Television & New Media recent issues

Three Dimensionality: Taxonomy of Iconic, Linguistic, and Audio Messages in Television News

Wojcieszak, M. E. — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:01:18 PDT

Visual critics interested in news primarily analyze still photographs in print media. Thus, the questions of how images in television news are contextualized, complemented, displaced, explained, or contradicted by the auditory channel and linguistic messages on the screen have not been studied extensively. Based on an exploratory content analysis of CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina, the author categorizes the interplay between the three modes of information transmission in the broadcast news: moving footage (iconic messages), on-screen textual elements (linguistic messages), and voiceover (audio messages). The analysis identifies six organizing categories: (1) polysemy reduction, (2) meaning attainment through audio, (3) reinforcement, (4) contextualization and acquiring meaning, (5) contradiction, and (6) slogano-symbolism. These categories provide an interpretative framework for visual analyses of television news and offer new directions for research.

Paying for Fewer Imports: The BBC License Fee 1975--1981 and Attitudes toward American Imports

Weissmann, E. — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:01:18 PDT

This article investigates the impact of the BBC license fee negotiations between 1975 and 1981 on the relationship between the broadcaster and American programming. It highlights the increasing dependence of the BBC on imported programming and on the export of content to America due to a series of below-inflation increases that left the BBC financially weakened. The article’s main concern, however, is with the management of attitudes toward American television that were exploited by key executive personnel in the United Kingdom for political ends: the campaign for a higher license fee. The author argues that the successive campaigns during the late 1970s exploited fears of Americanization to emphasize the lowering of quality in the output on the BBC, which connected to debates around public service ideals and hence, to the legitimization of the license fee. The campaigns ultimately also affected public attitudes, which increasingly registered American programming in relation to the lowering of standards on the BBC.

Block Booking Migrates to Television: The Rise and Fall of the International Output Deal

Torre, P. J. — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:01:18 PDT

This article examines the recent Hollywood studio practice of distributing international television programming via a bundling strategy, labeled an output deal, and situates the practice as a further iteration of the early Hollywood system of "block booking" feature films. Using Germany as a case study, the authors looks at how Hollywood compelled German distributors and broadcasters to take on large packages of television programming that combined highly desirable blockbuster motion pictures with far less valuable television series. Just as the original practice of block booking exerted financial pressure on theater owners, the burdensome practice of television programming output deals led to a major upheaval in Germany’s entertainment industry, driving the second largest German media company into bankruptcy. The international television output deal persists, however, because transnational media regulations cannot hope to marshal the enforcement powers of the U.S. Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Supreme Court. Market forces within the global entertainment industry have done little to curtail the expansion of global media conglomerates. And yet, even as global power dynamics remain essentially the same, with Hollywood retaining its primary position, this case study points to rising instabilities that threaten an American-dominated international media economy.

What Does Race Have to Do with Ugly Betty?: An Analysis of Privilege and Postracial(?) Representations on a Television Sitcom

Esposito, J. — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:01:18 PDT

This article examines ABC’s television comedy Ugly Betty, in particular one episode that explores race-based affirmative action decisions and quotas, to argue that race and racial categories are ever more present in our society and that they need to be. Asserting how and in what ways race "matters" is important in a social and political climate that often suggests race dare not speak its name. Circulating within sociology and education discourse is the notion of a "color-blind society" (meaning that we no longer see color or that the color of one’s skin will not determine his or her life chances). This idea has been has been recently redefined by the media as "postracial" (meaning that we have moved beyond race and that race no longer structures our thinking or our actions). Either discourse silences talk of racial privilege and disadvantage. As a discursive racial project, the Ugly Betty text helps reify notions of race and difference.

Internet Protocol TV in Perspective: A Matrix of Continuity and Innovation

Kim, P. — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:01:18 PDT

The telecommunications firms have continually attempted to introduce a new intelligent television system for the past thirty-plus years by making the best use of ever-developing information and communication technologies, changes in media consumption patterns, collapse of regulatory barriers, and so on. Internet protocol TV (IPTV) is the most recent version of such corporate attempts. This article contextualizes IPTV in terms of its history, identity, and challenges. Despite the rhetoric of newness, IPTV is a replica of the interactive TV of the past, which has a turbulent genealogy of its own. Even with the interactive services based upon advanced IP technology, it is not structurally different from conventional television as the medium is organized following the TV model. In addition to competition, a contradiction between the open internet and walled-garden IPTV will pose critical challenges to the medium. However, IPTV is still evolving, and its future is not yet fully determined.

