Long before internet archives and the anytime, anywhere convenience of streaming, people collected, traded, and shared radio and television content via informal networks that crisscrossed transnational boundaries.
Eleanor Patterson’s fascinating cultural history explores the distribution of radio and TV tapes from the 1960s through the 1980s. Looking at bootlegging against the backdrop of mass media’s formative years, Patterson delves into some of the major subcultures of the era. Old-time radio aficionados felt the impact of inexpensive audio recording equipment and the controversies surrounding programs like Amos ‘n’ Andy. Bootlegging communities devoted to buddy cop TV shows like Starsky and Hutch allowed women to articulate female pleasure and sexuality while Star Trek videos in Australia inspired a grassroots subculture built around community viewings of episodes. Tape trading also had a profound influence on creating an intellectual pro wrestling fandom that aided wrestling’s growth into an international sports entertainment industry.
A study of the largely hidden world of primary media market research and the different methods used to understand how the viewer is pictured in the industry.
The first book on the intersection between market research and media, Creating the Viewer takes a critical look at media companies’ studies of television viewers, the assumptions behind these studies, and the images of the viewer that are constructed through them. Justin Wyatt examines various types of market research, including talent testing, pilot testing, series maintenance, brand studies, and new show “ideation,” providing examples from a range of programming including news, sitcoms, reality shows, and dramas. He looks at brand studies for networks such as E!, and examines how the brands of individuals such as showrunner Ryan Murphy can be tested. Both an analytical and practical work, the book includes sample questionnaires and paths for study moderators and research analysts to follow. Drawn from over fifteen years of experience in research departments at various media companies, Creating the Viewer looks toward the future of media viewership, discussing how the concept of the viewer has changed in the age of streaming, how services such as Netflix view market research, and how viewers themselves can shift the industry through their media choices, behaviors, and activities.
In this first-ever comprehensive examination of queerbaiting, fan studies scholar Joseph Brennan and his contributors examine cases that shed light on the sometimes exploitative industry practice of teasing homoerotic possibilities that, while hinted at, never materialize in the program narratives. Through a nuanced approach that accounts for both the history of queer representation and older fan traditions, these essayists examine the phenomenon of queerbaiting across popular TV, video games, children’s programs, and more.
Contributors: Evangeline Aguas, Christoffer Bagger, Bridget Blodgett, Cassie Brummitt, Leyre Carcas, Jessica Carniel, Jennifer Duggan, Monique Franklin, Divya Garg, Danielle S. Girard, Mary Ingram-Waters, Hannah McCann, Michael McDermott, E. J. Nielsen, Emma Nordin, Holly Eva Katherine Randell-Moon, Emily E. Roach, Anastasia Salter, Elisabeth Schneider, Kieran Sellars, Isabela Silva, Guillaume Sirois, Clare Southerton
Sherlock Holmes remains more popular than ever some 130 years after the detective first appeared in print. These days, the iconic character’s staying power is due in large part to the success of the recent BBC series Sherlock, which brings the famous sleuth into the twenty-first century.
One of the most-watched television series in BBC history, Sherlock is set in contemporary London, where thirtysomething Sherlock and John (no longer fussy old Holmes and Watson), alongside New Scotland Yard, solve crimes with the help of smartphones, texting, online forums, and the internet. In their modernization of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s nineteenth-century world, Sherlock creators Stephen Moffatt and Mark Gatiss make London as much a character of their show as the actors themselves. The highly stylized series has inspired an impassioned fan community in Britain, the U.S., and beyond. Fans create and share their writings, which reimagine the characters in even more dramatic ways than the series can.
Interweaving fan fiction studies, world-building, and genre studies, Ann McClellan examines the hit series and the fan fiction it inspires. Using Sherlock to trace the changing face of fan fiction studies, McClellan’s book explores how far fans are willing to go to change the Sherlockian canon while still reinforcing its power and status as the source text. What makes Sherlock fanfic Sherlockian? How does it stay within the canon even while engaging in the wildest reimaginings? Sherlock’s World explores the boundaries between canon, genre, character, and reality through the lenses of fan fiction and world-building. This book promises to be a valuable resource for fan studies scholars, those who write fan fiction, and Sherlock fans alike.
Do soap opera fans deserve their reputation as lonely people, hopeless losers, or bored housewives? No, according to C. Lee Harrington and Denise D. Bielby. These authors—soap fans themselves—argue that soap fans are normal individuals who translate their soap watching into a broad range of public and private experience. People who cut across all categories of age, gender, race, ethnicity, income, education, and ideology incorporate a love of the soaps into their day-to-day leisure activities.
Interviews with soap opera viewers, actors, writers, producers, directors, the daytime press, and fan club staff members reveal fascinating details about the inside world of fandom and the multitude of outlets for fan expression—clubs, newsletters, electronic bulletin boards, and public events. Numerous examples illustrate the pleasure fans derive from critiquing characters, speculating on plot twists, and swapping memorabilia.
Examining the experiences that shape fan culture, Harrington and Bielby analyze the narrative structure and various aspects of the production of the soaps. Their examination reveals that the "meaning" of soaps is complex, individualized, and not simply a reflection of the narrative content of the stories. The authors show fans who actively contemplate what it means to be a fan, and who adjust their level of involvement accordingly.
During the worst years of apartheid, the most popular show on television in South Africa—among both Black and White South Africans—was The Cosby Show. Why did people living under a system built on the idea that Black people were inferior and threatening flock to a show that portrayed African Americans as comfortably mainstream? Starring Mandela and Cosby takes up this paradox, revealing the surprising impact of television on racial politics.
The South African government maintained a ban on television until 1976, and according to Ron Krabill, they were right to be wary of its potential power. The medium, he contends, created a shared space for communication in a deeply divided nation that seemed destined for civil war along racial lines. At a time when it was illegal to publish images of Nelson Mandela, Bill Cosby became the most recognizable Black man in the country, and, Krabill argues, his presence in the living rooms of white South Africans helped lay the groundwork for Mandela’s release and ascension to power.
Weaving together South Africa’s political history and a social history of television, Krabill challenges conventional understandings of globalization, offering up new insights into the relationship between politics and the media.
The Synchronized Society traces the history of the synchronous broadcast experience of the twentieth century and the transition to the asynchronous media that dominate today. Broadcasting grew out of the latent desire by nineteenth-century industrialists, political thinkers, and social reformers to tame an unruly society by controlling how people used their time. The idea manifested itself in the form of the broadcast schedule, a managed flow of information and entertainment that required audiences to be in a particular place – usually the home – at a particular time and helped to create “water cooler” moments, as audiences reflected on their shared media texts. Audiences began disconnecting from the broadcast schedule at the end of the twentieth century, but promoters of social media and television services still kept audiences under control, replacing the schedule with surveillance of media use. Author Randall Patnode offers compelling new insights into the intermingled roles of broadcasting and industrial/post-industrial work and how Americans spend their time.
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