The Television Will Be Revolutionized

After occupying a central space in American living rooms for the past fifty years, is television, as we've known it, dead? This work examines television at the turn of the twenty-first century. It takes us behind the screen to explore what is changing, why it's changing, and why these changes matter.

Go behind the TV screen to explore what is changing, why it is changing, and why the changes matters Many proclaimed the “end of television” in the early years of the twenty-first century, as capabilities and features of the boxes that occupied a central space in American living rooms for the preceding fifty years were radically remade. In this revised, second edition of her definitive book, Amanda D. Lotz proves that rumors of the death of television were greatly exaggerated and explores how new distribution and viewing technologies have resurrected the medium. Shifts in the basic practices of making and distributing television have not been hastening its demise, but are redefining what we can do with television, what we expect from it, how we use it—in short, revolutionizing it. Television, as both a technology and a tool for cultural storytelling, remains as important today as ever, but it has changed in fundamental ways. The Television Will Be Revolutionized provides a sophisticated history of the present, examining television in what Lotz terms the “post-network” era while providing frameworks for understanding the continued change in the medium. The second edition addresses adjustments throughout the industry wrought by broadband delivered television such as Netflix, YouTube, and cross-platform initiatives like TV Everywhere, as well as how technologies such as tablets and smartphones have changed how and where we view. Lotz begins to deconstruct the future of different kinds of television—exploring how “prized content,” live television sports and contests, and linear viewing may all be “television,” but very different types of television for both viewers and producers. Through interviews with those working in the industry, surveys of trade publications, and consideration of an extensive array of popular shows, Lotz takes us behind the screen to explore what is changing, why it is changing, and why the changes matter.

Beyond Prime Time brings together established television scholars writing new chapters in their areas of expertise that reconsider how programming forms other than prime-time series have been affected by the wide-ranging industrial changes instituted over the past twenty years. The chapters explore the relationship between textual and industrial changes in particular forms such as news, talk, sports, soap operas, syndication, children’s programming, made-for-television movies, public broadcasting, and local programming.

Television audiences and its industry alike have been confused by the emergence of new ways to watch television. On one hand, the programs seem every bit like the television we've long known, while the way we can watch, what we can watch, and the business models supporting them differ significantly. Portals: A Treatise on Internet-Distributed Television pushes understandings of the business of television to keep pace with the considerable technological change of the last decade. It explains why shows such as Orange is the New Black or Transparent are indeed television despite coming to screens over internet connection and in exchange for a monthly fee. It explores how internet-distributed television is able to do new things - particularly, allow different people to watch different shows chosen from a library of possibilities. This technological ability allows new audience behaviors and new norms in making television. Portals are the "channels" of internet-distributed television, and Portals identifies how the task of curating a library of shows differs from channels' task of building a schedule. It explores the business model--subscriber funding--that supports many portals, and identifies the key differences from advertiser or direct purchase. Portals considers what we know about the future of television, even though we remain early in a process of transformative change.

The collision of new technologies, changing business strategies, and innovative storytelling that produced a new golden age of TV. Cable television channels were once the backwater of American television, programming recent and not-so-recent movies and reruns of network shows. Then came La Femme Nikita, OZ, The Sopranos, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, and The Walking Dead. And then, just as “prestige cable” became a category, came House of Cards and Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video, and other Internet distributors of television content. What happened? In We Now Disrupt This Broadcast, Amanda Lotz chronicles the collision of new technologies, changing business strategies, and innovative storytelling that produced an era termed “peak TV.” Lotz explains that changes in the business of television expanded the creative possibilities of television. She describes the costly infrastructure rebuilding undertaken by cable service providers in the late 1990s and the struggles of cable channels to produce (and pay for) original, scripted programming in order to stand out from the competition. These new programs defied television conventions and made viewers adjust their expectations of what television could be. Le Femme Nikita offered cable's first antihero, Mad Men cost more than advertisers paid, The Walking Dead became the first mass cable hit, and Game of Thrones was the first global television blockbuster. Internet streaming didn't kill cable, Lotz tells us. Rather, it revolutionized how we watch television. Cable and network television quickly established their own streaming portals. Meanwhile, cable service providers had quietly transformed themselves into Internet providers, able to profit from both prestige cable and streaming services. Far from being dead, television continues to transform.

