"Five-decade chronicle of television history [covering] ... all daytime programs that aired for three or more weeks on a commercial network between 1947 and 1996, plus 100 nationally syndicated shows from the same period ... . [Includes] cartoons, children's programs, game shows, news shows, soap operas, sports programs, [and] talk shows ... . Provides the dates each show aired, a synosis of its plot, its principal cast members, and other pertinent information"--Back cover.
The popularity of soap operas on radio made them a natural for the new medium of television, where soaps quickly became an audience favorite. As television soap operas developed, so did the level of sophistication in delivery, writing and production. This history of television's "golden age" soaps begins with an overview of earlier serialized entertainments. An analysis of early TV soap stars, personnel and production follows, taking 40 programs into account. Ensuing chapters offer in-depth treatments of the serials Search for Tomorrow, Love of Life, The Guiding Light, The Secret Storm, As the World Turns and The Edge of Night. Appendices include chronological and alphabetical directories of period daytime serials and rankings of the durability of programs, actors and actresses, announcers and sponsors.
This is a major reference work about the overlapping fields of television, cable and video. With both technical and popular appeal, this book covers the following areas: advertising, agencies, associations, companies, unions, broadcasting, cable-casting, engineering, events, general production and programming.
The Encyclopedia of TV Pets is an entertaining and comprehensive journey into the lives of the world's most famous television animal stars. All creatures great and small, from kangaroos, sea lions, simians, and horses to elephants, dogs, lions, cats, and bears are here and pictured in nearly 200 photographs. More than 100 TV series are represented along with the biographies and true-life stories of such memorable animals as Lassie, Mr. Ed, Gentle Ben, Wishbone, Flipper, Trigger, Arnold the Pig, Murray, Morris, Silver, J. Fred Muggs, Spuds McKenzie, Nunzio, Clarence the Cross-eyed Lion and Judy the Chimp, Benji, Morty the Moose, Marcel the Monkey, Salem from Sabrina, Fred the Cockatoo, Flicka, Fury, Lancelot Link, Tramp, Comet, Skippy the Kangaroo, Rin Tin Tin, Cheetah, London, C.J. the Orangutan, Eddie from Frasier, and even the Taco Bell® Chihuahua! The Encyclopedia of TV Pets is an amazing menagerie of facts and tales, many never before told to television fans. Owners, trainers, and the human actors who worked with the animals have told stories in exclusive interviews. What were the animals' real names? What were their favorite treats? Who trained them to do the incredible feats you see on TV? It's all here and more in The Encyclopedia of TV Pets, a book that animal lovers will keep handy alongside their remote control.
The Encyclopedia of Television, second edtion is the first major reference work to provide description, history, analysis, and information on more than 1100 subjects related to television in its international context. For a full list of entries, contributors, and more, visit the Encyclo pedia of Television, 2nd edition website.
Insights into the nature of the consumer society and its ethos of consumption can often emerge from interpreting even the most lowly specimens of popular culture. In this spirit, a neglected genre that promises to shed light on the culture of consumption appears in the form of the daytime television game shows whose hegemonic message seems to convey and to justify a widespread obeisance to the mandate of materialism. These game shows often present a text that demands a readerly, monosemic, dominant interpretation as an unabashed celebration of merchandise. In particular, a close analysis of the longest running game show - The Price Is Right - suggests that all facets of this program combine to reinforce its central meaning as a ritualistic validation of consumption-oriented greed. An alternative resistant reading is explored but rejected - in part because it rests on an assumption that violates the empirical data and in part because it provides a more convincing analysis of a program like Supermarket Sweep. In short, the present study concludes that TV game shows in general, and The Price Is Right in particular, reflect and reinforce the obsession that many modern consumers feel with merchandise valued almost for its own sake, beyond any need or even capacity to use it, as a kind of disembodied target of misdirected desire.
A reporter for the Los Angeles Times once noted that “I Love Lucy is said to be on the air somewhere in the world 24 hours a day.” That Lucy’s madcap antics can be watched anywhere at any time is thanks to television syndication, a booming global marketplace that imports and exports TV shows. Programs from different countries are packaged, bought, and sold all over the world, under the watch of an industry that is extraordinarily lucrative for major studios and production companies. In Global TV, Denise D. Bielb and C. Lee Harrington seek to understand the machinery of this marketplace, its origins and history, its inner workings, and its product management. In so doing, they are led to explore the cultural significance of this global trade, and to ask how it is so remarkably successful despite the inherent cultural differences between shows and local audiences. How do culture-specific genres like American soap operas and Latin telenovelas so easily cross borders and adapt to new cultural surroundings? Why is The Nanny, whose gum-chewing star is from Queens, New York, a smash in Italy? Importantly, Bielby and Harrington also ask which kinds of shows fail. What is lost in translation? Considering such factors as censorship and other such state-specific policies, what are the inevitable constraints of crossing over? Highly experienced in the field, Bielby and Harrington provide a unique and richly textured look at global television through a cultural lens, one that has an undeniable and complex effect on what shows succeed and which do not on an international scale.
The period from 1925 to 1960 was the heyday of the American Radio Soap Opera. In addition to being part of popular culture, the soap opera had important commercial aspects as well that were not only related to their production, but also to the desperate need to sell products or perish. Both sides of this story are traced in this comprehensive compendium. The dictionary section, made up of more than 500 cross-referenced entries, provides brief vignettes of the more popular and also less well-known 'soaps,' among them Back Stage Wife, Our Gal Sunday, Pepper Young's Family and The Guiding Light. Other entries evoke those who brought these programs to life: the actors, announcers, scriptwriters, networks, and even the sponsors. Nor are the basic themes, the stock characters and the gimmick, forgotten. The book's introduction defines the soap opera, examines the span of the radio serial, reviews its origins and its demise, and focuses on the character types that made up its denizens. The chronology outlines the period and the bibliography offers further reading. Together, these elements make a comprehensive reference work that researchers will find invaluable long into the future.
Do you remember the 1959 game show where ABC cancelled a tape featuring a female impersonator (Across the Board)? Ever heard of Snip, the 1976 sitcom starring David Brenner that NBC canned just before it debuted? Almost everyone who has worked on a successful television series has also been on one that flopped. Even during the first thirty years of broadcasting, when NBC, CBS, and ABC were the only networks and not quite so quick to cancel unsuccessful programs, hundreds of shows lasted less than one year. This work tells the stories of those ill-fated series that were cancelled within one year after their premieres. The entries are arranged chronologically from the 1948-1949 through the 1977-1978 seasons, and provide brief descriptions of the shows along with such facts as the type of program each series was; its times, dates, and network; its competition on other networks; and the names of the cast, producer, director and writer. The book also includes information from more than 100 interviews with actors, writers, directors, and producers who worked on the short-lived television series.
