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Television conveys powerful messages about sexual identities, and popular shows such as Will & Grace, Ellen, Glee, Modern Family, and The Fosters are often credited with building support for gay rights, including marriage equality. At the same time, however, many dismiss TV’s portrayal of LGBT characters and issues as “gay for pay”—that is, apolitical and exploitative programming created simply for profit. In The New Gay for Pay, Julia Himberg moves beyond both of these positions to investigate the complex and multifaceted ways that television production participates in constructing sexuality, sexual identities and communities, and sexual politics.

Himberg examines the production stories behind explicitly LGBT narratives and characters, studying how industry workers themselves negotiate processes of TV development, production, marketing, and distribution. She interviews workers whose views are rarely heard, including market researchers, public relations experts, media advocacy workers, political campaigners designing strategies for TV messaging, and corporate social responsibility department officers, as well as network executives and producers. Thoroughly analyzing their comments in the light of four key issues—visibility, advocacy, diversity, and equality—Himberg reveals how the practices and belief systems of industry workers generate the conceptions of LGBT sexuality and political change that are portrayed on television. This original approach complicates and broadens our notions about who makes media; how those practitioners operate within media conglomerates; and, perhaps most important, how they contribute to commonsense ideas about sexuality.

This book demonstrates, in part through a history of emotions, how assumptions and prejudices about queer lives were challenged throughout the decade through the deceptively prosaic medium of television. Passion and disgust neatly outline the contours of the gay community’s press for equal rights at the dawn of the 1980s, just as fear and anxiety encapsulate the inchoate reactions to the emerging epidemic and the simultaneous explorations of privacy that were initiated by the onslaught of television as technology. While queer people anguished over their very survival and over the indifference of many to their situation, hope surfaced as a cause and potential treatments for HIV emerged and as the Supreme Court decided to make its first direct ruling on gay rights in a generation. When that latter hope was dashed by the Hardwick decision, the anger of gay rights advocates was trebled as they massed for the national March on Washington in homage to the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom that lent its key political organizing and messaging tactics to it. With the realization that progress would then be slow and all-consuming, a desperation to change queer lives was enjoined by a determination to do so in the most visible ways possible, through television.

Winner, McGannon Communications Research Award, 2004

In 1971, the Sloan Commission on Cable Communications likened the ongoing developments in cable television to the first uses of movable type and the invention of the telephone. Cable's proponents in the late 1960s and early 1970s hoped it would eventually remedy all the perceived ills of broadcast television, including lowest-common-denominator programming, inability to serve the needs of local audiences, and failure to recognize the needs of cultural minorities. Yet a quarter century after the "blue sky" era, cable television programming closely resembled, and indeed depended upon, broadcast television programming. Whatever happened to the Sloan Commission's "revolution now in sight"?

In this book, Megan Mullen examines the first half-century of cable television to understand why cable never achieved its promise as a radically different means of communication. Using textual analysis and oral, archival, and regulatory history, she chronicles and analyzes cable programming developments in the United States during three critical stages of the medium's history: the early community antenna (CATV) years (1948-1967), the optimistic "blue sky" years (1968-1975), and the early satellite years (1976-1995). This history clearly reveals how cable's roots as a retransmitter of broadcast signals, the regulatory constraints that stymied innovation, and the economic success of cable as an outlet for broadcast or broadcast-type programs all combined to defeat most utopian visions for cable programming.

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.

The broadcasting industry’s trade association, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), sought to sanitize television content via its self-regulatory document, the Television Code. The Code covered everything from the stories, images, and sounds of TV programs (no profanity, illicit sex and drinking, negative portrayals of family life and law enforcement officials, or irreverence for God and religion) to the allowable number of commercial minutes per hour of programming. It mandated that broadcasters make time for religious programming and discouraged them from charging for it. And it called for tasteful and accurate coverage of news, public events, and controversial issues.

