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ABC Sports: The Rise and Fall of Network Sports Television

Travis Vogan

The American Broadcasting Company division ABC Sports is behind some of network sports television’s most significant practices, personalities, and moments. It created the weekend anthology Wide World ... More

The American Broadcasting Company division ABC Sports is behind some of network sports television’s most significant practices, personalities, and moments. It created the weekend anthology Wide World of Sports, transformed professional football into a prime-time spectacle with Monday Night Football, and fashioned the Olympics into a mega media event. ABC Sports helped to turn Muhammad Ali, the sportscaster Howard Cosell, and the daredevil Evel Knievel into stars and captured now-iconic instances that include Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s raised fist protest at the 1968 Olympics, the terrorist attacks at the 1972 Munich Games, Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs’s 1973 “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match, the U.S. hockey team’s 1980 “Miracle on Ice” victory over the Soviet Union, and the 1999 Women’s World Cup final. Beyond sport, it revolutionized television news and altered the medium’s racial and gender politics. This book offers a cultural and institutional history of ABC Sports from its beginnings to its 2006 rebranding as “ESPN on ABC.” It uses the storied division to examine network sports television’s development in the United States; the aesthetic, cultural, political, and industrial practices that mark it; and the changes it endured, along with the new sports media environment it spawned.Less

Alan Clarke

Dave Rolinson

The British television director Alan Clarke is primarily associated with the visceral social realism of such works as his banned borstal play, Scum, and his study of football hooliganism, The Firm. ... More

The British television director Alan Clarke is primarily associated with the visceral social realism of such works as his banned borstal play, Scum, and his study of football hooliganism, The Firm. This book uncovers the full range of his work from the mythic fantasy of Penda's Fen, to the radical short film on terrorism, Elephant. The author uses original research to examine the development of Clarke's career from the theatre and the ‘studio system’ of provocative television play strands of the 1960s and 1970s, to the increasingly personal work of the 1980s, which established him as one of Britain's greatest auteur directors. The book examines techniques of television direction and proposes new methodologies as it questions the critical neglect of directors in what is traditionally seen as a writer's medium. It raises issues in television studies, including aesthetics, authorship, censorship, the convergence of film and television, drama-documentary form, narrative and realism.Less

Ancient Greece on British Television

Fiona Hobden and Amanda Wrigley (eds)

Ancient Greece has inspired television producers and captivated viewing audiences in the United Kingdom for over half a century. By examining how and why political, social and cultural narratives of ... More

Ancient Greece has inspired television producers and captivated viewing audiences in the United Kingdom for over half a century. By examining how and why political, social and cultural narratives of Greece have been constructed through television’s distinctive audiovisual languages, and also in relation to its influential sister-medium radio, this volume explores the nature and function of these public engagements with the written and material remains of the Hellenic past. Through ten case studies drawn from feature programmes, educational broadcasts, children’s animations, theatre play productions, dramatic fiction and documentaries broadcast across the decades, this collection offers wide-ranging insights into the significance of ancient Greece on British television.Less

Art of Confession: The Performance of Self from Robert Lowell to Reality TV

Christopher Grobe

What do midcentury “confessional” poets have in common with today’s reality TV stars? An inexplicable urge to make their lives an open book, but also a sense that this book can never be finished. ... More

What do midcentury “confessional” poets have in common with today’s reality TV stars? An inexplicable urge to make their lives an open book, but also a sense that this book can never be finished. Christopher Grobe argues that, in postwar America, artists like these forged a new way of being in the world. Identity, now, was a kind of work—always ongoing, never complete—to be performed on the public stage. The Art of Confession tells the history of this cultural shift and of the movement it created in American art: confessionalism. Like realism or Romanticism, confessionalism began in one art form, but soon pervaded them all: poetry and comedy in the 1950s and ’60s, performance art in the ’70s, theater in the ’80s, television in the ’90s, and online video and social media in the 2000s. Everywhere confessionalism went, it stood against autobiography, the art of the closed book. Instead of just publishing, these artists performed—with, around, and against the text of their lives. A blend of cultural history, literary criticism, and performance theory, The Art of Confession explores iconic works of art and draws surprising connections among artists who may seem far apart, but who were influenced directly by one another. Studying extraordinary art alongside ordinary experiences of self-betrayal and -revelation, Grobe argues that a tradition of confessional performance unites poets with comedians, performance artists with social media users, reality TV stars with actors—and all of them with us. There is art, this book shows, in our most artless acts.Less

