Daytime Television Game Shows And The Celebration Of Merchandise

Insights into the nature of the consumer society and its ethos of consumption can often emerge from interpreting even the most lowly specimens of popular culture. In this spirit, a neglected genre that promises to shed light on the culture of consumption appears in the form of the daytime television game shows whose hegemonic message seems to convey and to justify a widespread obeisance to the mandate of materialism. These game shows often present a text that demands a readerly, monosemic, dominant interpretation as an unabashed celebration of merchandise. In particular, a close analysis of the longest running game show - The Price Is Right - suggests that all facets of this program combine to reinforce its central meaning as a ritualistic validation of consumption-oriented greed. An alternative resistant reading is explored but rejected - in part because it rests on an assumption that violates the empirical data and in part because it provides a more convincing analysis of a program like Supermarket Sweep. In short, the present study concludes that TV game shows in general, and The Price Is Right in particular, reflect and reinforce the obsession that many modern consumers feel with merchandise valued almost for its own sake, beyond any need or even capacity to use it, as a kind of disembodied target of misdirected desire.

The Encyclopedia of Television, second edtion is the first major reference work to provide description, history, analysis, and information on more than 1100 subjects related to television in its international context. For a full list of entries, contributors, and more, visit the Encyclo pedia of Television, 2nd edition website.

For nearly two decades, Television: Critical Methods and Applications has served as the foremost guide to television studies. Designed for the television studies course in communication and media studies curricula, Television explains in depth how television programs and commercials are made and how they function as producers of meaning. Author Jeremy G. Butler shows the ways in which camera style, lighting, set design, editing, and sound combine to produce meanings that viewers take away from their television experience. He supplies students with a whole toolbox of implements to disassemble television and read between the lines, teaching them to incorporate critical thinking into their own television viewing. The fourth edition builds upon the pedagogy of previous editions to best accommodate current modes of understanding and teaching television. Highlights of the fourth edition include: New chapter and part organization to reflect the current approach to teaching television—with greatly expanded methods and theories chapters. An entirely new chapter on modes of production and their impact on what you see on the screen. Discussions integrated throughout on the latest developments in television’s on-going convergence with other media, such as material on transmedia storytelling and YouTube’s impact on video distribution. Over three hundred printed illustrations, including new and better quality frame grabs of recent television shows and commercials. A companion website featuring color frame grabs, a glossary, flash cards, and editing and sound exercises for students, as well as PowerPoint presentations, sample syllabi and other materials for instructors. Links to online videos that support examples in the text are also provided. With its distinctive approach to examining television, Television is appropriate for courses in television studies, media criticism, and general critical studies.

Despite its enduring popularity with both broadcasters and audiences, the quiz show has found itself marginalised in studies of popular television. This book offers a unique introduction to the study of the quiz show, while also revisiting, updating and expanding on existing quiz show scholarship. Ranging across programmes such as Double Your Money, The $64,000 Dollar Question, Twenty-One, The Price is Right, Who Wants to be a Millionaire and The Weakest Link to the controversial 'Quiz TV Call' phenomenon, the book explores programmes with a focus on question and answer. Topics covered include the relationship between quiz shows and television genre; the early broadcast history of the quiz show; questions of institutional regulation; quiz show aesthetics; the social significance of 'games'; 'ordinary' people as television performers, and questions of quiz show reception (from interactivity to on-line fandom). Key Features*Represents one of few book-length studies of the quiz show*Offers an accessible introduction to the genre for undergraduate students*Draws upon new archival research in order to contribute to knowledge about the early history of the quiz show*Demonstrates why the quiz show matters to Television Studies*Brings together key approaches in the field with new interventions and areas of study (such as the quiz show in the multi-platform age, and the study of 'ordinary' people as performers).

From The $64,000 Question and Twenty-One to Jeopardy and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, quiz shows have permeated American culture ever since their beginnings in early radio. In Rules of the Game, Olaf Hoerschelmann critically examines the quiz show genre in American culture, drawing on a large body of radio and television programs and on archival materials relating to the broadcast industry, program sponsors, advertising agencies, and individual producers. Hoerschelmann relates quiz shows to the larger social and industrial structures from which they originate and examines the connection of quiz shows to the production of knowledge in American society. He also provides a rethinking of media genre theory, offering a detailed analysis of the text-audience relationships on quiz shows and their significance for the practice of broadcasting.

"To understand the history and spirit of America, one must know its wars, its laws, and its presidents. To really understand it, however, one must also know its cheeseburgers, its love songs, and its lawn ornaments. The long-awaited Guide to the United States Popular Culture provides a single-volume guide to the landscape of everyday life in the United States. Scholars, students, and researchers will find in it a valuable tool with which to fill in the gaps left by traditional history. All American readers will find in it, one entry at a time, the story of their lives."--Robert Thompson, President, Popular Culture Association. "At long last popular culture may indeed be given its due within the humanities with the publication of The Guide to United States Popular Culture. With its nearly 1600 entries, it promises to be the most comprehensive single-volume source of information about popular culture. The range of subjects and diversity of opinions represented will make this an almost indispensable resource for humanities and popular culture scholars and enthusiasts alike."--Timothy E. Scheurer, President, American Culture Association "The popular culture of the United States is as free-wheeling and complex as the society it animates. To understand it, one needs assistance. Now that explanatory road map is provided in this Guide which charts the movements and people involved and provides a light at the end of the rainbow of dreams and expectations."--Marshall W. Fishwick, Past President, Popular Culture Association Features of The Guide to United States Popular Culture: 1,010 pages 1,600 entries 500 contributors Alphabetic entries Entries range from general topics (golf, film) to specific individuals, items, and events Articles are supplemented by bibliographies and cross references Comprehensive index

Although nearly every other television form or genre has undergone a massive critical and popular reassessment or resurgence in the past twenty years, the game show’s reputation has remained both remarkably stagnant and remarkably low. Scholarship on game shows concerns itself primarily with the history and aesthetics of the form, and few works assess the influence the format has had on American society or how the aesthetics and rhythms of contemporary life model themselves on the aesthetics and rhythms of game shows. In Truth and Consequences: Game Shows in Fiction and Film, author Mike Miley seeks to broaden the conversation about game shows by studying how they are represented in fiction and film. Writers and filmmakers find the game show to be the ideal metaphor for life in a media-saturated era, from selfhood to love to family to state power. The book is divided into “rounds,” each chapter looking at different themes that books and movies explore via the game show. By studying over two dozen works of fiction and film—bestsellers, blockbusters, disasters, modern legends, forgotten gems, award winners, self-published curios, and everything in between—Truth and Consequences argues that game shows offer a deeper understanding of modern-day America, a land of high-stakes spectacle where a game-show host can become president of the United States.