Using archival documents from the Federal Communications Commission, NBC, the NAB, and a television reformer, Senator William Benton, this book explores the run-up to the adoption of the 1952 Television Code from the perspectives of the government, TV viewers, local broadcasters, national networks, and the industry’s trade association. Deborah L. Jaramillo analyzes the competing motives and agendas of each of these groups as she builds a convincing case that the NAB actually developed the Television Code to protect commercial television from reformers who wanted more educational programming, as well as from advocates of subscription television, an alternative distribution model to the commercial system. By agreeing to self-censor content that viewers, local stations, and politicians found objectionable, Jaramillo concludes, the NAB helped to ensure that commercial broadcast television would remain the dominant model for decades to come.

The Total Black Experience is the first book to chronicle the history and social significance of Positively Black, one of the longest-running public affairs shows in the history of television. Spurred on by the findings of the Kerner Commission, executives at WNBC-TV greenlit the show and turned production over to a small but dedicated team of storytellers who quickly made it their mission to carve out a space for serious and nuanced discussion of issues important to the Black community and to celebrate all aspects of Black culture. They believed that accurate representation of their experiences was a right, not a privilege. The show’s first cohosts included the well-known Harlem-based activist Rev. Eugene Callender and Gus Heningburg, activist, successful consultant and mediator, and advocate for organized labor. Callender had founded Harlem Prep to equip young Black people for college, while Heningburg played a key role in stabilizing life in Newark following the rebellion there in the late 1960s. Both were adept at using the media to reach their constituencies. Combining in-depth interviews with painstaking archival research, The Total Black Experience introduces readers to key members of the Positively Black production team and analyzes thematic shifts in the show’s content. The book celebrates Positively Black’s longevity and challenges readers to explore the current state of Black representation on television.

This unique, comprehensive introduction to screenwriting offers practical advice for the beginning writer, whether college student or freelancer. Based on their experience as professional writers and as teachers in a large, successful screenwriting program at California State University, Northridge, the authors provide a progression of assignments at manageable screenwriting lengths for beginners. They lead students through development of a premise, treatment, stepsheet, and, finally, miniscreenplay—essential elements in writing a longer script.

A major feature of the text is the use of many example scenes from contemporary and classic American films, such as On the Waterfront, Kramer vs. Kramer, The Godfather, The Graduate, Tootsie, and more. Other scenes are drawn from international films and dramatic literature. The criticism of these scenes invites students to develop their own comparative models, while simultaneously providing exposure to the central analytical terms of good dramatic writing.

The authors also place screenwriting within the larger tradition of dramatic writing in order to put the beginning writer in touch with the wealth of art, experience, and practical ideas the drama contains. They provide an up-to-date, practical discussion of marketing and copywriting a screenplay, with addresses of relevant professional societies. Most importantly, they never offer an ill-advised shortcut or restrict students to only one way of thinking about a character, situation, or scene. In The Understructure of Writing for Film & Television, the student's thought and creativity are central.

Unruly women have been making a spectacle of themselves in film and on television from Mae West to Roseanne Arnold. In this groundbreaking work, Kathleen Rowe explores how the unruly woman—often a voluptuous, noisy, joke-making rebel or "woman on top"—uses humor and excess to undermine patriarchal norms and authority.

At the heart of the book are detailed analyses of two highly successful unruly women—the comedian Roseanne Arnold and the Muppet Miss Piggy. Putting these two figures in a deeper cultural perspective, Rowe also examines the evolution of romantic film comedy from the classical Hollywood period to the present, showing how the comedic roles of actresses such as Katharine Hepburn, Barbara Stanwyck, and Marilyn Monroe offered an alternative, empowered image of women that differed sharply from the "suffering heroine" portrayed in classical melodramas.

Few other television series have received as much academic, media, and fan celebration as The Wire, which has been called the best dramatic series ever created. The show depicts the conflict between Baltimore's police and criminals to raise a warning about race; drug war policing; deindustrialization; and the inadequacies of America’s civic, educational, and political institutions. The show's unflinching explorations of a city in crisis and its nuanced portrayals of those affected make it a show all about race and class in America.