The BBC's Irish troubles: Television, conflict and Northern Ireland

Robert Savage

This book explores how news and information about the conflict in Northern Ireland was disseminated through the most accessible, powerful and popular form of media: television. It focuses on the BBC ... More

This book explores how news and information about the conflict in Northern Ireland was disseminated through the most accessible, powerful and popular form of media: television. It focuses on the BBC and considers how its broadcasts complicated ‘the Troubles’ by challenging decisions, policies and tactics developed by governments trying to defeat a stubborn insurgency that threatened national security. The BBC’s Irish Troubles explores the incessant wrangling between political elites, civil servants, military officials, broadcasting authorities and journalists about what should and should not be featured on the regional and national networks of BBC television. In many cases the anxiety and controversy created by these political skirmishes challenged the ability of the medium to accurately inform citizens of important events taking place within the United Kingdom, thereby undermining the BBC’s role as a public service provider. The crisis in Northern Ireland tested the integrity and independence of the BBC, one of the most trusted and respected media outlets in the world. Throughout the conflict, the BBC was attacked, threatened and bullied, by a variety of actors but did its best to stand its ground and maintain editorial independence and journalistic credibility. In spite of the infamous broadcasting restrictions put in place in 1988, professional staff remained determined to provide the public with informed news and information about the crisis. Senior broadcasting officials pushed back against awkward government efforts to silence voices that, although unpalatable, were critical to comprehending and eventually resolving a long and bloody conflict.Less

Beyond Representation: Television Drama and the Politics and Aesthetics of Identity

Geraldine Harris

This book poses the question as to whether, over the last thirty years, there have been signs of ‘progress’ or ‘progressiveness’ in the representation of ‘marginalised’ or subaltern identity ... More

This book poses the question as to whether, over the last thirty years, there have been signs of ‘progress’ or ‘progressiveness’ in the representation of ‘marginalised’ or subaltern identity categories within television drama in Britain and the US. In doing so, it interrogates some of the key assumptions concerning the relationship between aesthetics and the politics of identity that have influenced and informed television drama criticism during this period. The book functions as a textbook because it provides students with a pathway through complex, wide-reaching and highly influential interdisciplinary terrain. Yet its re-evaluation of some of the key concepts that dominated academic thought in the twentieth century also make it of interest to scholars and specialists. Chapters examine ideas around politics and aesthetics emerging from Marxist-socialism and postmodernism, feminism and postmodern feminism, anti-racism and postcolonialism, queer theory and theories of globalisation, so as to evaluate their impact on television criticism and on television as an institution. These discussions are consolidated through case studies that offer analyses of a range of television drama texts including Big Women, Ally McBeal, Supply and Demand, The Bill, Second Generation, Star Trek (Enterprise), Queer as Folk, Metrosexuality and The Murder of Stephen Lawrence.Less

The Changing Spaces of Television Acting: From Studio Realism to Location Realism in BBC Television Drama

Richard Hewett

Why study television acting? While works focusing on cinema performance have increased in recent years, small screen drama has been largely neglected – despite the fact that developments in acting ... More