A phenomenal account, newly updated, of how twelve innovative television dramas transformed the medium and the culture at large, featuring Sepinwall’s take on the finales of Mad Men and Breaking Bad. In The Revolution Was Televised, celebrated TV critic Alan Sepinwall chronicles the remarkable transformation of the small screen over the past fifteen years. Focusing on twelve innovative television dramas that changed the medium and the culture at large forever, including The Sopranos, Oz, The Wire, Deadwood, The Shield, Lost, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 24, Battlestar Galactica, Friday Night Lights, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad, Sepinwall weaves his trademark incisive criticism with highly entertaining reporting about the real-life characters and conflicts behind the scenes. Drawing on interviews with writers David Chase, David Simon, David Milch, Joel Surnow and Howard Gordon, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, and Vince Gilligan, among others, along with the network executives responsible for green-lighting these groundbreaking shows, The Revolution Was Televised is the story of a new golden age in TV, one that’s as rich with drama and thrills as the very shows themselves.

In his seminal book "Television's Second Golden Age", Robert Thompson described quality TV as 'best defined by what it is not': 'it is not "regular" TV'. Audacious maybe, but his statement renewed debate on the meaning of this highly contentious term. Dealing primarily with the post-1996 era shaped by digital technologies and defined by consumer choice and brand marketing, this book brings together leading scholars, established journalists and experienced broadcasters working in the field of contemporary television to debate what we currently mean by quality TV. They go deep into contemporary American television fictions, from "The Sopranos" and "The West Wing", to "CSI" and "Lost" - innovative, sometimes controversial, always compelling dramas, which one scholar has described as 'now better than the movies!' But how do we understand the emergence of these kinds of fiction? Are they genuinely new? What does quality TV have to tell us about the state of today's television market? And is this a new Golden Age of quality TV? Original, often polemic, each chapter proposes new ways of thinking about and defining quality TV. There is a foreword from Robert Thompson, and heated dialogue between British and US television critics. Also included - and a great coup - are interviews with W. Snuffy Walden (scored "The West Wing" among others) and with David Chase ("The Sopranos" creator). "Quality TV" provides throughout groundbreaking and innovative theoretical and critical approaches to studying television and for understanding the current - and future - TV landscape.

Locating a persistent black nationalist desire - yearning for home and community - in the shows produced in the 1980s and 1990s, Zook shows how the Fox hip-hop sitcom both reinforced and rebelled against earlier black sitcoms from the 1960s and 1970s.

In Black Power TV, Devorah Heitner chronicles the emergence of Black public affairs television starting in 1968. She examines two local shows, New York's Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant and Boston's Say Brother, and the national programs Soul! and Black Journal. These shows offered viewers radical and innovative programming: the introspections of a Black police officer in Harlem, African American high school students discussing visionary alternatives to the curriculum, and Miriam Makeba comparing race relations in the United States to apartheid in South Africa. While Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant and Say Brother originated from a desire to contain Black discontent during a period of urban uprisings and racial conflict, these shows were re-envisioned by their African American producers as venues for expressing Black critiques of mainstream discourse, disseminating Black culture, and modeling Black empowerment. At the national level, Soul! and Black Journal allowed for the imagining of a Black nation and a distinctly African American consciousness, and they played an influential role in the rise of the Black Arts Movement. Black Power TV reveals how regulatory, activist, and textual histories are interconnected and how Black public affairs television redefined African American representations in ways that continue to reverberate today.

Television today is better than ever. From The Sopranos to Breaking Bad, Sex and the City to Girls, and Modern Family to Louie, never has so much quality programming dominated our screens. Exploring how we got here, acclaimed TV critic David Bianculli traces the evolution of the classic TV genres, among them the sitcom, the crime show, the miniseries, the soap opera, the Western, the animated series, the medical drama, and the variety show. In each genre he selects five key examples of the form to illustrate its continuities and its dramatic departures. Drawing on exclusive and in-depth interviews with many of the most famed auteurs in television history, Bianculli shows how the medium has evolved into the premier form of visual narrative art. Includes interviews with: MEL BROOKS, MATT GROENING, DAVID CHASE, KEVIN SPACEY, AMY SCHUMER, VINCE GILLIGAN, AARON SORKIN, MATTHEW WEINER, JUDD APATOW, LOUIS C.K., DAVID MILCH, DAVID E. KELLEY, JAMES L. BROOKS, LARRY DAVID, KEN BURNS, LARRY WILMORE, AND MANY, MANY MORE