The essays in this volume offer a range of astute critical responses to this television phenomenon. More consistently than any other crime show of its generation, The Wire challenges viewers' perceptions of the racialization of urban space and the media conventions that support this. The Wire reminds us of just how remarkably restricted the grammar of race is on American television and related media, and of the normative codings of race---as identity, as landscape---across urban narratives, from documentary to entertainment media.

Contributors To Volume 20
Susan Bennett / Jane Barnette / Becky Becker / Lisa Bernd / Evan
Bridenstine / Michael Jaros / Robert I. Lublin / Paulette Marty

Between 1971 and 1979, All in the Family was more than just a wildly popular television sitcom that routinely drew 50 million viewers weekly. It was also a touchstone of American life, so much so that the living room chairs of the two main characters have spent the last 40 years on display at the Smithsonian. How did a show this controversial and boundary-breaking manage to become so widely beloved?

Those Were the Days is the first full-length study of this remarkable television program. Created by Norman Lear and produced by Bud Yorkin, All in the Family dared to address such taboo topics as rape, abortion, menopause, homosexuality, and racial prejudice in a way that no other sitcom had before. Through a close analysis of the sitcom’s four main characters—boorish bigot Archie Bunker, his devoted wife Edith, their feminist daughter Gloria, and her outspoken liberal husband Mike—Jim Cullen demonstrates how All in the Family was able to bridge the generation gap and appeal to a broad spectrum of American viewers in an age when a network broadcast model of television created a shared national culture.

Locating All in the Family within the larger history of American television, this book shows how it transformed the medium, not only spawning spinoffs like Maude and The Jeffersons, but also helping to inspire programs like Roseanne, Married... with Children, and The Simpsons. And it raises the question: could a show this edgy ever air on broadcast television today?

Contemporary American media is awash with reality programs, faux documentaries, and user generated content. When did this fixation on real or feigned nonfictionality begin? Tomboys, Pretty Boys, and Outspoken Women argues that its origins can be found in the early 1970s, when American media discovered the entertainment value of documentaries, news programming, and other nonfiction forms. Edward D. Miller challenges preconceptions of the ’60s and ’70s through close readings of key events and important figures in the early 1970s: John Dean’s performance in front of the Senate during the Watergate Hearings; Billie Jean King popularizing tennis by taking on Bobby Riggs in a prime-time match; David Bowie experiencing “outer space” in his tours across America; An American Family and their gay son facing the public’s consternation; and Alison Steele, a female DJ who invited listeners to fly with her at night. Miller explores the early 1970s as a turning point in American culture, with nonfiction media of the time creating new possibilities for expressions of gender and sexuality, and argues that we are living in its aftermath.

In addition to readers attracted to media studies, this book will be of great interest to those involved in LGBT studies, feminism, and queer studies as well as students of contemporary media culture. The aim of the book is to demystify current media trends by providing an analysis of the recent past. Tomboys, Pretty Boys, and Outspoken Women is written for a large audience that extends beyond academia and embraces readers who have an interest in American pop culture and, in particular, the '70s.

Following the most solemn moments in recent American history, comedians have tested the limits of how soon is “too soon” to joke about tragedy. Comics confront the horrifying events and shocking moments that capture national attention and probe the acceptable, or “sayable,” boundaries of expression that shape our cultural memory. In Tragedy Plus Time, Philip Scepanski examines the role of humor, particularly televised comedy, in constructing and policing group identity and memory in the wake of large-scale events.

Tragedy Plus Time is the first comprehensive work to investigate tragedy-driven comedy in the aftermaths of such traumas as the JFK assassination and 9/11, as well as during the administration of Donald Trump. Focusing on the mass publicization of television comedy, Scepanski considers issues of censorship and memory construction in the ways comedians negotiate emotions, politics, war, race, and Islamophobia. Amid the media frenzy and conflicting expressions of grief following a public tragedy, comedians provoke or risk controversy to grapple publicly with national traumas that all Americans are trying to understand for themselves.

Two Vatos Talk Pop Cultura brings a leading Latinx media studies scholar, Frederick Luis Aldama, together with an award-winning television writer and producer, Peter Murrieta, to examine how Latinx representation has evolved—and stagnated—across seven decades of American TV, film, and pop culture.