BBC's Wednesday Magazine and Arts Television for Women

Wednesday Magazine (1958–1963) was an innovative BBC television afternoon arts and culture strand produced by the specialist BBC women's programme unit, which had been built up and nurtured by the first dedicated head of women's programmes Doreen Stephens, who was appointed in 1953. Stephens was responsible for the development of a diverse and extensive range of women's programming; highly ambitious in the offering that it presented to its female viewers. This article will examine the series Wednesday Magazine exploring the wealth of arts and culture items broadcast, whilst considering the programme's significance in critical histories of both women's programming and arts television. The article will also make an intervention into historical debates around what constituted women's television in Britain.     

Navigating the Maze: Sources for press historians

Television history channels and programming have seen considerable growth in recent years, yet empirical research on television history audiences remains limited. This essay argues that media history scholars need better to understand what happens when audiences consume television history, examining the critical debates concerning the genre's specific modalities of rendering the past on screen before exploring what opportunities and problems it affords viewers. The essay draws on original qualitative, empirical research on audiences of historical reality television through a specific, small-scale case study of BBC Wales' Coal House at War (Indus 2008). It argues for the need to retain a dual focus upon such programming's historical content and its televisuality if we are to appreciate the intricacies of viewers' cultural consumption. The essay concludes by demonstrating that audiences' own oral and written responses to television history reveal something of how people, situated in their specific times and places, understand both their past and their present.     

Surviving Survivor: A Content Analysis of Antisocial Behavior and Its Context in a Popular Reality Television Show

The scope and nature of reality television has changed since researchers last conducted a content analysis of the antisocial behavior for this type of programming. This study examines the content of seven seasons of Survivor, one of America's longest running reality television programs, to determine the types, frequency, and context of antisocial behavior presented in the series as well as the possible effects of the program on longtime viewers using social learning and cultivation theories. In the 76.4 hours of programming analyzed for this study, 4,207 antisocial acts were documented in the coding database. Indirect aggression and verbal aggression were found to be the most frequently occurring types of antisocial behavior. The number (4,207) and the rate (45.7 acts per hour) of antisocial acts in the seven seasons of Survivor analyzed in this study is higher than the findings of a previous study of antisocial behavior in reality-based television conducted in 1997. This study clearly demonstrates that longtime viewers of Survivor get a higher dose of antisocial behavior than did regular viewers of news programming and other reality-based programs that aired slightly more than 10 years ago.     

Lucy's two babies: framing the first televised depiction of pregnancy

This historical research describes the strategies used by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and several other periodicals to discuss the incorporation of Lucille Ball's pregnancy into her television sitcom, I Love Lucy. This important media event occurred in the early 1950s and marked the first time that an image of pregnancy and childbirth would be depicted on national television. Although the inclusion of sexual content in the mass media was highly controversial at the time of Ball's pregnancy, this analysis concluded that the press was generally favorable in its treatment of the topic. Journalists highlighted the popularity of the event, praised I Love Lucy creators for their sensitive treatment of the topic, and drew comparisons between characters' on-screen and off-screen lives. This research elucidates the emergence of representations of pregnancy and childbirth on television that are now commonly featured in modern broadcast programming.     

TV and the iPad: How the Tablet is Redefining the Way We Watch

The tablet computer offers options for streaming TV programming that potentially alters viewing behaviors compared to the traditional television set, yet there is a dearth of research related to this viewing alternative. This study uses a national sample of adult iPad owners to investigate the tablet's role as a TV. The frameworks of continuity-discontinuity, use-diffusion, and attention and absorption to programming are applied to uncover where the tablet fits into the current repertoire of viewing devices, and how individuals are engaging with traditional TV programming through it. Results show that overall, the tablet's functionality as a TV can lead to experiential differences.     

“It-Getting” in the Colbert Nation Online Forum

Previous experimental research that has found that college students exposed to a clip of the popular Comedy Central program entitled The Colbert Report were unable to distinguish its satirical intent from its stated content. To further investigate whether the show's viewers consume The Colbert Report as a satire of conservative television or construe it as a sincere expression of conservative sentiment, the present study examines the content of the program's online discussion forum. Forum posts reflect a diversity of responses to Stephen Colbert and The Colbert Report, many of them recognizing the ironic qualities of the show and its host.     

