Table of Contents

Introduction
Authorship Case Study: Hugh Wilson
Television Authors: The Case of Hugh Wilson by Richard Campbell and Jimmie L. Reeves
Interpreting Television: A Closer Look at the Cinematic Codes in Frank's Place by Bernard Timberg and David Barker
The Sense of Place in Frank's Place by Horace M. Newcomb
Black Music and Television: A Critical Look at Frank's Place by Joe Moorehouse
International Authorship Studies
Television Authorship in France: Le Réalisateur by Susan Boyd-Bowman
Authorship Conflict in The Prisoner by Tony Williams
Program Production for Export and the Domestic Market: British Television Film Series of the 1960s by Jonathan David Tankel
The Studio As Auteur
Negotiating the Television Text: The Transformation of Warner Bros. Presents by Christopher Anderson
Desilu, I Love Lucy, and the Rise of Network TV by Thomas Schatz
The Screen Gems Division of Columbia Pictures: Twenty-Five Years of Prime-Time Storytelling by David Marc
Individual Authorship Studies
Rewriting Culture: A Dialogic View of Television Authorship by Jimmie L. Reeves
Television Production as Collective Action by Cathy A. Sandeen and Ronald J. Compesi
Authorship and Point-of-View Issues in Music Video by Gary Burns
The Comic and Artistic Vision of Lorne Michaels and the Production of Unconventional Television by George M. Plasketes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Promotional Information

This volume presents work on the cutting edge of the television studies discipline, focusing on the issue of authorship: an identity that has never been sufficiently clear or recognized in television. The essays suggest numerous candidates for the authorial position in television: writers, producers, directors, the networks and studio executives.

About the Author

ROBERT J. THOMPSON is an Associate Professor at the State University of New York, at Cortland.

GARY BURNS is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Northern Illinois University.

Reviews

?This valuable collection includes essays by Horace Newcomb and David Marc. Authorship' is posited variously in the writer who controls a soap or a sitcom, the studio, the star who takes control, the executive producer, or the networks' methods of exerting control. Four essays are centered on the critical economy success Frank's Place, ' including Moorehouse's overview of the absence of black music in series television. Boyd-Bowman discusses the different production systems of France where auteur theory and nationalism consciously shaped several documentaries. Plasketes analyzes the late-night/prime-time experiences of outsider' Canadian Lorne Michaels. Together, the essays also supply a useful historical overview of the particulars of the broadcasting climate as well as case studies of individual series and serials, including The Wonder Years, The Prisoner, The Young and the Restless, The Avengers, and Cheyenne. A reader who knew little of the variables behind the cameras that shape television would learn much from this book; those who think those variables make it impossible for an individual sensibility to read through the collective art should be persuaded to reconsider. Useful references.?-Choice

"This valuable collection includes essays by Horace Newcomb and David Marc. Authorship' is posited variously in the writer who controls a soap or a sitcom, the studio, the star who takes control, the executive producer, or the networks' methods of exerting control. Four essays are centered on the critical economy success Frank's Place, ' including Moorehouse's overview of the absence of black music in series television. Boyd-Bowman discusses the different production systems of France where auteur theory and nationalism consciously shaped several documentaries. Plasketes analyzes the late-night/prime-time experiences of outsider' Canadian Lorne Michaels. Together, the essays also supply a useful historical overview of the particulars of the broadcasting climate as well as case studies of individual series and serials, including The Wonder Years, The Prisoner, The Young and the Restless, The Avengers, and Cheyenne. A reader who knew little of the variables behind the cameras that shape television would learn much from this book; those who think those variables make it impossible for an individual sensibility to read through the collective art should be persuaded to reconsider. Useful references."-Choice