Apocalypse Tv

The end of the world may be upon us, but it certainly is taking its sweet time playing out. The walkers on The Walking Dead have been "walking" for nearly a decade. There are now dozens of apocalyptic television shows and we use the "end times" to describe everything from domestic politics and international conflict, to the weather and our views of the future. This collection of new essays asks what it means to live in a world inundated with representations of the apocalypse. Focusing on such series as The Walking Dead, The Strain, Battlestar Galactica, Doomsday Preppers, Westworld, The Handmaid's Tale, they explore how the serialization of the end of the world allows for a closer examination of the disintegration of humanity--while it happens. Do these shows prepare us for what is to come? Do they spur us to action? Might they even be causing the apocalypse?

On November 20, 1983, a three-hour made-for-TV movie The Day After premiered on ABC. Set in the heartland of Lawrence, Kansas, the film depicted the events before, during, and after a Soviet nuclear attack with vivid scenes of the post-apocalyptic hellscape that would follow. The film was viewed by over 100 million Americans and remains the highest rated TV movie in history. After the premiere, ABC News aired an episode of Viewpoint, a live special featuring some of the most prominent public intellectuals of the debating the virtues of the Arms Race and the prospect of a winnable nuclear war. The response to the film proved more powerful than perhaps any film or television program in the history of media. Aside from its record-shattering Nielsen ratings, it enjoyed critical acclaim as well as international box office success in theatrical screenings. The path to primetime for The Day After proved nearly as treacherous as the film’s narrative. Battles ensued behind the scenes at the network, between the network and the filmmakers, with Broadcast Standards and Ad Sales, in the edit room and on the set, including the “nuke-mares” experienced by the cast. After the director was pushed aside, he contemplated suicide while also engineering a comeback through the press. But these skirmishes pale in comparison to the culture wars triggered by the film in the press, alongside a growing Nuclear Freeze movement, and from a united, pro-nuclear Right. Once efforts to alter the script failed, the White House conducted a full-throttled propaganda campaign to hijack the film’s message. Apocalypse Television features a dramatic insider’s account of the making of and backlash against The Day After. No other book has told this story in similar fashion, venturing behind-the-scenes of the programming and news divisions at ABC, Reagan officials in the White House who mounted the propaganda campaign, rogue publicists who hijacked the film to promote a Nuclear Freeze, the backlash from the conservative movement and Religious Right, the challenges encountered by film’s production team from conception to reception, and the experiences of the citizens of Lawrence, Kansas, where the film was set and shot, if also, ground zero in America’s nuclear heartland.

NOW A MAJOR TV SERIES Finalist for CBC Canada Reads 2023 Winner of the Toronto Book Award and the Arthur C. Clarke Award Finalist for the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the Sunburst Award Longlisted for the Baileys Prize and for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction A New York Times and Globe and Mail bestseller A Best Book of the Year in The Globe and Mail, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and Time magazine An audacious, darkly glittering novel about art, fame and ambition, set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse Day One The Georgia Flu explodes over the surface of the earth like a neutron bomb. News reports put the mortality rate at over 99%. Week Two Civilization has crumbled. Year Twenty A band of actors and musicians, called the Travelling Symphony, move through the territories of a changed world, performing concerts and Shakespeare at the settlements that have formed. Twenty years after the pandemic, life feels relatively safe. But now a new danger looms, and it threatens the world every hopeful survivor has tried to rebuild. Moving backward and forward in time, from the glittering years just before the collapse to the strange and altered world that exists twenty years after, Station Eleven charts the unexpected twists of fate that connect six people: celebrated actor Arthur Leander; Jeevan, a bystander warned about the flu just in time; Arthur's first wife, Miranda; Arthur's oldest friend, Clark; Kirsten, an actress with the Travelling Symphony; and the mysterious and self-proclaimed "prophet." Sometimes terrifying, sometimes tender, Station Eleven tells a story about the fragility of life, the relationships that sustain us, and the beauty of the world as we know it.

The end of the world may be upon us, but it certainly is taking its sweet time playing out. The walkers on The Walking Dead have been "walking" for nearly a decade. There are now dozens of apocalyptic television shows and we use the "end times" to describe everything from domestic politics and international conflict, to the weather and our views of the future. This collection of new essays asks what it means to live in a world inundated with representations of the apocalypse. Focusing on such series as The Walking Dead, The Strain, Battlestar Galactica, Doomsday Preppers, Westworld, The Handmaid's Tale, they explore how the serialization of the end of the world allows for a closer examination of the disintegration of humanity--while it happens. Do these shows prepare us for what is to come? Do they spur us to action? Might they even be causing the apocalypse?

In the late 2000s, television no longer referred to an object to be watched; it had transformed into content to be streamed, downloaded, and shared. Tens of millions of viewers have “cut the cord,” abandoned cable television, tuned into online services like Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube, and also watch pirated movies and programmes at an unprecedented rate. The idea that the Internet will devastate the television and film industry in the same way that it gutted the music industry no longer seems farfetched. The television industry, however, remains driven by outmoded market-based business models that ignore audience behaviour and preferences. In Post-TV, Michael Strangelove explores the viewing habits and values of the post-television generation, one that finds new ways to exploit technology to find its entertainment for free, rather than for a fee. Challenging the notion that the audience is constrained by regulatory and industrial regimes, Strangelove argues that cord-cutting, digital piracy, increased competition, and new modes of production and distribution are making audiences and content more difficult to control, opening up the possibility of a freer, more democratic, media environment. A follow-up to the award-winning Watching YouTube, Post-TV is a lively examination of the social and economic implications of a world where people can watch what they want, when they want, wherever they want.

This book offers analyses of the roles of race, gender, and sexuality in the post-apocalyptic visions of early twenty-first century film and television shows. Contributors examine the production, reproduction, and re-imagination of some of our most deeply held human ideals through sociological, anthropological, historical, and feminist approaches.

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"Genuinely transnational in content, as sensitive to the importance of production as consumption, covering the full range of approaches from political economy to textual analysis, and written by a star-studded cast of contributors" - Emeritus Professor Graeme Turner, University of Queensland "Finally, we have before us a first rate, and wide ranging volume that reframes television studies afresh, boldly synthesising debates in the humanities, cultural studies and social sciences...This volume should be in every library and media scholar’s bookshelf." - Professor Ravi Sundaram, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies Bringing together a truly international spread of contributors from across the UK, US, South America, Mexico and Australia, this Handbook charts the field of television studies from issues of ownership and regulation through to reception and consumption. Separate chapters are dedicated to examining the roles of journalists, writers, cinematographers, producers and manufacturers in the production process, whilst others explore different formats including sport, novella and soap opera, news and current affairs, music and reality TV. The final section analyses the pivotal role played by audiences in the contexts of gender, race and class, and spans a range of topics from effects studies to audience consumption. The SAGE Handbook of Television Studies is an essential reference work for all advanced undergraduates, graduate students and academics across broadcasting, mass communication and media studies.