Television Studies

Television is a form of media without equal. It has revolutionized the way we learn about and communicate with the world and has reinvented the way we experience ourselves and others. More than just cheap entertainment, TV is an undeniable component of our culture and contains many clues to who we are, what we value, and where we might be headed in the future. Media historian Gary R. Edgerton follows the technological developments and increasing cultural relevance of TV from its prehistory (before 1947) to the Network Era (1948-1975) and the Cable Era (1976-1994). ...

It would be difficult to cite any technological innovation whose impact on the fabric of daily living has been as pervasive as that of television. Within a few decades after its invention, television was providing, literally, a window to the world. A sole inventor of television does not exist. Instead, it came about through a remarkable interaction of several hundred scientists. Interviews with the scientists whose imagination and enterprise combined to make television a reality, extensive archival research worldwide, and rare photos make this book the one definitive history and the only authoritative account. ...

Together, these two volumes provide the definitive technical history of the medium. Upon the development in the mid-1940s of new cameras and picture tubes that made commercial television possible worldwide, the medium rose rapidly to prominence. Perhaps even more important was the invention of the video tape recorder in 1956, allowing editing, re-shooting and rebroadcasting.This second volume, 1942 to 2000 covers these significant developments and much more. Chapters are devoted to television during World War II and the postwar era, the development of color television, Ampex Corporation's contributions, television in Europe, the change from helical to high band technology, solid state cameras, the television coverage of Apollo II, the rise of electronic journalism, television entering the studios, the introduction of the camcorder, the demise of RCA at the hands of GE, the domination of Sony and Matsushita, and the future of television in e-cinema and the 1080 P24 format. ...

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. ...

From its earliest beginnings, television was destined to become one of the great new forces at work in the twentieth century. This new edition 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. ...

Television existed for a long time before it became commonplace in American homes. Even as cars, jazz, film, and radio heralded the modern age, television haunted the modern imagination. During the 1920s and 1930s, U.S. television was a topic of conversation and speculation. Was it technically feasible? Could it be commercially viable? What would it look like? How might it serve the public interest? And what was its place in the modern future? These questions were not just asked by the American public, but also posed by the people intimately involved in television's creation. ...

To paraphrase silent movie queen Norma Desmond in Billy Wilder's classic 1950 film Sunset Boulevard, "The epic miniseries are big! It's television that got small!" This is especially true when one compares such iconic epic miniseries as Rich Man, Poor Man (1976), Roots (1977), Holocaust (1978), Shogun (1980), The Winds of War (1983), War and Remembrance (1988-89) and Angels in America (2003) to today's ordinary television programming. This work traces the historical trajectory of the epic miniseries and delves into the character archetypes and themes that recur in the genre, giving close critical attention to more than 40 miniseries. A filmography is included.

According to the sociologist C. Wright Mills in his 1951 book, White Collar: The American Middle Classes, the "new entrepreneur" was a lone wolf able to succeed in post-World War II corporate America by elusively meandering through various institutions. During this time, anthology writers such as Rod Serling, Reginald Rose, and Paddy Chayefsky achieved a level of creativity that has rarely been equaled on television since. Yet despite their success, anthology writers still needed to evade the constraints and censorship of 50s television in order to stay true to their creative powers and political visions. Thus they worked as new entrepreneurs who adapted their more controversial scripts for the Hollywood, Broadway, and book publishing industries. ...

Only Connect is a comprehensive history of American broadcasting from its earliest days in radio, through the rise of television, to the current era of digital media and the Internet. It presents broadcasting as a vital component of American cultural identity, placing the development of U.S. radio, television, and new media in the context of social and cultural change. ...

Small Screens, Big Ideas brings together specially commissioned writings from British and American contributors to explore themes of diversity in the formative period of the 1950s. With radical changes taking place in terrestrial television, this is a timely moment to revisit the decade when television's very novelty was its most striking feature. ...

In the early 1960s, whenever the Today Show discussed integration, WLBT-TV, the NBS affiliate in Jackson, Mississippi, cut away to local news after announcing that the Today Show content was "network news . . . represent[ing] the views of the northern press." This was only one part of a larger effort by WLBT and other local stations to keep African Americans and integrationists off Jackson's television screens. Watching Jim Crow presents the vivid story of the successful struggles of African Americans to achieve representation in the TV programming of Jackson, a city many considered one of the strongest bastions of Jim Crow segregation. ...

While journalists, cultural critics, technology writers, and industry figures have been writing about television for a surprisingly long time (going back at least to experiments with mechanical television in the late 1920s), the academic study of television history largely emerged only in the 1970s in the United States and the United Kingdom.

The first season of this series looks at late night TV, sitcoms, variety programs and game shows. The second season looks at the popular genres of westerns, science fiction, crime dramas and local children's television.

The creation, innovation & expansion of the televisual medium.

Television reviews originally published in two sister publications: Variety (New York, N.Y.), and Daily Variety.

The Journal of e-Media Studies is a blind peer-reviewed, on-line journal dedicated to the scholarly study of the history and theory of electronic media, especially Television and New Media.

Critical Studies in Television publishes articles that draw together divergent disciplines and different ways of thinking, to promote and advance television as a distinct academic discipline. It welcomes contributions on any aspect of television—production studies and institutional histories, audience and reception studies, theoretical approaches, conceptual paradigms and pedagogical questions. ...

The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television is an international and interdisciplinary journal concerned with the history of the audio-visual mass media from c.1900 to the present.

This index covers over 300 journal and magazine titles for film and television reviews, scholarly and critical analysis of cinema and television, and articles of popular interest about film and television. About half the journals and magazines are film periodicals and the other half cover film and television with some regularity. Subject coverage includes film & television theory, preservation & restoration, writing, production, cinematography, technical aspects, and reviews.

The Media History Digital Library digitizes collections of classic media periodicals that belong in the public domain for full public access. The project is supported by owners of materials who loan them for scanning, and donors who contribute funds to cover the cost of scanning.

The Collection feature extensive runs of several important trade papers and fan magazines.

An archival resource containing the essential primary sources for studying the history of the film and entertainment industries, from the era of vaudeville and silent movies through to 2000. The core US and UK trade magazines covering film, music, broadcasting and theater are included, together with film fan magazines and music press titles.

The online version of 3 separate ISI indexes: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Science Citation Index and, Social Sciences Citation Index.