British Television A Reader

by Buscombe, Edward

• ISBN13: 9780198742654
• ISBN10: 0198742657
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-08-24
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

OXFORD TELEVISION STUDIES General Editors: Charlotte Brunsdon and John Caughie Oxford Television Studies offers international authors--both established and emerging--an opportunity to reflect on particular problems of history, theory, and criticism which are specific to television and which are central to its critical understanding. The perspective of the series will be international, while respecting the peculiarities of the national; it will be historical, without proposing simple histories; and it will be grounded in the analysis of programs and genres. The series is intended to be foundational without being introductory or routine, facilitating clearly focused critical reflection and engaging a range of debates, topics, and approaches which will offer a basis for the development of television studies. This book attempts to give a broad overview of British television by examining both the institutional framework and the programs that it has produced. A range of reprinted writings from the work of acknowledged experts is supplemented by specially commissioned essays on such key topics as sport and British television in the global context. It will be a key text for all students taking courses on British television and broadcasting.

Author Biography

Edward Buscombe is Visiting Professor of Media Arts, Southampton Institute. His previous publications include The Screen Education Reader (co-edited with Manuel Alvarado and Richard Collins, 1993) and Back in the Saddle Again: New Essays on the Western (co-edited with Roberta Pearson, 1998).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	ix
List of Contributors	xi
Introduction	1	(22)
Part I: Histories, Structures, Economics	23	(120)
The BBC and the General Strike: May 1926	25	(20)
Michael Tracey
Public Service Broadcasting: The History of a Concept	45	(18)
Paddy Scannell
The End of the Monopoly	63	(29)
Asa Briggs
Channel Four Television: From Annan to Grade	92	(26)
Sylvia Harvey
Money Talks: Broadcasting Finance and Public Culture	118	(25)
Graham Murdock
Part II: Programmes	143	(180)
Creating the Audience	145	(28)
David Buckingham
The Construction of a Community	173	(22)
Christine Geraghty
The Structure of Anxiety: Recent British Television Crime Fiction	195	(23)
Charlotte Brunsdon
Crime and Crisis: British Reality Television in Action	218	(17)
Annette Hill
Ill News Comes Often on the Back of Worse	235	(13)
John Eldridge
Every Wart and Pustule: Gilbert Harding and Television Stardom	248	(17)
Andy Medhurst
Framing `the Real': Oranges, Middlemarch, X-Files	265	(13)
Robin Nelson
Broadcast Comedy and Sitcom	278	(12)
Steve Neale
Frank Krutnik
The Lads and the Gladiators: Traditional Masculinities in a Postmodern Televisual Landscape	290	(13)
Garry Whannel
The International Circulation of British Television	303	(20)
Tom O'Regan
Select Bibliography	323	(16)
Index	339