Why study television acting? While works focusing on cinema performance have increased in recent years, small screen drama has been largely neglected – despite the fact that developments in acting style provide as valuable an index of the times and places in which they were created as any other aspect of production. The Changing Spaces of Television Acting addresses this lack by providing an overview of historical changes in performance style from the live era to the present day. Utilised as case studies are programmes from three diverse eras of television production: The Quatermass Experiment (BBC, 1953), which was transmitted live; Doctor Who (BBC, 1963-89), pre-recorded ‘as live’ on videotape; and Survivors (BBC, 1975-77), which swiftly adopted an Outside Broadcast ‘rehearse/record’ model. Each was also re-made in the 2000s, allowing for both a chronological study and a ‘then-and-now’ comparison of television acting. Archive research into production and reception is combined with textual analysis and interviews with actors and production personnel to examine the effects of the shift from multi-camera studio production to single camera film location work. The result is the first book to investigate not only changes in acting style for television drama, but also the underlying factors which influenced them, from production process and technology to direction, actor training and experience. Only by fully comprehending the conditions under which performances are produced can we understand and appreciate the resulting acting style; The Changing Spaces of Television Acting is the first book to comprehensively address this neglected area of research.Less

The Contemporary Television Series

Michael Hammond and Lucy Mazdon (eds)

This study of the contemporary prime-time ‘quality’ serial television format gives an account of prominent programmes such as 24, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ER, The Sopranos and The West Wing, and ... More

This study of the contemporary prime-time ‘quality’ serial television format gives an account of prominent programmes such as 24, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ER, The Sopranos and The West Wing, and explores their influential position within the television industry. Divided into the areas of history, aesthetics and reception, the text provides an overview of an increasingly hybrid television studies discipline. Chapters consider the formal and aesthetic elements in the contemporary television serial through approaches ranging from those concerned with issues of gender and sexuality, national identity and reception to industry history and textual analysis. The book also includes British examples of ‘quality’ serial television, emphasising not only their cultural specificity but also the transnational context in which these programmes operate.Less

Cult British TV comedy: From Reeves and Mortimer to Psychoville

Leon Hunt

The TV debut of Vic Reeves Big Night Out on Channel 4 in 1990 is often seen as marking a turning point for British TV Comedy, ushering in what is often characterised as the ‘post-alternative’ era. ... More

The TV debut of Vic Reeves Big Night Out on Channel 4 in 1990 is often seen as marking a turning point for British TV Comedy, ushering in what is often characterised as the ‘post-alternative’ era. The 1990s would produce acclaimed series such as Father Ted, The League of Gentlemen and The Fast Show, while the new century would produce such notable shows as The Mighty Boosh, The Office and Psychoville. However, while these shows enjoy the status of ‘cult classics’, comparatively few of them have received scholarly attention. This book is the first sustained critical analysis of the ‘post-alternative’ era, from 1990 to the present day. It examines post-alternative comedy as a form of both ‘Cult’ and ‘Quality’ TV, programmes that mostly target niche audiences and possess a subcultural aura – in the early 90s, comedy was famously declared ‘the new rock’n’roll’. It places these developments within a variety of cultural and institutional contexts and examines a range of comic forms, from sitcom to sketch shows and ‘mock TV’ formats. It includes case studies of Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer and the sitcom writer Graham LInehan. It examines developments in sketch shows and the emergence of ‘dark’ and ‘cringe’ comedy, and considers the politics of ‘offence’ during a period in which Brass Eye, ‘Sachsgate’ and Frankie Boyle provoked different kinds of media outrage. Cult British TV Comedy will be of interest to both students and fans of modern TV comedy.Less

Death Makes the News: How the Media Censor and Display the Dead

Jessica M. Fishman

Because it is impossible to create an unfiltered mirror to reality, the news media selectively rely on particular pictures and words to shape our understanding of world events. The construction of ... More

