Television History

Numerosi prodotti di importazione arricchiscono sempre più spesso l’offerta dei media italiani, tv compresa: in questo modo, nel nostro Paese approdano contenuti che non sono pensati e realizzati appositamente per il pubblico nazionale, ma che, una volta trasferiti e adattati, mutano – almeno in parte – la loro forma. In ambito televisivo, un caso particolarmente interessante è quello della situation comedy americana: un genere centrale nella tv statunitense, ma che in Italia è insieme molto diffuso nei palinsesti e spesso frainteso, complesso da tradurre e talvolta ricostruito – o persino stravolto –, disprezzato ma visto (e rivisto) da intere generazioni di spettatori. Questo volume pone le basi teoriche per uno stu dio dei processi di ‘mediazione’, solo apparentemente banali, che intercorrono nel passaggio di un prodotto mediale da un Paese all’altro: l’appropriazione nazionale (o ‘italianizzazione’), la traduzione, l’adattamento, la distribuzione. E poi applica queste basi a un’approfondita analisi delle vicende italiane della sitcom americana, e di alcuni suoi titoli in particolare (Seinfeld, Friends, Will & Grace, How I Met Your Mother), da tre punti di vista: la ricostruzione della sto ria del genere nel nostro Paese; la rassegna delle variazioni e modifiche traduttive che il prodotto televisivo si trova necessariamente ad affrontare; infine, il racconto della sua filiera produttiva e distributiva, delle routine traduttive e dei professionisti coinvolti. Per capire cosa cambia nella sitcom quando passa dagli Stati Uniti all’Italia, e perché.

The study is a long term structural analysis of public service television in Britain and Norway, focusing particularly on the BBC and NRK in the early stages of competition.
The study has  produced results on two levels: Firstly, it has identified a series of similar processes and alliances in the two countries in connection with the establishment and development of broadcasting systems. Secondly, it has produced detailed results regarding the so-called crisis for public broadcasting in the two countries.
The study has demonstrated that while the privileges of the BBC and the NRK have been undermined, they are still expected to fulfil many of their original obligations, obligations which in turn have become more difficult to fulfil.
These developments have presented the corporation with difficult challenges regarding both their financial bases and their social legitimacy. The corporations have both responded these challenges with a dual strategy: On the one hand they have attempted to improve their financial balances and adapt to market-standards, whereas on the other they have strengthened their commitment to some of the areas which they have seen as crucial to their identity as public broadcasters.

This article claims that the emergence of television in the 1950s must be interpreted as a conservative media revolution. It aims at revisiting some of the popular narratives about the emergence of television as a revolutionary moment in media history and questions the newness of television in the European mass media ensemble. Focusing on a set of privileged sites of negotiation where the tensions between the conservative and modernising agencies of the medium became most visible or explicit, the article emphasizes the ambiguous and contested nature of television as a new medium. Finally, the author pleas for an integral approach to media history that studies the intermedial relationships and interdependencies between television and other mass media.

How might television aesthetics characterise the 'medium' or 'art form' or television? From a perspective inspired by analytic philosophical aesthetics, this paper disputes the commonplace practice of referring to television as a ‘medium’. It proposes instead that television be regarded as an art composed of many media. Individual works employ various media available to television and also to other arts.
The paper evaluates the usefulness of these distinctions for our conceptual understanding of television, appraisal of television works, and appreciation of television in relation to other arts. Via its reconfiguration of ‘medium/media’, it challenges narrowly contemporary notions of the televisual, positing a more historicised model and situating television alongside other arts – amongst friends.

Course description: This course surveys the history of American television during the 20th century. After initially examining how American broadcast television's structure and content built on radio's foundations, we will proceed to explore the complex ways that technological, social, political, industrial, and cultural factors interacted to shape the form and content of broadcast, cable, and satellite television. Our discussion of industrial practices and regulatory decisions will be balanced with an analysis of representational and formal-aesthetic practices. The semester will briefly conclude with a consideration of the meaning and implications of digital convergence on contemporary American – and global – media culture.

Objectives and outcomes: By the end of the course you should be able to…
• Assess how and why TV developed as it did at specific historical moments;
• Analyze television as a cultural and social force;
• Appreciate how previous regulatory, industrial, and creative decisions continue to impact the structure and content of contemporary television;
• Understand and critique the different ways that scholars research and write about television history.

