Com Arts 351 Spring 2012

To understand American popular culture, we need to come to grips with the enormous role that television has played in shaping that culture over the past sixty years. In this timely and provocative book, Jason Mittell provides students with a uniquely thorough look at the medium of television.

Exploring television at once as a technological medium, an economic system, a facet of democracy, and a part of everyday life, this landmark text uses numerous sidebars and case studies to demonstrate the past, immediate, and far-reaching effects of American culture on television--and television's influence on American culture. Arranged topically, the book provides a broad historical overview of television while also honing in on such finer points as the formal attributes of its various genres and its role in gender and racial identity formation.

Replete with examples, this pedagogically rich text includes many end-of-chapter case studies and narratives with suggestions for further reading--and, appropriately, viewing. Illustrations and photographs--primarily DVD grabs--contextualize historical footage and older television programs that may not be familiar to younger students.

A multi-disciplinary approach to American television, Television and American Culture is ideal for an array of intermediate undergraduate- and beginning graduate-level courses, including:
* Television Criticism
* Television & American Culture
* Television & Society
* Introduction to Media Studies
* American Popular Culture
* Radio & TV
* History of Mass Communication
* Broadcasting & Broadcast Programming

For more information about this book, including updates, corrections, links, videos, and teaching resources, visit the companion website at http://tvamericanculture.net.

To understand American popular culture, we need to come to grips with the enormous role that television has played in shaping that culture over the past sixty years. In this timely and provocative book, Jason Mittell provides students with a uniquely thorough look at the medium of television.

Exploring television at once as a technological medium, an economic system, a facet of democracy, and a part of everyday life, this landmark text uses numerous sidebars and case studies to demonstrate the past, immediate, and far-reaching effects of American culture on television--and television's influence on American culture. Arranged topically, the book provides a broad historical overview of television while also honing in on such finer points as the formal attributes of its various genres and its role in gender and racial identity formation.

Replete with examples, this pedagogically rich text includes many end-of-chapter case studies and narratives with suggestions for further reading--and, appropriately, viewing. Illustrations and photographs--primarily DVD grabs--contextualize historical footage and older television programs that may not be familiar to younger students.

A multi-disciplinary approach to American television, Television and American Culture is ideal for an array of intermediate undergraduate- and beginning graduate-level courses, including:
* Television Criticism
* Television & American Culture
* Television & Society
* Introduction to Media Studies
* American Popular Culture
* Radio & TV
* History of Mass Communication
* Broadcasting & Broadcast Programming

For more information about this book, including updates, corrections, links, videos, and teaching resources, visit the companion website at http://tvamericanculture.net.

Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2008

After occupying a central space in American living rooms for the past fifty years, is television, as we've known it, dead? The capabilities and features of that simple box have been so radically redefined that it's now nearly unrecognizable. Today, viewers with digital video recorders such as TiVo may elect to circumvent scheduling constraints and commercials. Owners of iPods and other portable viewing devices are able to download the latest episodes of their favorite shows and watch them whenever and wherever they want. Still others rent television shows on DVD, or download them through legal and illegal sources online. But these changes have not been hastening the demise of the medium. They are revolutionizing it.

The Television Will Be Revolutionized examines television at the turn of the twenty-first century —:what Amanda D. Lotz terms the “post-network” era. Television, both as a technology and a tool for cultural storytelling, remains as important today as ever, but it has changed in fundamental ways as the result of technological innovations, proliferating cable channels targeting ever more specific niche audiences, and evolving forms of advertising such as product placement and branded entertainment. Many of the conventional practices and even the industry's basic business model are proving unworkable in this new context, resulting in a crisis in norms and practices.

Through interviews with those working in the industry, attendance of various industry summits and meetings, surveys of trade publications, and consideration of an extensive array of popular television shows, Lotz takes us behind the screen to explore what is changing, why it's changing, and why these changes matter.