Because it is impossible to create an unfiltered mirror to reality, the news media selectively rely on particular pictures and words to shape our understanding of world events. The construction of news is never a random process, and photojournalism is far more than a mechanical undertaking. Because photographs literally craft boundaries, systematically hiding one reality while illuminating another, this book extensively examines how pictures represent tragedy, uncovering surprising editorial forces that persistently structure the way the news media cover death. Some deaths are concealed, while others are illustrated in great detail, and this book develops formulas predicting these fates. We see how deep political cleavages, especially those powered by nationalism, create remarkable patterns of visibility and invisibility. The patterns are striking, but they overturn long-held assumptions about which deaths are newsworthy, raising fundamental questions about the role of news images. This behind-the-scenes account shares many photographs, including images that were censored from the news. It also explores in-depth interviews with industry leaders who admit to self-censorship and industry censorship. It engages impassioned controversies over bearing witness, protecting privacy, and other sensitive topics.Less

Dramatized Societies: Quality Television in Spain and Mexico

Paul Julian Smith

Over the last decade Spain and Mexico have both produced an extraordinary wealth of television drama and are among the leaders in their respective continents. The new dramas have high production ... More

Over the last decade Spain and Mexico have both produced an extraordinary wealth of television drama and are among the leaders in their respective continents. The new dramas have high production values (easily the equal of cinema), intricately plotted narratives, and compellingly ambivalent characters. They are thus clearly worthy of the close textual analysis they have not yet received. Drawing on both national practices of production and reception (based on archival research in Madrid and Mexico City) and international theories of textual analysis, this book offers the first study of contemporary quality TV drama in two countries where, unlike elsewhere, it is not yet recognized that television has displaced cinema as the creative medium that shapes the national narrative. As dramatized societies, Spain and Mexico are thus at once reflected and refracted by the new series on the small screen. Social issues treated include historical memory, youth, drugs, race, and gender.Less

Equal Time: Television and the Civil Rights Movement

Aniko Bodroghkozy

This book explores the crucial role of network television in reconfiguring new attitudes in race relations during the civil rights movement. Due to widespread coverage, the civil rights revolution ... More

This book explores the crucial role of network television in reconfiguring new attitudes in race relations during the civil rights movement. Due to widespread coverage, the civil rights revolution quickly became the United States' first televised major domestic news story. This important medium unmistakably influenced the ongoing movement for African American empowerment, desegregation, and equality. The book brings to the foreground television news treatment of now-famous civil rights events including the 1965 Selma voting rights campaign, integration riots at the University of Mississippi, and the March on Washington, including Martin Luther King's “I Have a Dream” speech. It also examines the most high-profile and controversial television series of the era to feature African American actors—East Side/West Side, Julia, and Good Times—to reveal how entertainment programmers sought to represent a rapidly shifting consensus on what “blackness” and “whiteness” meant and how they now fit together.Less

Fighting for the Future: Essays on Star Trek: Discovery

Sabrina Mittermeier and Mareike Spychala (eds)

The first two seasons of the television series Star Trek: Discovery, the newest instalment in the long-running and influential Star Trek franchise, received media and academic attention from the ... More

The first two seasons of the television series Star Trek: Discovery, the newest instalment in the long-running and influential Star Trek franchise, received media and academic attention from the moment they arrived on screen. Discovery makes several key changes to Star Trek’s well-known narrative formulae, particularly the use of more serialized storytelling, appealing to audiences’ changed viewing habits in the streaming age – and yet the storylines, in their topical nature and the broad range of socio-political issues they engage with, continue in the political vein of the franchise’s megatext. This volume brings together eighteen essays and one interview about the series, with contributions from a variety of disciplines including cultural studies, literary studies, media studies, fandom studies, history and political science. They explore representations of gender, sexuality and race, as well as topics such as shifts in storytelling and depictions of diplomacy. Examining Discovery alongside older entries into the Star Trek canon and tracing emerging continuities and changes, this volume will be an invaluable resource for all those interested in Star Trek and science fiction in the franchise era.Less

The Great War on the Small Screen: Representing the First World War in Contemporary Britain

Emma Hanna

In Britain since the 1960s television has been the most influential medium of popular culture. Television is also the site where the Western Front of popular culture clashes with the Western Front of ... More

