The Triumph of Reality TV
The Triumph of Reality TV

Author: Leigh H. Edwards

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2013-01-09

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13:

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This book provides an up-to-date account of how reality TV has developed, why it has become the most popular genre on television today, and how the explosion in reality TV signals new developments in American media culture. The reasons behind reality TV's continued popularity go beyond the sensationalism and low production cost of these programs: there is much more to the genre's continued success than just escapism or "guilty pleasure" TV. The Triumph of Reality TV: The Revolution in American Television identifies and explores five key media trends reality TV has used to continually draw in viewers and ensure success. These media trends include innovations in storytelling, making emotional appeals to viewers, and applying content from television to other media such as films, music albums, webisodes, online games, and smart phone apps. Author Leigh H. Edwards also analyzes how reality TV shows target themes of social conflict, such as changing ideas of the American family, and address common anxieties and tensions in American society such as gender, race, class, and economic struggle. A wide variety of reality shows—including American Idol, Celebrity Rehab, Jackass, Run's House, Survivor, and The Hills—are profiled. An appealing read for students, scholars, and general readers alike, this book provides fascinating insights into the complexities of a seemingly simplistic form of mass entertainment.

The Triumph of Reality TV
The Triumph of Reality TV

Author: Leigh H. Edwards

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2013-01-09

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 0313399026

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This book provides an up-to-date account of how reality TV has developed, why it has become the most popular genre on television today, and how the explosion in reality TV signals new developments in American media culture. The reasons behind reality TV's continued popularity go beyond the sensationalism and low production cost of these programs: there is much more to the genre's continued success than just escapism or "guilty pleasure" TV. The Triumph of Reality TV: The Revolution in American Television identifies and explores five key media trends reality TV has used to continually draw in viewers and ensure success. These media trends include innovations in storytelling, making emotional appeals to viewers, and applying content from television to other media such as films, music albums, webisodes, online games, and smart phone apps. Author Leigh H. Edwards also analyzes how reality TV shows target themes of social conflict, such as changing ideas of the American family, and address common anxieties and tensions in American society such as gender, race, class, and economic struggle. A wide variety of reality shows—including American Idol, Celebrity Rehab, Jackass, Run's House, Survivor, and The Hills—are profiled. An appealing read for students, scholars, and general readers alike, this book provides fascinating insights into the complexities of a seemingly simplistic form of mass entertainment.

Reality Show
Reality Show

Author: Howard Kurtz

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2007-10-09

Total Pages: 482

ISBN-13: 1416580611

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Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings: They were on a first-name basis with the country for a generation, leading viewers through moments of triumph and tragedy. But now that a new generation has succeeded them, the once-glittering job of network anchor seems unmistakably tarnished. In an age of instantaneous Internet news, cable echo chambers and iPod downloads, who really needs the evening news? And, by extension, who needs Katie Couric, Brian Williams, and Charlie Gibson? But the anchors still have a megaphone capable of cutting through the media static. Their coverage of Iraq helped turn the country against that bloody war, and they are now playing a leading role in chronicling the collapse of George Bush's presidency and the 2008 race to succeed him. Yet, even as the anchors fight for ratings supremacy, the mega-corporations they work for have handed them a bigger challenge: saving an American institution. In this freewheeling, intimate account of life atop the media pyramid, award-winning bestselling author Howard Kurtz takes us inside the newsrooms and executive suites of CBS, NBC, and ABC, capturing the deadline judgments, image-making, jealousies, and gossip of this high-pressure business. Whether it is Couric trying to regain her morning magic while coping with tabloid stories about her boyfriends, Williams reporting from New Orleans and Baghdad while worrying about his ailing father, or Gibson weighing whether to follow his wife into retirement while grappling with having to report the explicit details of sex scandals, Kurtz brings to life the daily battles that define their lives. The narrative reflects an extraordinary degree of access to such corporate chieftains as Jeff Zucker and Les Moonves, star correspondents, and the anchors themselves. Their goal: create an on-screen persona that people will tune in to and trust. Yet they are faced with a graying, shrinking audience as younger viewers flock to Jon Stewart, whose influence on the real newscasts is palpable. Here is the untold story of what these journalistic celebrities think of their bosses, cable competitors, bloggers, and each other.