"Making It Our Own": BBC Newsround Professionals and Their Efforts to Build a News Agenda for the Young

Matthews, J. — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:01:18 PDT

This article, based on an observational study of the BBC children’s news program Newsround (UK), discusses how news professionals’ particularized news culture shapes the production of the specialized news agenda. Studying the agenda-building process with this concern reveals how an understanding of their target audience plays an important role within the news-making process. This informs professionals’ collective understanding of an "ideal" Newsround story that is used within production to select and shape a simplified and personalized news agenda for children. The impact of this process on children’s "cultural rights" as would-be citizens as well as the importance of the news form and its inscribed audience for an understanding of agenda building is then addressed within the article’s conclusion.

Illusive Pluralism and Hegemonic Identity in Popular Reality Shows in Israel

Elias, N., Jamal, A., Soker, O. — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:57:20 PDT

The present study aims to examine the pluralistic potential of reality shows, which might allow minorities to shape the program's script and to gain recognition for their particularistic identities. For this purpose, two prime-time reality shows were chosen— The Ambassador and Seeking a Leader—broadcast in Israel in 2005. The analysis of the programs included identification and deconstruction of their metanarratives and exposure of several mechanisms of stigmatization and othering used against minorities. In addition, the authors analyzed the tactics utilized by minorities to maneuver the script and steps taken by the majority to maintain its cultural dominance. The research reveals that the ostensibly pluralistic nature of reality shows is limited a priori by the hegemonic forces. Although the hegemonic discourse in reality shows is highly sophisticated and disguised, the sense of equality and pluralism that these programs inspire constitutes an even more powerful mechanism of exclusion and cultural domination.

Performing Black Power in the "Cradle of Liberty": Say Brother Envisions New Principles of Blackness in Boston

Heitner, D. — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:57:20 PDT

This article examines the early history of Boston's black public affairs television program Say Brother from 1968—1970. This history shows that as a local broadcast, WGBH's Say Brother could take a more outspoken position than a national program, such as Black Journal, could have taken. The article explores the radical pedagogy offered by Say Brother, which attempted to impart "new principles of Blackness" to its viewers using multiple genres. Through an analysis of the archived program and interviews with former staff members, the article demonstrates how Say Brother's youthful creators took advantage of establishment fears about black uprisings to create an openly critical television show that examined black discontent, showcased black viewpoints and black artists and overcame a cancellation attempt by rallying community response.

U.K. Television News: Monopoly Politics and Cynical Populism

Wayne, M., Murray, C. — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:57:20 PDT

This essay provides a statistical and qualitative analysis of the hierarchical coverage of politics by UK Television news. It finds that there is a rigidly structured hierarchy of political access and focus, whereby the Prime Minister dominates over the cabinet, the cabinet dominates over ordinary MPs, the governing party dominates over the opposition, the three main parties dominate overwhelmingly over smaller parties, and the political elites dominate over ordinary members of the public. The paper also provides a framing analysis of TV news both during and after an election campaign period, and finds a skew towards `horse race' and personalization coverage which both outweigh `policy' issues. Thus television news is characterised by a hybrid of hierarchical and exclusive coverage of politics, combined with a narrowly expressed `cynicism' or populist antagonism towards politics that is personalized and anti-systemic in its focus.

Liberating Bicentennial America: Imagining the Nation through TV Superwomen of the Seventies

Clark, J. S. — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:57:20 PDT

With popular 1970s television programs Wonder Woman (ABC 1975—1976, CBS 1977—1979) and Isis (CBS 1975—1977) as its primary focus, this article explores the ways that network television utilized images of liberated women to revise its aesthetics, ensure audience capture, and produce fictions about American cultural coherence and political superiority. These television programs expressed fantasies of a viable American society during the mid- to late 1970s, a time of uncertainty and flux in American cultural coherence and global political might. Both fantasy superheroine series illustrate the ways representations of America's "progressive" gender politics worked to the economic advantage of TV networks, formulated reassuring messages about the state of the nation, helped manage America's less progressive attitudes about race and other nations, and justified America's imperialist impulses.

As Easy as Pie: Cooking Shows, Domestic Efficiency, and Postfeminist Temporality

Nathanson, E. — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:26:53 PDT

This article examines how the media define women's experience of time in the postfeminist context through analysis of the popular Food Network program 30 Minute Meals. In a context in which women attempt to "have it all," the media expose anxieties about and offer solutions for how women should balance home and work demands. Contemporary representations of domesticity on television present the home as radically affected by the temporal logic of the working world. By interrogating 30 Minute Meals's real-time narrative structure alongside the marketing strategies of stores like Crate and Barrel, this article argues that postfeminist media propose contradictory remedies to the contemporary "time crunch" in the form of rational and efficient time management and nostalgia for an imagined past in which women had endless amounts of time. Studying how the media represent women's time is crucial to understanding definitions of femininity and women's labor and leisure in the postfeminist context.