It's HBO: Passionate engagement,TV branding,and tourism in the postbroadcast Era

This paper contends with how postbroadcast television branding subsumes viewers’ affective interactivities with place to produce brand value. Focusing on the HBO series Treme, I argue that Treme engendered HBO's postbroadcast brand mutation by producing “passionate engagement,” where viewers were invited to interact with the show by touring New Orleans, thus adding place to online interactivity and multiscreen engagement as a means of constructing an “authentic” brand identity. The desire for viewers to connect to New Orleans’ culture is thus transformed into a vehicle for profit making for HBO and an assurance to shareholders that the brand still holds value.     

An Evaluation of the Federal Communications Commission's 2007 Report on TV Violence

At the behest of 39 members of the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Energy and Commerce, in 2007 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released a report that addressed the effects of violent television on children, the constitutionality of various strategies for regulating children's exposure to violent television content, and the viability and benefit of a congressionally developed definition of excessively violent television programming. This review evaluates how well the FCC carried out the tasks assigned to it by Congress, particularly in regards to the FCC's assessment of the social scientific research on the effects of exposure to televised violence.     

Structural determinants of the television news audience

This study examined the impact that program scheduling and market characteristics had on people's exposure to the early evening local news. Three factors combined to explain 81% of the variation in local news ratings across the U.S.: a station's network news rating, the lead‐in rating for the local news, and the size of the available television audience. We discussed how such structural factors might be better integrated into research and theory that emphasize individual characteristics as determinants of exposure to television programming.     

Conceptualizations of Female Empowerment and Enjoyment of Sexualized Characters in Reality Television

This study explores how young women's definitions of empowerment relate to their reception of The Girls Next Door, a popular reality show that documents the life and fun times of Hugh Hefner's three sexy, live-in girlfriends. Specifically, we examine whether young women's general attraction to reality television relates to their endorsement of different views of women and empowerment, how these endorsements relate to the women's own sexual permissiveness, and finally how these views relate to perceptions of The Girls Next Door. Results suggest that reality television preferences relate to greater endorsement of sexual empowerment and traditional feminine roles. However, sexual permissiveness is elevated only when sexual empowerment is endorsed, and perceptions of the show appear to be most positive only when sexual permissiveness is elevated.     

Libraries,Lectures, and Talk Shows: Some Russian Internet Resources for Research,Teaching, and Learning

ABSTRACT

Ethnocentrism affects perception and choices, and scholars, teachers, and students may not see or seek the “global” in our “global information revolution,” especially in such vast monolingual social spaces as the United States and the Anglophone world. Russia illuminates how unfortunate this state of affairs is because perceptions of Russia are so negative; whereas online information and open access there are so plentiful. Elibrary.ru offers free, full-text access to Russia’s periodical scholarship in all disciplines. Postnauka.ru is a lecture platform for Russian academics that rivals TED Talks in scale and production quality. Kul’tura is a federal television channel devoted entirely to education. Academic talk shows constitute part of the programming there and elsewhere. High-quality and reliable online tools such as these can enhance “Western” scholars’ and educators’ resource repertoires.     

Manufacturing Authenticity: The Rhetoric of “Real” in Women's Magazines

Discourses of authenticity are symptomatic of an era of destabilized communication hierarchies, participatory media, and reality television programming. Women's magazines are an apt site to examine articulations of authenticity given the genre's traditional emphases on aspirational consumption and “making up” the external self. This study explores constructions of authenticity in the advertising and editorial content of two top-ranked publications, Glamour and Cosmopolitan. Drawing on a qualitative textual analysis of these magazines, the author conceptualizes three overlapping tropes of authenticity: (a) promoting natural, organic products; (b) the celebration of ordinary-looking women; and (c) the encouragement of inner-directed self-discovery. These striations of real products, real external beauty, and real internal beauty, respectively, allow authenticity to seep throughout the texts without fundamentally disrupting their traditional commercial function.     

Prosocial effects of entertainment television in India

The study examines the prosocial effects of Hum Log (We People), India's first long‐running television soap opera. Hum Log was a prosocial television programme that was designed to promote women's status in Indian society. Regression analysis was used to measure the degree to which exposure to Hum Log affected viewers' (1) awareness of certain prosocial beliefs promoted by the series, (2) level of television dependency, (3) involvement with the characters of Hum Log, and (4) adherence to three prosocial beliefs promoted by Hum Log. Exposure to Hum Log was positively associated with viewers' awareness of the programme's prosocial messages, television dependency, and involvement with television characters in the series. Viewers who were more exposed to Hum Log were also more likely to believe in women's equality and women's freedom of choice, but not in family planning. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of present and future research on the use of prosocial television programmes for development in Asia.     

