Ordinary Television

`Most cultural analysis focuses on the spectacular and the unusual. Frances Bonner has done us a great service by insisting on - and demonstrating - the importance of everyday TV. Ordinary Television breaks genuinely new ground′ - Toby Miller, New York University In this book, Frances Bonner provides a distinctive angle on a key area of research and teaching across media and cultural studies - the content of television and the relations between television genres and audiences. Hitherto most books on television have focused on drama, or news and current affairs. In other words, they tend to ignore ′ordinary′ television - lifestyle programmes and ′reality TV′, just the sort of programmes which increasing dominate the schedules. In Ordinary Television, Frances Bonner makes a distinctive argument for regarding these disparate shows as a whole. By examining a substantial range of these programmes, Frances Bonner uncovers their shared characteristics, especially through a consideration of the dominant and disguised discources which pervade them. In addition, the comparative nature of her study enables the author to launch a powerful critique of conventional theories in relation to the globalization of television. This book will be invaluable reading for anyone interested in television and the media in general.

'Ordinary Lifestyles' contains a collection of new essays that explore how various media texts bring ideas about taste and fashion to consumers, helping audiences to fashion their lifestyles as well as defining what constitutes an appropriate lifestyle for particular social formations.

This book explores the new theoretical and political questions raised by food TV’s digital transformation. Bringing together analyses of food media texts and platform infrastructures—from streaming and catch-up TV to YouTube and Facebook food videos—it shows how new textual conventions, algorithmic practices, and market logics have redrawn the boundaries of food TV and altered the cultural place of food, and food media, in a digital era. With case studies of new and rerun television and emerging online genres, Digital Food TV considers what food television means at the current moment—a time when on-screen digital content is rapidly proliferating and televisual platforms and technologies are undergoing significant change. This book will appeal to students and scholars of food studies, television studies, and digital media studies.

The Language of Journalism aims to provide an accessible, wide-ranging introductory textbook for a range of students. The book explores the significance of a range of linguistic practices occurring in journalism, demonstrating and facilitating the use of analysis in aiding professional journalistic and media practice. The book introduces the differences in language conventions that develop across media platforms. It covers all the key journalistic mediums available today, including sport, online and citizen journalism alongside the more standard chapters on magazine, newspaper and broadcast journalism. Clearly written and structured, this will be a key text for journalism students.

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).

An in-depth look at the role of media in the struggle for transgender inclusion From television shows like Orange is the New Black and Transparent, to the real-life struggles of Caitlyn Jenner splashed across the headlines, transgender visibility is on the rise. But what was it like to live as a transgender person in a media environment before this transgender boom in television? While pop culture imaginations of transgender identity flourish and shape audience’s perceptions of trans identities, what does this new media visibility mean for transgender individuals themselves? Struggling for Ordinary engagingly answers these questions, offering a snapshot of how transgender individuals made their way toward a sense of ordinary life by integrating available media into their everyday experiences. Drawing on in-depth interviews with transgender communities, Andre Cavalcante offers a richly detailed account of how the media impacts the lives and experiences of transgender individuals. He grippingly looks at the emotional toll that media takes on this population along with their resilience in the face of disempowerment. Deeply rooted in the life stories of transgender people, the book uses everyday circumstances to show how media and technology operate as a medium through which transgender individuals are able to cultivate an understanding of their identities, build inhabitable worlds, and achieve the routine affordances of everyday life from which they are often excluded. Expertly researched and eloquently argued, Struggling for Ordinary sheds a fascinating new light of the everyday struggles of individuals and communities, to seek a life in which transgender identity is fully integrated into the ordinary.