This article is a case study of the French TV series Un Village francais , broadcast on France 3 from 2009 to 2017. Based on interviews and observations of the cast and crew members, it attempts to unravel the relationships between writers, producers, directors and broadcasters within the French television industry. First, some particularities of television production in France are briefly addressed. These include: the limited number of channels commissioning original TV series; the still unestablished concept and professional practice of showrunners and the lack of an industrialized process in creating televised serial narratives; and the dominant status of directors, which contributes to the weakened position of TV writers within this economy. The focus of the article is then the pre-broadcast history of the series, from the early stages of its conception to the later stages of its production. Un Village francais is indeed created by an a-typical trio of executive co-producers: a ...

Black public-affairs television programming in New York City
between 1967 and 1968 happened because of a convergence
of several factors. They include (a) the upheavals in urban
America between 1964 and 1967, (b) the release of the Report
of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (a.k.a.,
the Kerner Commission report) and (c) the assassination of
Martin Luther King, the latter two both within months of
each other in 1968. Other equally important factors include
the organic development of Black American-owned and
Black American-oriented media—newspapers and radio
outlets buttressed and informed by more than a century of
Black Left/Nationalist/Pan-Africanist/integrationist intellectual
thought and African-centered/Afrocentric ideology. Using and
critiquing the emerging scholarship on such programming, a
brief historical review of the creation and development of 4==
such shows in 1967 and 1968—WABC-TV’s Like It Is, WNEW-TV’s
Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant, and National Educational Television’s
two locally produced (but nationally broadcast) programs, Black
Journal and Soul!—shows that these programs sought to correct
the Kerner Commission’s critique that the American mass media
show “a White man’s world” by attempting to show, for the first
time, a Black world to large mainstream broadcast markets.

My aim in this paper was to bring together a theoretical, historical enquiry and an empirical, contemporary project. At the time I was preoccupied, on the one hand, with Walter Benjamin’s writing on images and cities, and on the other hand, with the exhibition project Video as Urban Condition.[1]

The paper locates the crossing point where Benjamin’s thought — in particular, his conception of urban experience — intersects with the technology of television — that is to say, seeing at a distance.

I did not attempt to reconcile Benjamin’s suggestions with the post-war television phenomena that he neither saw nor foresaw. The question I posed myself was whether some observations of Benjamin’s, or rather, some observations on Benjamin’s thought, might furnish the distance necessary for observing the present.

I found, in the interior of the nineteenth century, the pre-vision of television — television almost without technology — and I traced its philosophical heritage. I entered that interior with Benjamin and exited with the flâneur, to whom the city opened up like a landscape even as it enclosed him like a room, as a private domain.

Hence the screen, the façade, the shop window and the television set revealed themselves as the sites where one could interrogate the intersections between exterior and interior, between media and architecture, the city and its phantasmagoria.

[1]: On the one hand, see ‘Imagine no Metaphors: the dialectical image of Walter Benjamin’ in Image & Narrative, special issue edited by Hanneke Grootenboer, no. 18, September 2007. On the other hand, see ‘Who is Big Brother? or The Politics of Looking’, in Dérive Zeitschrift für Stadtforschung, no. 42, January 2011.

With an appendix: Video as Urban Condition

Leif Kramp untersucht erstmals umfassend die Gedächtnisrelevanz des Massenmediums Fernsehen sowie den archivischen und musealen Umgang mit der Fernsehgeschichte. Anknüpfend an die interdisziplinären Zweige der Gedächtnisforschung analysiert der erste Band die Bedeutung des Fernsehens seit Beginn des regelmäßigen Programmbetriebs in Deutschland und Nordamerika unter gedächtnistheoretischer Perspektive. Damit legt dieser Band den Grund für eine differenzierte Bewertung des Fernsehens als Medium des Erinnerns und Vergessens. Auf Basis einer breiten empirischen Erhebung bei zahlreichen Institutionen in Deutschland, Kanada und den USA befasst sich der zweite Band mit dem Status Quo und den Perspektiven der Verwaltung und Nutzung von Überlieferungen aus der Fernsehgeschichte. Kramp analysiert die maßgeblichen Problemstellungen, mit denen sich Museen und Archive konfrontiert sehen: von Fragen der Auswahl, Bewahrung und Zugänglichkeit von Fernsehüberlieferungen bis hin zu ihrer Präsentation und dem Medienwandel, und diskutiert Strategien für die Arbeit von Fernsehmuseen im digitalen Medienzeitalter.

A partir dos conceitos de televisão formulados por Wolton (1997) e Chandler e Munday (2011), o presente artigo trata de posicionar a Tupi do Rio de Janeiro como a emissora pioneira em transmissões experimentais de TV dentro dos Diários Associados. Fundamenta-se em registros obtidos em livros e periódicos, todos eles tratados através do método de análise documental à luz de Bardin (2011). Visa, assim, contribuir com o registro da história da TV Tupi e da televisão brasileira em geral, cuja narrativa hegemônica não dedica espaço justo ao trabalho realizado pelos pioneiros cariocas.