In Britain since the 1960s television has been the most influential medium of popular culture. Television is also the site where the Western Front of popular culture clashes with the Western Front of history. This book examines the ways in which those involved in the production of historical documentaries for this most influential media have struggled to communicate the stories of the First World War to British audiences. Documents in the BBC Written Archives Centre at Caversham, Berkshire, the Imperial War Museum, and the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives all inform the analysis. Interviews and correspondence with television producers, scriptwriters and production crew, as well as two First World War veterans who appeared in several recent documentaries provide new insights for the reader. Emma Hanna takes the reader behind the scenes of the making of the most influential documentaries from the landmark epic series The Great War (BBC, 1964) up to more recent controversial productions such as The Trench (BBC, 2002) and Not Forgotten: The Men Who Wouldn't Fight (BBC, 2008). By examining the production, broadcast and reception of a number of British television documentaries this book examines the difficult relationship between the war's history and its popular memory.Less

Jack Rosenthal

Sue Vice

This is a critical work on Jack Rosenthal, the highly regarded British television dramatist. His career began with Coronation Street in the 1960s and he became famous for his popular sitcoms, ... More

This is a critical work on Jack Rosenthal, the highly regarded British television dramatist. His career began with Coronation Street in the 1960s and he became famous for his popular sitcoms, including The Lovers and The Dustbinmen. During what is often known as the ‘golden age’ of British television drama, Rosenthal wrote such plays as The Knowledge, The Chain, Spend, Spend, Spend and P'tang, Yang, Kipperbang, as well as the pilot for the series London's Burning. This study offers a close analysis of all his best-known works, drawing on archival material as well as interviews with his collaborators, including Jonathan Lynn and Don Black. The book places Rosenthal's plays in their historical and televisual context, and does so by tracing the events that informed his writing – ranging from his comic take on the ‘permissive society’ of the 1960s, to recession in the 1970s and Thatcherism in the 1980s. His distinctive brand of melancholy humour is contrasted throughout with the work of contemporaries such as Dennis Potter, Alan Bleasdale and Johnny Speight, and his influence on contemporary television and film is analysed. Rosenthal is not usually placed in the canon of Anglo-Jewish writing, but the book argues this case by focusing on his prize-winning Plays for Today, The Evacuees and Bar Mitzvah Boy.Less

Jimmy McGovern

Steve Blandford

This is the first book-length study of one of the most significant of all British television writers, Jimmy McGovern. The book provides comprehensive coverage of all his work for television including ... More

This is the first book-length study of one of the most significant of all British television writers, Jimmy McGovern. The book provides comprehensive coverage of all his work for television including early writing on Brookside, major documentary dramas such as Hillsborough and Sunday and more recent series such as The Street and Accused. Whilst the book is firmly focused on McGovern’s own work, the range of his output over the period in which he has been working also provides something of an overview of the radical changes in television drama commissioning that have taken place during this time. Without compromising his deeply-held convictions McGovern has managed to adapt to an ever changing environment, often using his position as a sought-after writer to defy industry trends. The book also challenges the notion of McGovern as an uncomplicated social realist in stylistic terms. Looking particularly at his later work, a case is made for McGovern employing a greater range of narrative approaches, albeit subtly and within boundaries that allow him to continue to write for large popular audiences. Finally it is worth pointing to the book’s examination of McGovern’s role in recent years as a mentor to new voices, frequently acting as a creative producer on series that he part-writes and part brings through different less-experienced names.Less

Justice Provocateur: Jane Tennison and Policing in Prime Suspect

Gray Cavender

Nancy C. Jurik (ed.)

