Business on television: continuity, change and risk in the development of television’s ‘business entertainment format’

This article traces the evolution of what has become known as the business entertainment format on British television. Drawing on interviews with channel controllers, commissioners and producers from across the BBC, Channel 4 and the independent sector this research highlights a number of key individuals who have shaped the development of the business entertainment format and investigates some of the tensions that arise from combining entertainment values with more journalistic or educational approaches to factual television. While much work has looked at docusoaps and reality programming, this area of television output has remained largely unexamined by television scholars. The research argues that as the television industry has itself developed into a business, programme-makers have come to view themselves as [creative] entrepreneurs thus raising the issue of whether the development off-screen of a more commercial, competitive and entrepreneurial TV marketplace has impacted on the way the medium frames its onscreen engagement with business, entrepreneurship, risk and wealth creation

Becoming a Crorepati: From Glocal TV Game to Grobal Fiction

Numerous studies have dealt with the process of globalization and its various cultural products. Three such cultural products illustrate this process: Vikas Swarup’s novel Q and A (2005), the TV quiz show Kaun banega crorepati? (Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?), and Danny Boyle’s film Slumdog Millionaire (2008). The novel, the TV show and the film have so far been studied separately. Juxtaposing and comparing Q and A, Kaun banega crorepati, and Slumdog Millionaire provides an effective means to shed light on the dialogic and interactive nature of the process of globalization. It is argued through this case study that an analysis of their place of production, language and content, helps clarify the derivative concepts of “glocalization” and “grobalization” with regard to the way(s) contemporary cultural products respond to globalization

Surviving Reality TV: The Ultimate Challenge for Reality Show Contestants

With the popularity of reality television remaining unabated, precious little attention is given to the effects participation as a contestant on a reality television show may have. Although there is a growing body of work concerning the mental toll reality television takes on its contestants, the legal ramifications of such effects have remained largely unexamined. Even as some producers of such shows acknowledge the effects their programming has on their contestants, many hide behind the contracts contestants signed prior to filming, effectively blocking litigation. Further, a favorite defense of producers is that the contestants are not their employees and thus are not owed common employer-employee duties. Reality show con-testants are left with a feeling of being deceived and manipulated by producers hungry for ratings

Representations of African American Women on Reality Television After the Great Recession

This project is animated by two related problems. First, there are relatively few studies of the ways that African American women are represented on reality television. Second, the current literature about representations of Black women on reality television completely ignores the Great Recession as an important contextual factor. In this study, I pair the Constant Comparative Method of textual analysis with discourse analysis to answer the question: “How does reality television represent African American women in terms of gender, race, and class in the context of the aftermath of the Great Recession?” I closely analyzed reality television programs with the highest ratings in 2012: The Voice, American Idol, Survivor, The Biggest Loser, and The Real Housewives of Atlanta. To better understand how Black women are represented on these shows, I contextualize my analysis in terms of intersectionality, post-racism, post-sexism, and neoliberalism. This analysis generated several results and conclusions. On the most popular reality television programs (all but The Real Housewives of Atlanta), African American women are uniquely subjected to the logic of neoliberalism by the hosts, judges, and coaches on the shows. Placing Black women in the logic of neoliberalism puts them in a no-win situation and explains their failure in the competition on the show, and by extension, their failure in society at large. In addition, these programs employ contemporary “controlling images” of Black women: the Black Lady, the Strong Black Woman, and the Black Bitc

Spartan Daily, October 30, 1978

Volume 71, Issue 40https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/6399/thumbnail.jp

The Protection of television formats: intellectual property and market based strategies.