Por estar vivendo seu auge de popularidade, o seriado televisivo é o enfoque dessa pesquisa. Ela tem tem como objetivo traçar a trajetória e flexões presentes no estilo de narrativa seriada. Como critério, foi levado em consideração suas origens na oralidade, sua apropriação pelos meios de comunicação, as variações proporcionadas pelas transformações tecnológicas e suas consequências, além de sua espectatorialidade. O artigo busca organizar os elementos que moldaram o estilo até se chegar ao formato de série de televisão que consumimos atualmente. A narrativa seriada encontrou seu lugar ao sol nos meios de comunicação de massa. O ato de dividir uma história para manter o interesse daquele que está a acompanhando favorece principalmente o capital, que fideliza um público curioso e que está disposto a consumir essas histórias. Jornais, cinema, rádio, televisão e internet, não importa o suporte, a narrativa seriada tem espaço em todos eles. A serialidade encontrou diversas formas e suportes para ser realizado, mas sua origem é bem anterior à sua apropriação pelos meios de comunicação de massa e está relacionada à oralidade. A prática de se contar histórias, como vimos, é parte fundamental da construção da identidade de uma nação. Nesse sentido, o folclore – um

For decades, television scholars have viewed global television through the lens of cultural imperialism, focusing primarily on programs produced by US and UK markets and exported to foreign markets. Global Television Formats revolutionizes television studies by de-provincializing its approach to media globalization. It re-examines dominant approaches and their legacies of global/local and center/periphery, and offers new directions for understanding television’s contemporary incarnations.

The chapters in this collection take up the format phenomena from around the globe, including the Middle East, Western and Eastern Europe, South and West Africa, South and East Asia, Australia and New Zealand, North America, South America, and the Caribbean. Contributors address both little known examples and massive global hits ranging from the Idol franchise around the world, to telenovelas, dance competitions, sports programming, reality TV, quiz shows, sitcoms and more. Looking to global television formats as vital for various cultural meanings, relationships, and structures, this collection shows how formats can further our understanding of television and the culture of globalization at large.

Cucina, moda, casa, trasformazione fisica e psicologica, relazioni, famiglia, fai-da-te, medicina, lifestyle: l’universo dei prodotti che compongono l’offerta di factual entertainment della tv italiana contemporanea è dinamico e variegato. Il suo crescente inserimento nella programmazione nazionale ha accompagnato e, almeno in parte, caratterizzato quella svolta di sistema che ha visto il medium approdare all’“età dell’abbondanza” , con lo svilupparsi non semplicemente di nuovi canali, ma anche di nuove abitudini di consumo, di differenti modalità di produzione, programmazione e acquisto da parte dei broadcaster, e di inedite strategie di costruzione dei brand di rete. [...]

In den 50er Jahren tritt das Fernsehen seinen bis heute anhaltenden Siegeszug an. Diese Entwicklung findet in Martin Morlock einen stilistisch brillanten Kommentator, der von 1958 bis 1963 als »Telemann« das deutsche Fernsehgeschehen mit kritischem Blick begleitet. Zu einem Zeitpunkt, an dem die Nutzung der Technik noch nicht festgelegt ist, formuliert Morlock deren potentielle Leistungen, Funktionen und Inhalte. Damit verbunden ist ein Plädoyer für den autonomen Zuschauer, der den Sendeinhalten nicht willenlos ausgeliefert ist – eine These, die gerade in Anbetracht der aktuellen Debatten über Gewalt in den Medien bemerkenswert ist.

Per comprendere la televisione, un’analisi della sua evoluzione tecnologica non basta. Bisogna contestualizzare la sua mediamorfosi anche in rapporto con gli altri mezzi di comunicazione, con le loro forme culturali e con una società profondamente trasformata a livello economico, legislativo, nei modelli di consumo e di business.
Per raccontare con esempi concreti la traiettoria – dagli esordi della tv fino all’epoca della convergenza digitale e dei social media – il libro propone un percorso multimodale in cui il lettore troverà, accanto ai testi, cinquanta video (spezzoni di film, clip o parti di trasmissioni televisive) scelti per documentare, spiegare o introdurre collegamenti interdisciplinari. È possibile accedere ai contenuti video semplicemente inquadrando con uno smartphone i codici QR accanto alle didascalie.
Il volume è inoltre arricchito da approfondimenti bibliografici necessari per sviluppare i temi affrontati.

