Ulteriori informazioni
From a few national broadcasters to hundreds of digital channels and from a box in the living room to screens of every size, everywhere, television looks and feels very different now. Today television programming must "translate" to different nations, cultures, broadcast systems; different formats, distribution outlets, and screen sizes, while simultaneously attracting and sustaining audience interest over the time it takes to travel through these spaces. Blending institutional and textual analyses,
Television in Transition examines the return to action narratives with individual (super) heroes intended to navigate this new, international, multi-channel universe. Case studies of
Highlander: The Series, Smallville,
24, and
Doctor Who call up new questions of political, economic and cultural citizenship, crossing borders, splitting affinities, and pushing boundaries through reinterpretations of long-time televisual representational themes (white masculinity, heroism, nation, genre, etc.) within this era of transformation and perceived industry crisis.
Television in Transition examines the narrative and institutional paradigms of textual afterlife to offer a highly original explanation of how innovation takes place within the television industry's management of predictability, risk, and familiarity.
Sommario
Acknowledgments. Introduction: The Time and Space of Television in Transition.
1 Television in Transition.
2 The Hero.
3 How to Watch Television.
4 Highlander: The Immortal Cosmopolitan.
5 Smallville: "No Flights, No Tights": Doing Business with Superman.
6 24: In Real Time.
7 Doctor Who: Regeneration through Time and (Relative Dimensions in) Space.
Conclusion: Do We Need Another Hero?
Notes.
References.
Index.
Info autore
Shawn Shimpach is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His research has appeared in the online scholarly fourm FLOW, as well as in many journals, including
Social Semiotics and
Cultural Studies and in the collectin
Media and Public Sphere.
Riassunto
Combining an exciting methodology alongside high-interest casestudies, Television in Transition offers studentsof television a guide to a medium that has weathered the challengesof first-run syndication, a multi-channel universe, netlets, majormedia conglomerates, deregulation, and globalization--all in thespace of twenty years.