This book focuses on Prime Suspect, a popular British television film series starring Oscar and Emmy award-winning actress Helen Mirren as fictional London policewoman Jane Tennison. The book ... More

This book focuses on Prime Suspect, a popular British television film series starring Oscar and Emmy award-winning actress Helen Mirren as fictional London policewoman Jane Tennison. The book examines the media constructions of justice, gender, and police work in the show, exploring its progressive treatment of contemporary social problems in which women are central protagonists. The book argues that the show acts as a vehicle for progressive moral fiction—fiction that gives voice to victim experiences, locates those experiences within a larger social context, transcends traditional legal definitions of justice for victims, and offers insights into ways that individuals might challenge oppressive social and organizational arrangements. Shrewdly interpreting the show as an illustration of the tensions and contradictions of women's experiences and their various relations to power, the book provides a framework for interrogating the meanings and implications of justice, gender, and social transformation both on and off the screen.Less

Keepers of the Flame: NFL Films and the Rise of Sports Media

Travis Vogan

NFL Films changed the way Americans view football. This book traces the subsidiary's development from a small independent film production company to the marketing machine that Sports Illustrated ... More

NFL Films changed the way Americans view football. This book traces the subsidiary's development from a small independent film production company to the marketing machine that Sports Illustrated named “perhaps the most effective propaganda organ in the history of corporate America.” Drawing on research at the NFL Films Archive and the Pro Football Hall of Fame and interviews with media pioneer Steve Sabol and others, the book shows how NFL Films has constructed a consistent, romanticized, and remarkably visible mythology for the National Football League. The company packages football as a visceral and dramatic sequence of violent, beautiful, graceful, and heroic gridiron battles. Historically proven formulas for presentation are still used today. From the Vincent Price-narrated Strange but True Football Stories to the currently running series Hard Knocks, NFL Films distinguishes the NFL from other sports organizations and from other media and entertainment. The book tells the larger story of the company's relationship with and vast influence on our culture's representations of sport, the expansion of sports television beyond live game broadcasts, and the emergence of cable television and Internet sports media. This book presents sports media as an integral facet of American popular culture and NFL Films as key to the transformation of pro football into the national obsession commonly known as America's Game.Less

Masculinity and Popular Television

Rebecca Feasey

The author of this book reads the depiction of masculinity in the soap opera, homosexuality in the situation comedy, fatherhood in prime-time animation, emerging manhood in the supernatural teen ... More

The author of this book reads the depiction of masculinity in the soap opera, homosexuality in the situation comedy, fatherhood in prime-time animation, emerging manhood in the supernatural teen text, alternative gender roles in science fiction, male authority in police procedurals, masculine anxieties in the hospital drama, violence and aggression in sports coverage, ordinariness and emotional connectedness in the reality game show and domesticity in lifestyle television. The book illuminates the construction, circulation and interrogation of masculinities in contemporary British and American programming and relates such images to the ‘common sense’ model of the hegemonic male that dominates the cultural landscape.Less

New Television, Globalisation, and the East Asian Cultural Imagination

Michael Keane, Anthony Y. H. Fung, and Albert Moran

Challenging assumptions that have underpinned critiques of globalization and combining cultural theory with media-industry analysis, this book gives an account of the evolution of television in the ... More

Challenging assumptions that have underpinned critiques of globalization and combining cultural theory with media-industry analysis, this book gives an account of the evolution of television in the post-broadcasting era, and of how programming ideas are creatively redeveloped and franchised in East Asia. In this study of television-program adaptation across cultures, the authors argue that adaptation, transfer, and recycling of content are multiplying to the point of marginalizing other economic and cultural practices. This is happening in television, but also in many other media and related areas of cultural production. Looking at China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, the study details practices that are variously referred to as formatting, franchising, imitation, adaptation, hybridity, bricolage, and even emulation. The authors show that significant re-modelling of local TV-production practices occur when adaptation is genuinely responsive to local values. Examples of East Asian format adaptations include Survivor, Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, The Weakest Link, Coronation Street, and Idol. The book offers alternatives models of media flow that demonstrate how Hollywood is losing its global grip. It deals with the history of the TV-format trade, a movement that has coincided with the rise of alternative centres of television production and distribution outside the US.Less