The Bizarre World of Reality Television
The Bizarre World of Reality Television

Author: Stuart Lenig

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2017-10-12

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13:

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How do reality television programs shape our view of the world and what we perceive as real and normal? This book explores the bizarre and highly controversial world of reality television, including its early history, wide variety of subject matter, and social implications. In recent decades, reality television shows ranging from Keeping up with the Kardashians to Duck Dynasty have become increasingly popular. Why are these "unscripted" programs irresistible to millions of viewers? And what does the nearly universal success of reality shows say about American culture? This book covers more than 100 major and influential reality programs past and present, discussing the origins and past of reality programming, the contemporary social and economic conditions that led to the rise of reality shows, and the ways in which the most successful shows achieve popularity with both male and female demographics or appeal to specific, targeted niche audiences. The text addresses reality TV within five, easy-to-identify content categories: competition shows, relationship/love-interest shows, real people or alternative lifestyle and culture shows, transformation shows, and international programming. By examining modern reality television, a topic of great interest for a wide variety of readers, this book also discusses cultural and social norms in the United States, including materialism, unrealistic beauty ideals, gender roles and stereotypes in society, dynamics of personal relationships, teenage lifestyles and issues, and the branding of people for financial gain and wider viewership.

Reality TV
Reality TV

Author: Jon Kraszewski

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2017-02-24

Total Pages: 205

ISBN-13: 1317806042

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From early first-wave programs such as Candid Camera, An American Family, and The Real World to the shows on our television screens and portable devices today, reality television consistently takes us to cities—such as New York, Los Angeles, and Boston—to imagine the place of urbanity in American culture and society. Jon Kraszewski offers the first extended account of this phenomenon, as he makes the politics of urban space the center of his history and theory of reality television. Kraszewski situates reality television in a larger economic transformation that started in the 1980s when America went from an industrial economy, when cities were home to all classes, to its post-industrial economy as cities became key points in a web of global financing, expelling all economic classes except the elite and the poor. Reality television in the industrial era reworked social relationships based on class, race, and gender for liberatory purposes, which resulted in an egalitarian ethos in the genre. However, reality television of the post-industrial era attempts to convince viewers that cities still serve their interests, even though most viewers find city life today economically untenable. Each chapter uses a key theoretical concept from spatial theory—such as power geometries, diasporic nostalgia, orientalism, the imagination of social expulsions, and the relationship between the country and the city—to illuminate the way reality television engages this larger transformation of urban space in America.

Reality TV
Reality TV

Author: June Deery

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2015-02-11

Total Pages: 167

ISBN-13: 0745690424

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Reality TV has changed television and changed reality, even if we are not among the millions who watch. Written for a broad audience, this accessible overview addresses questions such as: How real is reality TV? How do its programs represent gender, sex, class, and race? How does reality TV relate to politics, to consumer society, to surveillance? What kind of ethics are on display? Drawing on current media research and the author’s own analysis, this study encompasses the history and evolution of reality television, its production of reflexive selves and ordinary celebrity, its advertising and commercialization, and its spearheading of new relations between television and social media. To dismiss this programming as trivial is easy. Deery demonstrates that reality television merits serious attention and her incisive analysis will interest students in media studies, cultural studies, politics, sociology, and anyone who is simply curious about this global phenomenon.

Real Sister
Real Sister

Author: Jervette R. Ward

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2015-11-02

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 0813575087

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From The Real Housewives of Atlanta to Flavor of Love, reality shows with predominantly black casts have often been criticized for their negative representation of African American women as loud, angry, and violent. Yet even as these programs appear to be rehashing old stereotypes of black women, the critiques of them are arguably problematic in their own way, as the notion of “respectability” has historically been used to police black women’s behaviors. The first book of scholarship devoted to the issue of how black women are depicted on reality television, Real Sister offers an even-handed consideration of the genre. The book’s ten contributors—black female scholars from a variety of disciplines—provide a wide range of perspectives, while considering everything from Basketball Wives to Say Yes to the Dress. As regular viewers of reality television, these scholars are able to note ways in which the genre presents positive images of black womanhood, even as they catalog a litany of stereotypes about race, class, and gender that it tends to reinforce. Rather than simply dismissing reality television as “trash,” this collection takes the genre seriously, as an important touchstone in ongoing cultural debates about what constitutes “trashiness” and “respectability.” Written in an accessible style that will appeal to reality TV fans both inside and outside of academia, Real Sister thus seeks to inspire a more nuanced, thoughtful conversation about the genre’s representations and their effects on the black community.

