Description
The author encourages critical analysis while discussing how television (limited here to broadcasts that appeared on a network at one time) achieves meaning through technical nuts and bolts, business, and style. He discusses non-empirical, non-evaluative methods of criticism (e.g. feminist, genre study) and how series, commercials, music videos, and cartoons can be interpreted through each point of view. In this third edition, a chapter analyzing reality television has been added, and there is new discussion on how the digital age has diminished the stronghold networks held on the medium during the "broadcast era." This book will be of interest to communications and media studies students, as well as those who may enter broadcasting in a technical, creative, or business capacity. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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Written in clear and lively prose, Television explains how television programs and commercials are made, and how they function as producers of meaning. Author Jeremy Butler demonstrates the ways in which cinematography and videography, acting, lighting, set design, editing, and sound combine to produce meanings that viewers take away from their television experience. This popular text teaches students to read between the lines, encouraging them to incorporate critical thinking into their own television viewing. Television provides essential critical and historical context, lucidly explaining how different critical methods have been applied to the medium, such as genre study, ideological criticism, and cultural studies. Hundreds of illustrations from television programs introduce the reader to the varied ways in which television goes about telling stories, presenting news, and selling products, and a companion Web site (www.TVcrit.com) supplements the text with color frame grabs and illustrative video clips. Highlights of this third edition include:*new segments on “reality” television and television animation since 1990;*an updated and expanded chapter surveying critical methods applied to television;*a wide variety of examples, including recent television shows; and*a supplemental DVD to provide teachers with video examples and exercises. With its distinctive approach to examining television, this text is appropriate for courses in television studies, media criticism, and general critical studies. In addition, Television will encourage critical thinking in television production courses.
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