Television Performance

This innovative and timely collection offers a wide-reaching critical evaluation of performance in television, mapping out key conventions, practices and concerns while introducing performance theory and criticism to the established field of television studies. Chapters from leading scholars move through a range of examples from different styles and genres, from Game of Thrones to America's Next Top Model. Individual performances are analysed in close detail as the authors debate central questions of meaning, value and achievement. Opening out new pathways for inquiry and investigation, this book is an important touchstone for undergraduate and postgraduate students of television, media and theatre studies with an interest in the work of actors and non-actors on screen.

Since the first series of Pop Idol aired in the UK just over a decade ago, Idols television shows have been broadcast in more than forty countries all over the world. In all those countries the global Idols format has been adapted to local cultures and production contexts, resulting in a plethora of different versions, ranging from the Dutch Idols to the Pan-Arab Super Star and from Nigerian Idol to the international blockbuster American Idol. Despite its worldwide success and widespread journalistic coverage, the Idols phenomenon has received only limited academic attention. Adapting Idols: Authenticity, Identity and Performance in a Global Television Format brings together original studies from scholars in different parts of the world to identify and evaluate the productive dimensions of Idols. As one of the world's most successful television formats, Idols offers a unique case for the study of cultural globalization. Chapters discuss how Idols shows address particular national or regional identity politics and how Idols is consumed by audiences in different territories. This book illustrates that even though the same television format is used in countries all over the globe, practices of adaptation can still result in the creation of unique local cultural products.

The documentation of practice is one of the principle concerns of performance studies. Focusing on contemporary performance practice and with emphasis on the transformative impact of video, photography and writing, this book explores the ideological, practical, and representational implications of knowing performance through its documentations.

As reality television extends into the experiences of the everyday, it makes dramatic and often shocking the mundane aspects of our intimate relations. This book addresses the impact of this endless opening out of intimacy as an entertainment trend that erodes the traditional boundaries between spectator and performer.

ePortfolio Performance Support Systems: Constructing, Presenting, and Assessing Portfolios addresses theories and practices advanced by some of the most innovative and active proponents of ePortfolios.

The "talk show" has become a ubiquitous feature of American and European television. The various examples have been frequently discussed by academic commentators, as well as journalists in an attempt to place them in a cultural setting. Ultimately, the conclusion is reached by both academics and non-academics that talk shows matter because they are a focus for considerable public debate and are crucial to the landscape of popular television. All the variations of talk shows, from chat shows to celebrity interviews, have key elements in common: They all feature groups of guests, not individual interviewees, and they all involve audience participation. The studio audience is not only visible, but is given the opportunity to comment and intervene. Other books have applied academic analysis to the phenomenon of these shows, but this is the first to analyze the actual "talk" of the talk shows, and in that sense it is closer to discourse analysis than to other forms of analysis. This book provides a systematic empirical study of the broadcast talk in talk shows and maps out the range of formats that appear in the major American and British television shows. The contributors are members of an international network of researchers interested in the study of broadcast talk.