Trouble & Triumph
Trouble & Triumph

Author: Tip "T.I." Harris

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2012-09-18

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 0062067702

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Grammy Award-winning hip-hop artist, producer, and actor T.I. proved himself a powerful storyteller as well with the publication of his debut novel Power & Beauty. Now he follows up with his second riveting street-lit epic, Trouble & Triumph. T.I.’s explosive sequel picks up the story of Paul “Power” Clay and Tanya “Beauty” Long, as Power takes over his mentor-turned-arch-enemy’s street empire, looking to turn it legit, while Beauty rises ever-higher in a glamorous world of fashion and celebrity. An authentic voice of the street, in the vein of Sistah Souljah and other successful authors of contemporary African-American commercial fiction, T.I. is a rap music legend who has lived at every strata of society, and whose hard life experience adds truth and fire to Trouble & Triumph.

Real People and the Rise of Reality Television
Real People and the Rise of Reality Television

Author: Michael McKenna

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2015-06-25

Total Pages: 275

ISBN-13: 1442250542

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The origins of, and in many ways the prototype for, modern reality programming can be traced to Real People, a show that premiered on the NBC network in April of 1979. An instant ratings success, Real People appealed to an audience that clamored for stories about “everyday” men and women. However, many of the vignettes focused on individuals who were far from average—eccentric collectors, allegedly talented performers, and inspirational overachievers—many of whom could be called quirky, if not just plain weird. In the wake of the show’s success, a rash of imitators followed. What had started out as a counter-programming gamble became the norm, and now the television airwaves are littered with reality shows. In Real People and the Rise of Reality Television, Michael McKenna looks at the show that started a trend in television viewing, one that now permeates not only the major networks but almost all of cable channels as well. McKenna traces the history of reality programming back to the early days of television up to the late 1970s when networks were beginning to take a chance on non-scripted prime time shows. The author provides an in-depth look at how Real People evolved from profiles of peculiar characters to an almost weekly display of hyper-patriotism, largely fueled by a desperate desire to recover from the disappointments of the 1970s. McKenna also charts the rise of shows that aimed to duplicate Real People’s success: That’s Incredible!, The People’s Court, COPS, America’s Funniest Home Videos, and MTV’s The Real World. Though Real People was cancelled in 1984, reality-themed programming flourished and this look at the show’s history makes for a fascinating read. Fans of nonfiction programs owe a debt to the show that started it all, and Real People and the Rise of Reality Television provides readers with insights into how and why one show changed the cultural landscape forever.

The Naughty Nineties
The Naughty Nineties

Author: David Friend

Publisher: Twelve

Published: 2017-09-12

Total Pages: 1074

ISBN-13: 1455567558

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A sexual history of the 1990s when the Baby Boomers took over Washington, Hollywood, and Madison Avenue. A definitive look at the captains of the culture wars -- and an indispensable road map for understanding how we got to the Trump Teens. The Naughty Nineties: The Triumph of the American Libido examines the scandal-strafed decade when our public and private lives began to blur due to the rise of the web, reality television, and the wholesale tabloidization of pop culture. In this comprehensive and often hilarious time capsule, David Friend combines detailed reporting with first-person accounts from many of the decade's singular personalities, from Anita Hill to Monica Lewinsky, Lorena Bobbitt to Heidi Fleiss, Alan Cumming to Joan Rivers, Jesse Jackson to key members of the Clinton, Dole, and Bush teams. The Naughty Nineties also uncovers unsung sexual pioneers, from the enterprising sisters who dreamed up the Brazilian bikini wax to the scientists who, quite by accident, discovered Viagra.