Release: 1990-09-27
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN:

Part of Praeger's Media and Society Series, this contributed volume is the only collection of essays on television authorship. It includes work of some of the most prominent scholars in television studies. Rather than assigning one author to individual television texts, the contributors probe the relationship between the various authors at work within the institutional, cultural, and economic settings that characterize the television industry. This book analyzes and defines the unique methods of television authorship and suggests numerous candidates for authorial accountability allowing the medium to enter the realm of contemporary criticism. The first part of the volume provides a case study in four chapters on authorship issues surrounding Frank's Place, the short lived but compelling situation comedy. This is followed by three chapters focusing on issues of authorship in international television. The book then probes the studio's role as author, including essays on Warner Brothers, Desilu, and Screen Gems. Finally the contributors examine individual TV authors and cover such topics as point of view in music video, television production as collective action, and unconventional television.

Creating Dialogue for TV

Creating Dialogue for TV
Author: Monika Bednarek
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 88
Release: 2019-01-22
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0429639341

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.

Same Time, Same Station

Same Time, Same Station
Author: James L. Baughman
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 484
Release: 2007-03-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780801879333

Outstanding Academic Title for 2007, Choice Magazine Ever wonder how American television came to be the much-derided, advertising-heavy home to reality programming, formulaic situation comedies, hapless men, and buxom, scantily clad women? Could it have been something different, focusing instead on culture, theater, and performing arts? In Same Time, Same Station, historian James L. Baughman takes readers behind the scenes of early broadcasting, examining corporate machinations that determined the future of television. Split into two camps—those who thought TV could meet and possibly raise the expectations of wealthier, better-educated post-war consumers and those who believed success meant mimicking the products of movie houses and radio—decision makers fought a battle of ideas that peaked in the 1950s, just as TV became a central facet of daily life for most Americans. Baughman’s engagingly written account of the brief but contentious debate shows how the inner workings and outward actions of the major networks, advertisers, producers, writers, and entertainers ultimately made TV the primary forum for entertainment and information. The tale of television's founding years reveals a series of decisions that favored commercial success over cultural aspiration.

Making Great Television

Making Great Television
Author: Dee LaDuke
Publisher: Garth Gardner Company
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2004
Genre: Television broadcasting
ISBN: 9781589650183

The simple steps outlined in this book help clarify which television projects are most likely to be written as pilot scripts, produced, and ultimately given a series order. Presenting a new twist on the old notion of formulaic television, this book analyzes the four-component formula that the best television has given us and elaborates upon it for the creation of great comedy and drama in half-hour or miniseries format.

The Television Will be Revolutionized

The Television Will be Revolutionized
Author: Amanda D. Lotz
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2007-11-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0814752322

Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2008 After occupying a central space in American living rooms for the past fifty years, is television, as we’ve known it, dead? The capabilities and features of that simple box have been so radically redefined that it’s now nearly unrecognizable. Today, viewers with digital video recorders such as TiVo may elect to circumvent scheduling constraints and commercials. Owners of iPods and other portable viewing devices are able to download the latest episodes of their favorite shows and watch them whenever and wherever they want. Still others rent television shows on DVD, or download them through legal and illegal sources online. But these changes have not been hastening the demise of the medium. They are revolutionizing it. The Television Will Be Revolutionized examines television at the turn of the twenty-first century —:what Amanda D. Lotz terms the “post-network” era. Television, both as a technology and a tool for cultural storytelling, remains as important today as ever, but it has changed in fundamental ways as the result of technological innovations, proliferating cable channels targeting ever more specific niche audiences, and evolving forms of advertising such as product placement and branded entertainment. Many of the conventional practices and even the industry’s basic business model are proving unworkable in this new context, resulting in a crisis in norms and practices. Through interviews with those working in the industry, attendance of various industry summits and meetings, surveys of trade publications, and consideration of an extensive array of popular television shows, Lotz takes us behind the screen to explore what is changing, why it’s changing, and why these changes matter.

Television Program Making

Television Program Making
Author: Colin Hart
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2012-11-12
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1136049452

This book is for anyone starting out or hoping to work in the ever-expanding world of television and video. Everyone involved in a TV or video production is contributing to the program making process. They all need to know and understand how it happens. Whatever you want to end up doing, whether you are part way through a course or starting from scratch, this book gives you all the essential information you will need. It takes a practical, step-by-step approach, based on the author's own 25-year experience of producing, writing and directing for broadcast television and the corporate sector on both video and film. It describes the roles people perform, the equipment they use and what it does. In simple, easy-to-read language it explains the grammar of shooting and editing and offers first-hand advice on treatments, scripts and budgets. As well as covering the technical aspects of both single and multi-camera production, it also looks at the editorial elements that create a successful program. With practical examples it demonstrates how best to turn ideas into reality, how to obtain successful interviews and how to put together programs that work. Colin Hart has his own production company making programs for corporate clients. He trained as a single and multi-camera director in local televison news and for ten years worked in BBC Current Affairs producing and directing for Nationwide and The Money Programme.