Movement as memory: Significant form in eyes on the prize

Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years ranks as one of the most successful public television documentaries ever produced. Although it originally aired in 1987, the series has since been shown widely in school and college classrooms, where it arguably has influenced many students’ understanding of the civil rights struggle and, more fundamentally, of the nature and form of “social movement” itself This essay draws upon Kenneth Burke's concept of “significant form” to examine how the documentary's design works to shape public memory of the civil rights struggle as a social movement. In addition to yielding insight into the rhetorical structure of a landmark television documentary, the analysis of form in Eyes on the Prize illumines how public consciousness of “social movement” can be created and perpetuated through narrative form.     

A dream deferred: The failed fantasy of Norman Lear's a.k.a. Pablo

Norman Lear's return to commercial network television in 1983 after an absence of five years resulted in the first prime time series about and starring Hispanic‐Americans. The lack of a coherent and sustained rhetorical vision resulted in the failure of the series. This essay uses fantasy theme analysis to examine the series’ narrative and production discourse and suggests how Pablo might have achieved success.     

Diverse techniques in international broadcasting

The question of “who is to supply programs” to television networks is one that affects viewers, advertisers, and licensees as well as networks and program producers and packagers. The revolutionary change that took place in the early 1950's, when the advertising agency was supplanted by the network as the primary source of programming, cured many then‐existing problems, but led to complaints that the networks could and did prevent “outside” creative program agencies from having an outlet for their productions. These complaints, added to those presented in Congress and elsewhere about the present quality of television programming, led to the proposal discussed in the following article. Often mislabeled, and still more often misunderstood, the FCC's proposal is intended to “preserve intact the present structure of television network broadcasting, but seeks within that structure to improve conditions of competition in the program process.”     

Programming Strategies of U.S.-Originated Cable Networks in Asian Markets: Descriptive Study Based on the Product Standardization and Adaptation Theory

Abstract

This multiple-case study explored television programming products offered by U.S.-originated cable networks—namely, Music Television, Cartoon Network, Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, and Discovery Channel—in such Asian markets as Japan, Singapore, and Taiwan and attempted to identify factors that shape their programming strategies. On the basis of theoretical foundations concerning product standardization and adaptation in international marketing research, this study found that various external and intrafirm factors, ranging from host country's cultural and environmental characteristics to network's business orientation, are relevant to the decision on programming products by global television networks.     

Exploring Attribution of Responsibility in a Cross-National Study of TV News Coverage of the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen

This study investigates how prime-time television news portrayed attributions of responsibility for climate change policy issues in the United States, China, and Canada. In analyzing news coverage of the 2009 climate change summit in Copenhagen, we distinguish between causal and treatment responsibility. Additionally, we develop frames to test Cerutti's conceptualization of responsibility attribution (2010). The results suggest that television news in the 3 countries portrayed treatment responsibility differently. The prominence of morality, global justice, and national efficacy frames varied across countries, and these conditions were associated with the treatment responsibility frame, partially lending support to the validity of Cerutti's conceptualization.     

Expanding Television’s Cultural Forum in the Digital Era: Prime Time Television,Twitter, and Black Lives Matter

Twitter updates and expands television’s cultural forum model by letting viewers speak to current events such as the Black Live Matter (BLM) movement. This article analyzes 1,985 tweets in response to three television episodes (Law & Order: SVU, The Good Wife, and Scandal) that dramatized BLM, and identifies five common themes in how viewers address these representations: thematic appropriateness, timing, producers’ qualifications, institutional critiques, and the purpose of entertainment television. This study concludes that Twitter facilitates a meta-commentary, which expands traditional discussions of entertainment programming, and that these programs transcend “mere” entertainment to become critiques of larger social movements.     

A Longitudinal Analysis of Foreign Program Imports on South Korean Television, 1978–2002: A Case of Rising Indigenous Capacity in Program Supply

A time-series analysis using the 25-year longitudinal data shows that the proportion of foreign imports aired on the Korean terrestrial broadcasters decreased between 1978 and 2002. The findings indicate that Korea's competitiveness in producing television content has risen over the period, as Korea's economy and television advertising market grew consistently and rapidly in spite of the short-term drop in the late 1990s. The rise of domestic television programming output was particularly evident in drama series. The Korean case defies the crude form of Americanization of television in developing countries. However, it also shows that it will take time and resources for a country to enter into the phase of increasing indigenous television content.