Part of Praeger's "Media and Society" series, this contributed volume is a collection of essays on television authorship. It includes work of some of the most prominent scholars in television studies. Rather than assigning one author to individual television texts, the contributors probe the relationship between the various authors at work within the institutional, cultural and economic settings that characterize the television industry. This book analyzes and defines the candidates for authorial accountability, allowing the medium to enter the realm of contemporary criticism. The first part of the volume provides a case study in four chapters on authorship issues surrounding "Frank's Place", the short lived but compelling situation comedy. This is followed by three chapters focusing on issues of authorship in international television. The book then probes the studio's role as author, including essays on Warner Brothers, "Desilu", and Screen Gems. Finally the contributors examine individual TV authors and cover such topics as point of view in music video, television production as collective action, and unconventional television.
Part of Praeger's "Media and Society" series, this contributed volume is a collection of essays on television authorship. It includes work of some of the most prominent scholars in television studies. Rather than assigning one author to individual television texts, the contributors probe the relationship between the various authors at work within the institutional, cultural and economic settings that characterize the television industry. This book analyzes and defines the candidates for authorial accountability, allowing the medium to enter the realm of contemporary criticism. The first part of the volume provides a case study in four chapters on authorship issues surrounding "Frank's Place", the short lived but compelling situation comedy. This is followed by three chapters focusing on issues of authorship in international television. The book then probes the studio's role as author, including essays on Warner Brothers, "Desilu", and Screen Gems. Finally the contributors examine individual TV authors and cover such topics as point of view in music video, television production as collective action, and unconventional television.
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
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.
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.
?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
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