Convergent Ethnicity and the Neo-platoon Show: Recombining Difference in the Postnetwork Era

Brook, V. — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:26:53 PDT

Corresponding to and partially driven by economic and technological convergence in the postnetwork era, American television programming in the past decade has produced a form of ethno-racial convergence in an array of prominent dramatic series such as Boston Public, Lost, Heroes, Grey's Anatomy, and Ugly Betty. Featuring multiracial and multigendered casts, prime-time soap narrative structures, and, most significant, interracial romance, these popular shows are clearly responding to global economic forces, sociocultural changes, and media monitoring pressures. They also have antecedents in the platoon films of World War II and the platoon sitcoms of the 1970s, extending their forebears' capitalist realist tendencies to the point of capitalist surrealism. Offering personal and industrial solutions to the postmodern dissolution of identity and the breakdown in network hegemony, the "neo-platoon" shows present a multicultural and transnational universe in which not only everything is interconnected but also interconnectedness provides the key to salvation.

From Broadcast Scarcity to Digital Plenitude: The Changing Dynamics of the Media Sport Content Economy

Hutchins, B., Rowe, D. — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:26:53 PDT

This essay traces and analyzes emerging zones of conflict as the transmission of popular sport content shifts from the historically dominant platform of broadcast television to the online environment of the Internet and World Wide Web (WWW). These conflicts are many and marked, underpinned by a shift in the media sport content economy in terms of the production, distribution and consumption of content. This economy is conceptualized as moving from a long-established broadcast model characterized by `scarcity', with high barriers of access and cost restricting the number of media companies and sports organizations able to create, control and distribute quality, popular sport content. In comparison, the emerging online model is defined by `digital plenitude', with the Internet and WWW significantly lowering barriers of access and cost and thus increasing the number of media companies, sports organizations, clubs, and even individual athletes able to produce and distribute content for online consumption.

"A Fan Crashing the Party": Exploring Reality-celebrity in MTV's Real World Franchise

Curnutt, H. — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:49:30 PDT

Reality TV's (re)emergence at the turn of the century necessitates a reconsideration of what it means to work in television as on-camera talent. Through a study of reality actor Susie Meister, the author examines a new kind of television-based celebrity created in the wake of the longest-running U.S. reality series, The Real World (1992—). This form of celebrity, which I call "reality-celebrity," diverges from other modes of televisual fame by encoding its participants as off-camera texts cast to perform their "ordinariness" within the confines of a reality persona. Different from other types of television personalities (e.g., talk show hosts, news anchors), MTV's reality-celebrities must continually act as if they are off camera. The "behindthe-scenes" quality of Meister's fame is explored to trace some of the ways in which MTV's construction of celebrity challenges past notions of televisual fame. Ultimately, this article considers the implications of reality TV's blurring of the distinction between participant and performer.

At the Golden Globes

Grantham, B. — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:49:30 PDT

Puppets, Slaves, and Sex Changes: Mr. Garrison and South Park's Performative Sexuality

Gournelos, T. — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:49:30 PDT

Disconnected neither from close textual analysis nor socially engaged theory, this article shows how what can be called "responsive" levels of political discourse are mobilized to react and propose alternatives to dominant ideology. Through an analysis of a character's changing sexuality in the television show South Park, it demonstrates how cultural texts can act discursively within the wider framework of contemporary politics. Over the course of eleven seasons, Mr. Garrison has functioned specifically to address and attack rhetoric surrounding queer identity, (hyper)masculinity, femininity, and heteronormative sexual identity. Engaging with contemporary queer theory, the essay attempts to formulate an understanding of identity based not in "difference," "tolerance," or "resistance" but as an assemblage of discourses and representations that are both reactions to and attempted critiques of dominant (binary) positions on sexuality that point us toward new, socially responsive locations and locutions within which one can conceive and interact with cultural politics.

Dialogic Absurdity: TV News Parody as a Critique of Genre

Druick, Z. — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:49:30 PDT

This article examines the popular phenomenon of news parodies using the concept of genre. While genre is often used as a category of industrial production and marketing, the author argues that Mikhail Bakhtin's notion of genre as a socially embedded aesthetic form allows us to understand the proliferation of news parodies as a commentary on the social authority of the news. Comparing examples from Canada, the UK, and the United States, the article argues that the political significance of intertextual social communication resides in the doubleness of texts that ask an audience to recognize the problems of official forms of culture while simultaneously possibly reinscribing their dominance. The article offers a comparison of shows that merely parody the news with those that actually satirize politics, and ends with a discussion of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report and their particular significance as daily news parodies.