Televisuality

Although the "decline" of network television in the face of cable was a crisis in television history, John Caldwell finds that it spawned new production initiatives to reassert network authority. Caldwell's classic volume, now available as a handsome volume in the Rutgers University Press Classics imprint, calls for desegregation of theory and practice in media scholarship.

Although the "decline" of network television in the face of cable programming was an institutional crisis of television history, John Caldwell's classic volume Televisuality reveals that this decline spawned a flurry of new production initiatives to reassert network authority. Television in the 1980s hyped an extensive array of exhibitionist practices to raise the prime-time marquee above the multi-channel flow. Televisuality demonstrates the cultural logic of stylistic exhibitionism in everything from prestige series (Northern Exposure) and "loss-leader" event-status programming (War and Remembrance) to lower "trash" and "tabloid" forms (Pee-Wee's Playhouse and reality TV). Caldwell shows how "import-auteurs" like Oliver Stone and David Lynch were stylized for prime time as videographics packaged and tamed crisis news coverage. By drawing on production experience and critical and cultural analysis, and by tying technologies to aesthetics and ideology, Televisuality is a powerful call for desegregation of theory and practice in media scholarship and an end to the willful blindness of "high theory."

Although Film Studies has successfully (re)turned attention to matters of style and interpretation, its sibling discipline has left the territory uncharted - until now. The question of how television operates on a stylistic level has been critically underexplored, despite being fundamental to our viewing experience. This significant new work redresses a vital gap in Television Studies by engaging with the stylistic dynamics of TV; exploring the aesthetic properties and values of both the medium and particular types of output (specific programmes); and raising important questions about the way we judge television as both cultural artifact and art form. Television Aesthetics and Style provides a unique and vital intervention in the field, raising key questions about television's artistic properties and possibilities. Through a series of case-studies by internationally renowned scholars, the collection takes a radical step forward in understanding TV's stylistic achievements.

Just how bad is television? Drawing on a range of theoretical sources including Husserl Lacan, Lefebvre, Sartre, Schutz and Adam Smith, this book takes a phenomenological approach to the small screen to offer an original sociological approach to television and its contribution to moral culture of late modern societies.

Reality-based television has come to play a major role in both production decisions and network strategy. This text examines the representation of reality within the televisual viewing frame, as well as the exponential growth of these programmes.

DIVA critical reassessment of television and television studies in the age of new media./div

Media Studies is a comprehensive text for introductory and advanced courses in the growing field of media studies, integrating history with close textual analysis in a concise, readable style. Explores the growing synergies between print and online journalism, and the growth of independent journalism through blogging Discusses the ways advertising is connected to print and screen, economically and from the perspective of the reader Gives students the analytical skills they need in a presentation that is readable without sacrificing complexity Allows students to move within the media they know while increasing comprehension

The late 20th century was a formative phase in the history of digital media culture. The introduction of "new media" was associated with promises for the future that still resonate today. This book brings together contributions that discuss key aspects of the "imaginaries" surrounding new media in this epoch. The focus is on the works of the media artist group Van Gogh-TV, especially the historically very important interactive television project "Piazza virtuale" (1992).