Television Studies »

GARY BURNS is Assistant Professor of Communications Studies at Northern Illinois University.

ROBERT J. THOMPSON is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at State University of New York at Cortland.

Burns and Thompson help to remedy the lack of a forum for current research on television by bringing together, in this volume, some of the best recent research in television studies. This work will begin to fill the gap in literature on television studies as a discipline. In compiling these 13 papers, the editors maintain a balance of timely interest and lasting relevance. The contributors study the texts of current TV dramatic and comic series, such as Dallas and Cheers, as well as current trends in nonfiction TV, such as network and local news coverage. Each analysis of a specific television text is complimented with rigorous theoretical argumentation. Students and scholars of communications and television criticism will find Television Studies valuable reading.

The book begins with a two-chapter debate primarily seeking a definition of 'television studies.' The debate includes a critical examination of the capitalist institutions that dominate television as an industry. Further chapters discuss dramatic television series; an examination of the development of the lengthy serial text of Dallas, and structural analysis of the pilot episode of Cheers. The book contains five essays on nonfiction television, including an insiders view of the production and promotion of local TV news and an analysis of CBS and ABC's TV news coverage of South Africa over a two week period in 1987. In a final essay, conventional wisdom about 'the audience' is refuted.

Introduction

Political Economy vs. Cultural Studies

Television, Cultural Studies, and the "Blind Spot" Debate in Critical Communications Research

Popular Television and Commercial Culture: Beyond Political Economy

Critical Studies of Dramatic Series

"Dallas" Refigured

Flatulent Conceptions: The Young Ones, Inoculation, and Emisis

Collective Blindness and American Television

"He's Everything You're Not . . . ": A Semiological Analysis of Cheers

And Justice for All: The Messages Behind "Real" Courtroom Dramas

Critical Studies of Nonfiction Television

The Ratings "Sweeps" and How They Make News

The Graphication and Personification of Television News

Representations of Race in Network News Coverage of South Africa

Propaganda Techniques in Documentary Film and Television: AIM vs PBS

TV's World of Sports: Presenting and Playing the Game

Audience as Text

Invisible Fictions: Television Audiences, Paedocracy, Pleasure

Selected Bibliography

Index