Perspectives on entertainment television's portrayal of a racial incident: An intensive analysis

Television entertainment plays an important role in the development of political orientations concerning authority, order, freedom and equality. This article shows that viewers have “limited autonomy” in constructing meaning from television entertainment. Q‐method was employed to determine viewer's subjective reactions to an episode of Law and Order that fictionalized a racial incident that took place in Brooklyn, New York in 1991. The analysis revealed that there were at least seven distinct readings of the program. While there was consensus about some aspects of the story, viewers obviously had some autonomy regarding interpretation. We argue for a synthesis of theories that emphasize “closed” and “open” meanings of television programs. Entertainment is politically relevant and the most useful way to examine its impact is through intensive methods.     

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.”     

“Listening in,” our new national pastime

The current emphasis placed by the television industry on the development and production of public affairs programing has led to increased reliance upon perhaps the oldest, most simple, and least costly form of informative programing: the interview. This recent attention should not be allowed to obscure two facts: 1) the average interview program, valuable as it may be, rarely attracts audiences (and sponsors) to the same extent as does an “entertainment” program; and 2) some programs are exceptions. For eight years the “Paul Coates Show” has fascinated a loyal audience that has amply repaid the program's sponsors. Why has this particular program done so well? Mr. Coates, a widely‐read newspaper columnist, does not fit the stereotype of a television “personality,” neither are his questions so probing as those of some other television interviewers. In an attempt to uncover the factors underlying the popularity of the “Paul Coates Show,” Dr. Borgers has analyzed the structure of a number of programs and has arrived at some useful conclusions.     

Television Teaching: Parody,The Simpsons,and Media Literacy Education

This paper examines televisual parody as a media literacy educator, and the potential of parody to channel the powers of comedy and entertainment in order to “teach” the techniques and rhetoric of televisual texts and genres. It focuses on the case of the hugely successful and popular animated parodic sitcom, The Simpsons, and its playful attack on advertising and promotional culture. Currently in its 16th season, The Simpsons broadcasts to approximately 60 million viewers in 70 countries weekly, offering a playful critique of television from within the television frame.     

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.     

The Family Business: Entertainment Products and the Network Morning News Shows

The morning news programs provide an excellent forum for television broadcast networks to benefit from “corporate synergy,” but do they simultaneously compromise the intent of the social responsibility theory of the press? This study measured the entertainment content of the three network morning shows and correlated that to the ownership of the programs and the products being promoted. Results show the morning programs fill their daily news hole at least 20% of the time with entertainment and sports topics, that the entertainment products covered are more likely to have been produced by the networks' parent companies, and that the coverage of entertainment topics is almost certain to be favorable. The results are further evidence in support of calls for revision and update of the Social Responsibility Theory of the Press. The authors suggest that the adoption of the concept of stakeholder theory, applied in the business literature, offers a framework for making responsible editorial decisions in an atmosphere of corporate synergy.     

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.     

Facsimiles,fakes, and forgeries: Concerning punctuation in Shakespeare's King Richard II

While T. M. Parrott's proposal that Shakespeare may have written the title‐role of King Richard II "for his own interpretation as an actor” suggests an interesting area of bibliographical research, the prevailing unreliability of facsimile editions of Shakespearean quartos makes investigation of presumed authorial pointing in Q₁ —theoretically rhetorical or dramatic, rather than syntactical—both hazardous and frustrating. Still, the neophyte American bibliographer (who must resort to such texts), if forewarned concerning the nature of tamperings in photo‐lithographic facsimiles—made‐up lines, editorial “emendations” of original punctuation, occasional alteration of details in printers’ ornaments, and sometimes even outright forgeries—should find the liabilities well worth braving.     

Offensive Language Spoken on Morning Radio Programs

A content analysis examined offensive language spoken on popular morning radio programs on the five highest-rated radio stations offering live-streaming audio over the Internet in the top 10 US markets. While concerns over indecency have long existed, renewed interest in the issue of indecency on television and radio was sparked during the 2004 Super Bowl half-time show and, as evident in the 2007 firing of radio personality Don Imus, continues to be of concern today. The purpose of this study was to identify the amount and kind of offensive language spoken on-air. Overall, there were 872 instances of offensive language or 4.36 words spoken per hour. Of these, words classified as mild (words such as “hell” and “damn”) were the largest proportion (40.9%). The bulk of crude language was spoken on Rock and Popular formats. Additionally, broadcasts in the northeast part of the country contained significantly more instances of offensive language.     

