The Quiz Show

by Holmes, Su

• ISBN13: 9780748627523
• ISBN10: 0748627529
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-10-14
• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Summary

Despite its enduring popularity with both broadcasters and audiences, the quiz show is marginalized in studies of popular television. Su Holmes takes a fresh approach to quiz shows while also revisiting, updating, and expanding existing quiz show scholarship. Discussing Double Your Money, The $64,000 Dollar Question, Twenty-One, The Price is Right, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and The Weakest Link, Holmes addresses the relationship between quiz shows and the television genre; the early broadcast history of the quiz show; questions of institutional regulation; quiz show aesthetics; the social significance of "games;" "ordinary" people as television performers, and questions of quiz show reception, from interactivity to on-line fandom.Key Features One of the few book-length studies of the quiz showAn accessible introduction to the genre for undergraduate studentsNew archival research that contributes to the early history of the quiz showDemonstrates why the quiz show matters to television studiesBrings established approaches together with new interventions and areas of study (such as looking at the quiz show in the multi-platform age and the study of "ordinary" people as performers).

Author Biography

Su Holmes is Reader in Television Studies at the University of East Anglia.

Table of Contents

Game On	p. 1
Genre and the Quiz Show	p. 11
Quiz Show Histories	p. 32
Quiz Show Theory: Approaching the Programme Text	p. 58
Knowledge in the Quiz Show	p. 86
The Quiz Show and 'Ordinary' People as Television Performers	p. 118
'Asking the Audience': Quiz Shows and Their Viewers	p. 140
'Not the Final Answer ...'	p. 162
Bibliography	p. 166
Index	p. 175
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