Television formats have become a major export product, with Britain alone accounting for nearly half of all format hours broadcast annually worldwide. Yet, there is no such thing as a television format right under copyright law. Any producer is free to develop game, reality and talent shows that are based on similar ideas. This research analyses the paradox of growth in the international trade of formats in the absence of any legal solutions which provide precise and enforceable governance. The research first assesses the limits of copyright law as a means of protecting formats, by creating a bespoke database of 59 format disputes reported in the trade press and in online services. Disputes are categorised by jurisdiction, ground of dispute and decision or settlement. Secondly, theoretical propositions of format protection are developed, based on theories from the diverse fields of cultural theory (production of culture perspective), marketing (brand identity, innovation and extensions) and media economics (distribution dynamics and scale of production). These propositions then are exposed to semi-structured interviews with format sellers at international television trade fairs, as well as senior managers at Fremantlemedia (a leading format originator and distributor). The qualitative data is synthesized into a theory of format trade using IP and market based means of protection. Format developers appear to use three groups of strategies to exploit TV formats internationally. These are (1) Formalization and transaction of know-how (format bibles, flying producers, confidentiality agreements and access control); (2) Managing the brand (brand identity, localisations, brand extensions, innovation, trademarks); (3) Distribution dynamics and industry conventions (scale of production, social networks, retaliation, trade fairs). This research contributes to original knowledge in media and cultural industries management by first empirically illustrating a recurrent, under-researched problem and then advancing a theory to understand industry behaviour to overcome the same

Winter/Spring 2020 catalog

This catalog offers a dynamic selection of courses provided by our Continuing Education Department, the Academy for Lifelong Learning, and the McGrath Computer Learning Center. It describes programs that are presented by the USC Aiken faculty and experts from our community :p ractical training seminars and workshops; an immense variety of online programs; exciting travel opportunities; engaging presentations; and insightful field experiences. The catalog offers courses from specialized trainings to help advance your career, to classes that are just for fun

“Did You Like It?”: Adolescent Sex Education in the United States, 1980-2018

This thesis examines the social and political history of public adolescent sex education in the United States between 1980 and 2018, while working to highlight contemporary teenage narratives. Tying together theories of citizenship, welfare, and adolescence, this thesis explores how American teenagers have been treated as dependent citizens without personal responsibility or choice during this historical moment. I examine how the State justifies denying access to quality comprehensive sex education in favor of punitive abstinence-only curricula based on the position adolescents hold in American society. This marginalization resulting from age intersects with other identities —race, class, gender, sexuality, citizenship— to affect young people in a variety of ways. However, this thesis is not a demographic study of effect, rather I examine the production and spread of sex education messaging itself. Drawing on public policy related to federal abstinence-only education funding (1980s – 2000s), national newspaper articles (1990s), Evangelical Christian media (1990s), texts written by educators (1990s), and teen drama television (1994 – 2007), this thesis follows the sex education discourses throughout the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Using interviews I conducted with young people between October 2017 and January 2018, I also add the voices of teenagers affected by this history throughout. The final chapter, which compiles and analyzes my oral history interviews with teenagers, acts not only as testimony to the potential harm of non-comprehensive sex education curricula, but offers solutions for improvement. The young people I spoke to form a community within these pages to illuminate our audience about how sex education could change in order to combat systemic injustice and embolden the bodily autonomy and physical and emotional sexual health of teenagers

The War of the Sexes Glossary: How Social Media Could Destroy American Marriage

We viewed highly influential social media channels on the internet regularly using non-participant observation as our method. We observed hundreds of short videos on YouTube and other platforms, as a sociocultural anthropologic field study, from January 2023 to January 2024. Given the well documented decline in marriage globally, we sought to understand common themes shared by social media content providers. Our non-participant observations led us to develop the War of the Sexes Glossary. Generation Z appears to have solidified a worldview that marriage is unnecessary. Emil Brunner’s predictions from 1945 have come true, where he argued that “If the social basis, marriage, is rotten, the whole community is rotten.” The Manosphere, in direct response to feminists’ rhetoric, has fostered three main complaints prohibiting them from marriage commitment: “No Fault Divorce,” “Presumptive Paternity” and “My Body, My Choice.” We offer practicable solutions to policy makers on how to mitigate this dangerous worldview that, if not corrected, could destroy marriage in America