A content analytic technique for measuring the sexiness of women's business attire in media presentations

This study describes the development and pretest of a content analytic category scheme for objectively measuring the sexiness of women's business attire in media presentations. In a test of the validity of the category scheme, presentations of women's business attire in television soap operas were compared to real world examples. The television samples were found to be significantly more provocative than the real world attire. In addition, the results of the content analysis of soap opera attire was compared to an intuitive perception of “sexiness.” A significant positive correlation was found between the degree of sexiness as measured by the content analytic category scheme and subject's perception of sexiness.     

A content analytic technique for measuring the sexiness of women's business Attire in media presentations

This study describes the development and pretest of a content analytic category scheme for objectively measuring the sexiness of women's business attire in media presentations. In a test of the validity of the category scheme, presentations of women's business attire in television soap operas were compared to real world examples. The television samples were found to be significantly more provocative than the real world attire. In addition, the results of the content analysis of soap opera attire was compared to an intuitive perception of “sexiness.” A significant positive correlation was found between the degree of sexiness as measured by the content analytic category scheme and subject's perception of sexiness.     

Beyond the Research Paper: Extending the Use of Collections

The increasing availability of high quality digital texts and usage data about them provides opportunities to identify new uses for collections, alternative ways to present and explore content, and expanded audiences for the materials. Using this information and a rapid development model called a “flash build,” JSTOR is creating and partnering with other organizations to build new tools that add value to library investments in digital collections. Two examples are discussed: “Classroom Readings,” a tool designed to help educators find articles on JSTOR that are good candidates for teaching, and “Understanding Shakespeare,” a resource created in collaboration with the Folger Shakespeare Library that enables scholars to follow links in lines from Shakespeare plays to articles on JSTOR that reference them. The rapid development model used for these projects is easily reproducible and effective, and could be applied to many library-driven efforts.     

Not All Countries Are Created Equal: Foreign Countries Prevalence in U.S. News and Entertainment Media

Why do some countries appear more popular than others in mass media? Although researchers have long sought to explain foreign countries’ prevalence in the media, to date they have exclusively focused on news, leaving other types of media content unexplored. In addition, focusing on media effects and media content, the literature on entertainment and politics has largely ignored the study of agenda-building processes. Thus, this study fills these gaps by exploring factors affecting the volume of references to foreign countries in both U.S. news and entertainment media. Analyzing more than 400 U.S. television shows, four news channels, and two newspapers spanning from 2000 to 2011, we reexamine past findings on salience of foreign countries in the news and apply these findings to a new field of research, entertainment media. We further suggest that the same factors shaping foreign countries’ prevalence in the news media are applicable to both news and entertainment and that in the context of foreign countries’ prevalence, the criteria for “newsworthiness” and “fictionworthiness” is similar.     

“Touching the sentiments of everyone”;: Nationalism and state broadcasting in thirties Mexico

This paper provides a historical perspective on the intersection of media, popular culture, and nationalism through a study of the broadcasting policies and programs of one of Mexico's earliest government radio stations. This study analyzes the musical programs that formed the centerpiece of government radio programming in order to evaluate the racial and class ideologies imbedded in the nationalist discourse of state broadcasters. By viewing these government programs through the lens of a broader literature on nationalism in the Third World and among diasporic communities, it is possible to identify a fundamental tension in Mexico's official nationalism between a search for the roots of an “authentic”; ethnic identity, and a need to position Mexican culture within the constellation of Western “civilization.”; Finally, this paper investigates audience reactions to state broadcasts in order to explore the meaning of early broadcast nationalism for Mexico's radio listeners.     