Elokuvan suhdetta menneisyyteen ja tulevaisuuteen on viime aikoina käsitelty varsin paljon, mutta huomio on kohdistunut ennen kaikkea niihin lajityyppeihin, joilla on eksplikoidusti "ajallinen" orientaatio. On kirjoitettu sekä historiallisen elokuvan tavasta kertoa menneisyydestä että tieteiselokuvan tavasta kuvata tulevaisuutta. Tarkoitukseni on tässä artikkelissa kääntää asetelma päinvastaiseksi ja kysyä: miten tieteisfiktio kuvaa menneisyyttä? Kaiken kaikkiaan nyt-hetkessä eläminen on jatkuvaa menneisyyden kokemusten ja tulevaisuuden odotuksen välistä vuoropuhelua. Käsitykset menneestä ja tulevasta eivät ole toisistaan riippumattomia: mistäpä muualta tieteiskirjailija tai elokuvaohjaaja etsisi ymmärrystä tulevaisuuden kuvaamiseksi ellei menneisyydestä. Historiasta tieteisfiktioiden tekijät usein noutavat myös kerronnallista ja kuvallista raaka-ainetta.

William Benton, one of the founders of the advertising agency Benton & Bowles, helped oversee the production of major US radio programs in the 1930s, such as Maxwell House's Showboat. Benton left advertising and in his subsequent careers in education and politics, consistently advocated for broadcast reforms.

Angela Carter is best known for her novels, short fiction and journalism, but she also produced a substantial body of writing for media other than the printed page, including five radio plays, two film adaptations, an original television documentary and a number of unrealized scripts for stage and screen. Despite increasing academic interest in Carter's work, these dramatic writings have largely been ignored. In this book, Charlotte Crofts redresses this lack of critical attention by examining Carter's dramatic writings together for the first time (including two unpublished works), giving them a more central position in the Carter canon

You can read an excerpt of the book here:http://books.google.com/books?id=RsMnIC72qC0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=anagrams&ie=ISO-8859-1&cd=9&source=gbs_gdata#v=onepage&q&f=false

Cited in Jack Zipes (2010), The Enchanted Screen, The Unknown History of Fairy-Tale Films; Susanne Gruss (2009), The pleasure of the feminist text, reading Michèle Roberts and Angela Carter and Laura Di Michele (2005) Shakespeare, una "Tempesta" dopo l'altra

Da Lucy ed io a Friends, da Happy Days a The Big Bang Theory, da I Jefferson a The Good Place, da Casa Vianello a Boris: la situation comedy è un genere televisivo importante, che sembra semplice ma non lo è, ha un linguaggio stratificato e una storia piena di svolte. Fa ridere il pubblico con la sua sapiente miscela di innovazione e ripetizione, ha dato vita a un importante modello produttivo e industriale, riempie i palinsesti tra prime visioni e repliche. I suoi personaggi diventano popolari, i suoi racconti proseguono per tante stagioni e circolano pressoché dappertutto. Il volume traccia una definizione della sitcom e ne ricostruisce le principali evoluzioni, negli Stati Uniti come in Italia. Getta poi uno sguardo sul presente e sul futuro di un genere spesso trascurato ma ancora centrale, che nello scenario digitale non solo resiste ma si trasforma, insieme alla tv che cambia.

Come accaduto in molti altri Paesi europei, la televisione italiana ha subìto numerose trasformazioni nel passaggio dall’analogico al digitale terrestre. Il processo di spegnimento del segnale analogico, cominciato in alcune regioni pilota nel 2008, è stato completato, attraverso tappe successive, su tutto il territorio nazionale nel 2012.
La digitalizzazione genera numerosi effetti sia sulla produzione e sulla distribuzione, modificando l’organizzazione del sistema tv italiano nel suo complesso, sia sul consumo, favorendo la diffusione di nuove forme di visione . Tra le principali conseguenze di questo passaggio è particolarmente rilevante l’ampliamento dell’offerta gratuita di contenuti televisivi, con la nascita di nuovi canali digitali sviluppati dai network commerciali (come Mediaset e Telecom Italia Media), da operatori pay che entrano così in un nuovo mercato (come Sky Italia e Discovery Networks) e, infine, dal broadcaster di servizio pubblico (Rai – Radio Televisione Italiana). [...]

