Cable Visions

by Banet-Weiser, Sarah

• ISBN13: 9780814799505
• ISBN10: 0814799507
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-09-01
• Publisher: New York Univ Pr

Summary

Through a series of highly original and carefully researched essays, Cable Visions offers a lively and comprehensive survey of the contemporary multichannel television landscape in the United States.--William Boddy, author of New Media and Popular Imagination: Launching Radio, Television, and Digital Media in the United StatesCable television, on the brink of a boom in the 1970s, promised audiences a new media frontier-an expansive new variety of entertainment and information choices. Music video, 24-hour news, 24-hour weather, movie channels, children's channels, home shopping, and channels targeting groups based on demographic characteristics or interests were introduced.Cable Visions looks beyond broadcasting's mainstream, toward cable's alternatives, to critically consider the capacity of commercial media to serve the public interest. It offers an overview of the industry's history and regulatory trends, case studies of key cable newcomers aimed at niche markets (including Nickelodeon, BET, and HBO Latino), and analyses of programming forms introduced by cable TV (such as nature, cooking, sports, and history channels).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
Institutions and Audiences
Introduction	p. 17
The Moms 'n' Pops of CATV	p. 24
A Taste of Class: Pay-TV and the Commodification of Television in Postwar America	p. 44
Cable's Digital Future	p. 66
If It's Not TV, What Is It? The Case of U.S. Subscription Television	p. 85
Where the Cable Ends: Television beyond Fringe Areas	p. 103
Channels
Introduction	p. 129
Discovery's Wild Discovery: The Growth and Globalization of TV's Animal Genres	p. 137
Tunnel Vision and Food: A Political-Economic Analysis of Food Network	p. 158
Target Market Black: BET and the Branding of African America	p. 177
Monolingualism, Biculturalism, and Cable TV: HBO Latino and the Promise of the Multiplex	p. 194
Gay Programming, Gay Publics: Public and Private Tensions in Lesbian and Gay Cable Channels	p. 215
The Nickelodeon Brand: Buying and Selling the Audience	p. 234
Cable Programs: The Platinum Age of Television?
Introduction	p. 255
Cable Watching: HBO, The Sopranos, and Discourses of Distinction	p. 261
Bank Tellers and Flag Wavers: Cable News in the United States	p. 284
Dualcasting: Bravo's Gay Programming and the Quest for Women Audiences	p. 302
"I'm Rich, Bitch!!!": The Comedy of Chappelle's Show	p. 319
Worldwide Wrestling Entertainment's Global Reach: Latino Fans and Wrestlers	p. 338
About the Contributors	p. 359
Index	p. 363
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