Television after TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition (Console-ing Passions) [Paperback]

Jostein Gripsrud (Author), Priscilla Ovalle (Author), Lynn Spigel (Editor), Jan Olsson (Editor), John Thornton Caldwell (Contributor), William Uricchio (Contributor), David Morley (Contributor)

Book Description

Series: Console-ing Passions | Publication Date: November 30, 2004

In the last ten years, television has reinvented itself in numerous ways. The demise of the U.S. three-network system, the rise of multi-channel cable and global satellite delivery, changes in regulation policies and ownership rules, technological innovations in screen design, and the development of digital systems like TiVo have combined to transform the practice we call watching tv. If tv refers to the technologies, program forms, government policies, and practices of looking associated with the medium in its classic public service and three-network age, it appears that we are now entering a new phase of television. Exploring these changes, the essays in this collection consider the future of television in the United States and Europe and the scholarship and activism focused on it.

With historical, critical, and speculative essays by some of the leading television and media scholars, Television after TV examines both commercial and public service traditions and evaluates their dual (and some say merging) fates in our global, digital culture of convergence. The essays explore a broad range of topics, including contemporary programming and advertising strategies, the use of television and the Internet among diasporic and minority populations, the innovations of new technologies like TiVo, the rise of program forms from reality tv to lifestyle programs, television’s changing role in public places and at home, the Internet’s use as a means of social activism, and television’s role in education and the arts. In dialogue with previous media theorists and historians, the contributors collectively rethink the goals of media scholarship, pointing toward new ways of accounting for television’s past, present, and future.

Contributors
William Boddy
Charlotte Brunsdon
John T. Caldwell
Michael Curtin
Julie D’Acci
Anna Everett
Jostein Gripsrud
John Hartley
Anna McCarthy
David Morley
Jan Olsson
Priscilla Peña Ovalle
Lisa Parks
Jeffrey Sconce
Lynn Spigel
William Uricchio

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A terrific collection of essays by the top scholars in the field, Television after TV revitalizes television studies by exploring the interplay between television and new media and between corporate consolidation and new forms of programming. Not willing to rest on old paradigms or theories, the authors propose new analytical frameworks for making sense of television in the age of the Internet and beyond.”—Susan J. Douglas, Catherine Neafie Kellogg Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan and coauthor of The Mommy Myth

“Lynn Spigel and Jan Olsson have assembled a stellar lineup of television scholars whose unique and differentiated approaches to television studies’ future also provide a fascinating overview of where we are and how we got here. These essays will set the terms for how we look at television in the twenty-first century.”—Michele Hilmes, editor of The Television History Book

About the Author

Lynn Spigel is a professor in the Department of Radio/Television/Film at Northwestern University. She is the author of Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs (published by Duke University Press) and Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America.

Jan Olsson is a professor in the Department of Cinema Studies at Stockholm University in Sweden. He is a coeditor of Nordic Explorations: Film Before 1930.

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Duke University Press Books (November 30, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822333937
• ISBN-13: 978-0822333937
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #757,340 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars High-level scholarship, April 17, 2006

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This review is from: Television after TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition (Console-ing Passions) (Paperback)

"Television After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition" by Lynn Spigel and Jan Olsson (Editors) is a scholarly collection of essays about TV culture, technology, industry, and culture. Professionals who have studied these issues in depth offer insightful analysis and criticism, and offer a range of opinions on what the future may hold. Through its consistently high-level scholarship, the book also offers the next generation of media abalysts many outstanding examples to emulate as well as suggestions on how the field of study might remain relevant.

The book is divided into four sections.

Part One is "Industry, Programs and Production Contexts". John Caldwell discusses the post-Fordist media industry's shift to producing branded content and TV's increasingly strategic relationship with the Web. Charlotte Brunsdon surveys Britain's lifestyle programs to find the social good of inclusiveness partly offset by more aggressive displays of consumerism and spectacle. Jeffrey Sconce convincingly argues that TV narratives have grown more sophisticated over time as conjecture, mythology and self-relexivity have conspired to enrich texts that in turn cultivate ever more demanding audiences. William Boddy recounts the history of interactive technologies and suggests that if the past is a guide, new technologies will merely serve to enhance the TV experience but will not revolutionize it. Lisa Parks deflates microcasting as embodied by the Oxygen network as representing a corporate scheme to more efficently market to profitable niche audiences and encourages social progressives to fight for greater TV self-expression.

Part Two is "Technology, Society and Cultural Form". William Uricchio explores how changing technologies have threatened broadcaster's control of programming flow and predicts a general shift from broadcasting to narrowcasting. Anna McCarthy's fascinating field study about TV in public spaces ultimately discovers that viewing practices are defined by capitalism's exploitation of waiting time created by differentials in power relations. Jostein Gripsrud contends that broadcasting will persist because it continues to serve elite interests in distributing cultural values and anticipates that interactive technologies will only marginally effect viewer behaviors. Anna Everett's case study of the Million Woman March touches on issues of technological self-empowerment and the mainstream media's increased reticence to cover significant social issues and events in depth.

Part Three is "Electronic Nations, Then and Now". Michael Curtin discusses the history of media production to show how national broadcasting was crucial to U.S. capitalist development in the post-World War II era but has more recently entered into an era of uneasy international competition and cooperation between East (Hong Kong) and West (Hollywood). David Morley contemplates TV's role in reinforcing the nation state and the manner in which audiences experience dis-placement through media images. Pena Ovalle analyzes the Pocho.com website's satirical treatment of popular media imagery in order to debate issues effecting the Chicano/a community and its struggle for cultural identity.

Part Four is "Television Teachers". Lynn Spigel recalls how MoMA's anxieties with consumer culture, feminity and domesticity doomed its programming attempts in the 1950s that sought to bridge the gap between hibrow art patrons and lowbrow TV audiences. John Hartley reminds us of the important role TV played in sharing differential experiences and struggles (such as the Civil Rights and Feminist movements) and contends that TV today has become a more democratic medium. Julie D'Acci proposes a new cultural studies model that stresses audience discourses and interdisciplinary study as the keys to yielding meaningful insight and analysis.

I highly recommend this sophisticated book to everyone interested in TV studies.