Girls rule!: gender,feminism, and nickelodeon

Nickelodeon is a powerful commercial cable network of television, internet activities, toy manufacturing, and video production. The network has been recognized by both industry professionals and media scholars for its representation of girls as strong, intelligent lead characters. Focusing on entertainment programs Clarissa Explains It All and As Told by Ginger, as well as on Nickelodeon's non‐fiction children's news program, Nick News, I argue that the media context of girl power, combined with the increasing recognition of adolescent girls as both powerful citizens and consumers, offers what at times looks like a radical gesture in terms of disrupting dominant gender relations. However, we can also read the mainstream embrace of girl power as a restabilization of particular categories of gender, so that this “radical” challenge moves toward the entrenchment of conventional gender relations.     

Popularizing the environment in modern media

The present essay comparatively explores and reflects on popularizing the environment in a changing media ecology wherein content is no longer exclusive to traditional television viewing or distributed for cinematic release. Specifically, the aim of this essay is to illustrate how screened presentations such as film, television, and recently digital media, promote environmentalist ideals in the hopes that if audiences are entertained, then perhaps these narratives can subtly influence thinking and behavior. This review also draws from research on mediating the environment in television and film studies as well as scholarly literature on entertainment-education. The implications of this essay indicate that whether real or fictional, eco-friendly content is growing in popular media and no longer the backdrop to the story being told. As this essay shows, media professionals have started embracing entertaining content infused with content of value so that audiences can “see” why the environment is important.     

Television and Family Values: Was Dan Quayle Right?

In this article, we explore the extent to which heavy television viewers' beliefs about the real world are consistent with the most repetitive and overarching patterns that television presents, especially in its dramatic entertainment programs. We test the hypothesis (put forth by many besides Dan Quayle) that television encourages viewers to embrace alternatives to the traditional 2-parent family. For purposes of conceptual clarity, we chose to focus on the question of illegitimacy and single parenthood, which is most directly related to the Murphy Brown controversy and is frequently touched on in many strands of political discourse. We reviewed previous research on television portrayal of the family and then used the 1988 and 1994 General Social Surveys (Davis & Smith, 1996) to assess relations between television viewing and judgments about illegitimacy and single parenthood. The data do not contradict Quayle's contention that television viewing is contributing to fraying of traditional family values.     

Investigating Cheaters

This article analyzes the American television program Cheaters. Cheaters advances itself as the most “realistic” of reality programs based on an ethnographic approach to the surveillance and exposure of infidelity. The program offers theoretical lessons in the vernacular of reality television, as it proliferates positions for the subjects in its narrative and raises questions about the relationship between seeing and believing. Every effort to show and tell more destabilizes the possibility of discerning the very truths it purports to uncover. In the process the program offers insights into the limits of reality television and into contemporary socio-cultural epistemology.     

Texting the Subject: Women,Television, and Modern Self-Reflexivity

Feminist audience research has often argued that the pleasures women find in watching certain popular television genres derive from their indulgence in “referential viewing”: relating their own subjective experience to television texts. But it has never been spelled out what this actually entails. This article, based upon research with women viewers of talk shows and morning magazine programs, suggests a specific methodology, “text in action,” to capture the specificities of the text/subject relationship. Findings arising from the use of this method suggest that accounts of the negotiation of subjectivity are induced through the text/subject interplay. Established explanations of “referential viewing” arrived at through traditional reception studies do not entirely account for the dialogic nature of these encounters. This article suggests that they can be more accurately explored through contemporary arguments about modern self-reflexivity where subjectivity can be seen to be discursively accomplishedthrough pragmatic actions across the broadcast encounter.     

Representations of Interpersonal Interaction and Race/Ethnicity: An Examination of Prime-Time Network Television Programs

Racial and ethnic relations in America are a form of social interaction about which changing perceptions could have important consequences. Current research examining the nature of discrete social interaction situations in entertainment content on television is lacking. This study was conducted with the objective of obtaining an updated account of the state of interpersonal interaction portrayals between characters of different racial/ethnic backgrounds in popular prime time programs on broadcast television. Specifically, we analyzed prime-time television program content on 4 major U.S. broadcast networks. Findings are interpreted via a media priming framework.