Il volume analizza la storia della televisione italiana delle origini a partire da una prospettiva sociale. Tramite l’utilizzo sia di dati statistici sugli ascolti televisivi, conservati presso gli archivi RAI, sia di memorie degli spettatori di quegli anni, rintracciate in diari e autobiografie, questo libro propone una storia del pubblico televisivo attraverso i mutamenti della società del “miracolo”. Quali sono i programmi televisivi entrati a far parte dell’immaginario del nostro paese? Quali erano le dinamiche di visione, privata e collettiva, messe in atto dalla TV delle origini? Ribaltando la prospettiva gerarchica della tradizione di studi sulla televisione italiana, il libro rivisita la TV degli anni cinquanta e sessanta a partire da un’analisi dei suoi pubblici.

The TARDIS is one of Doctor Who’s most distinctive iconographic components and performs a number of functions.  This paper explores some of the roles that the TARDIS plays, as a space for narrative action, a vehicle, an object within a setting, and a place that is inhabited.  The paper analyses how the TARDIS functions aesthetically, and how it enables and constrains the production of ‘classic’ Doctor Who in the context of studio video and location filming. The paper explores the significations of the TARDIS with special reference to its role in Logopolis (1981) and Castrovalva (1982).

In the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia, no intelligence officer, real or
imagined, has been more famous than Max Otto von Stierlitz, usually known simply as “Shtirlits.”Part of my broader research project on intelligence-themed television entertainment produced by the eastern side of the Cold War, this article contributes to a growing literature on this major phenomenon of Soviet popular
culture. In particular, it will show that we have not yet sufficiently
considered the international, specifically Cold War dimension of Seventeen Moments; that we should also revise its place in Soviet domestic political-cultural history by according Seventeen Moments’ post-Thaw transformation of the image of Stalin its full weight, and, finally, that these two aspects of the miniseries were linked through the détente/peaceful-coexistence moment of its making.

Il palinsesto è la sequenza di tutto ciò che viene trasmesso in televisione nella giornata, nella settimana, nel mese. Ma è anche un mosaico di contenuti eterogenei, è un processo di composizione sempre presente per gli addetti ai lavori, è l’elemento che definisce l’identità e il ‘sapore’ dell’offerta per gli spettatori. Il libro affronta per la prima volta in modo sistematico il tema del palinsesto: gli strumenti e le regole del buon programmatore, le logiche che sottostanno alla sua composizione, l’evoluzione storica dei palinsesti italiani, gli effetti del digitale e del multichannel. Un volume fondamentale per comprendere l’elemento principe della grammatica televisiva e i suoi sviluppi futuri.

Na segunda metade do séc. XX, ocorreu uma mutação no dispositivo enunciativo da
televisão de que o reality-show é um dos exemplos maiores ao confiar, não tanto no enunciado
quanto na enunciação. Dada a fluidez com que se apresenta e a multiplicidade de influências que o
constituem, constatam-se sérias dificuldades em inseri-lo num único género. Procurando inserir-se
na reflexão deste problema, o presente artigo coloca o reality-show como um género televisivo
independente, dotado de convenções muito particulares que nos permite ensaiar uma definição de
género mais precisa. Relevando a centralidade do quotidiano, o movimento escopofílico e a
emancipação do espectador, esboça-se uma definição que dá conta da especificidade distintiva do
género televisivo “reality-show”.

In 1974, Melbourne teenager Jennifer Sketchley started keeping a daily diary. It continued until 1985, describing everyday life as a schoolgirl, leaving school at the age of 16, studying by correspondence and entering the workforce. She was happiest watching films and television, with her diary recording what she watched from morning to night. Sketchley's diaries provide an intimate insight into the television habits and preferences of one Australian. This girl-centred article frames this unique record within the context of her family circumstances and within the field of girls' media studies. It examines the everyday practice of an active television consumer and fan, engaging with programmes (especially Star Trek) and television periodicals, and seeking comfort and community.

The concept of ’natural heritage’ has become increasingly significant with the threat of dwindling resources, environmental degradation and climatic change. As humanity’s impact on the condition of life on earth has become more prominent, a discernible shift in the relationship between western society and the environment has taken place. This is reflective of wider historical processes which reveal a constantly changing association between humanity’s definition and perception of what ’nature’ constitutes or what can be defined as ’natural’. From the ornate collections of specimens which formed the basis of a distinct concept of ’nature’ emerging during the Enlightenment, this definition and the wider relationship between humanity and natural history have reflected issues of identity, place and politics in the modern era.

This book examines this process and focuses on the ideas, values and agendas that have defined the representation and reception of the history of the natural world, including geology and palaeontology, within contemporary society and addresses how the heritage of natural history, whether through museums, parks, tourist sites or popular culture is used to shape social, political, cultural and moral identities. It will be of interest to scholars and practitioners within heritage studies, public history, ecology, environmental studies and geography.