REDESIGNING WOMEN: Television after the Network Era (Feminist Studies and Media Culture)

In the 1990s, American televison audiences witnessed anunprecedented rise in programming devoted explicitly to women. Cablenetworks such as Oxygen Media, Women's Entertainment Network, and Lifetime targeted a female audience, and prime_time dramaticseries such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Judging Amy, Gilmore Girls, Sex and the City, and Ally McBeal empowered heroines, single careerwomen, and professionals struggling with family commitments andoccupational demands. After establishing this phenomenon'ssignificance, Amanda D. Lotz explores the audience profile, the types ofnarrative and characters that recur, and changes to the industrylandscape in the wake of media consolidation and a profusion ofchannel

Redesigning Women: Television after the Network Era (Feminist Studies and Media Culture)

Computers & Technology

Lotz, Amanda D.

Networking & Cloud Computing

University of Illinois Press

In the 1990s, American televison audiences witnessed an unprecedented rise in programming devoted explicitly to women. Cable networks such as Oxygen Media, Women's Entertainment Network, and Lifetime targeted a female audience, and prime_time dramatic series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Judging Amy, Gilmore Girls, Sex and the City, and Ally McBeal empowered heroines, single career women, and professionals struggling with family commitments and occupational demands. After establishing this phenomenon's significance, Amanda D. Lotz explores the audience profile, the types of narrative and characters that recur, and changes to the industry landscape in the wake of media consolidation and a profusion of channels. Employing a cultural studies framework, Lotz examines whether the multiplicity of female-centric networks and narratives renders certain gender stereotypes uninhabitable, and how new dramatic portrayals of women have redefined narrative conventions. targeting of a niche segment of the overall audience, and the ways in which the new, sophisticated portrayals of women inspire sympathetic identification while also commodifying viewers into a marketable demographic for advertisers. Amanda D. Lotz is an assistant professor of communication at the University of Michigan. She has contributed to the Encyclopedia of Television, 2nd ed., and other books and journals.

The collision of new technologies, changing business strategies, and innovative storytelling that produced a new golden age of TV.
Cable television channels were once the backwater of American television, programming recent and not-so-recent movies and reruns of network shows. Then came La Femme Nikita, OZ, The Sopranos, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, and The Walking Dead. And then, just as “prestige cable” became a category, came House of Cards and Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video, and other Internet distributors of television content. What happened? In We Now Disrupt This Broadcast, Amanda Lotz chronicles the collision of new technologies, changing business strategies, and innovative storytelling that produced an era termed “peak TV.”
Lotz explains that changes in the business of television expanded the creative possibilities of television. She describes the costly infrastructure rebuilding undertaken by cable service providers in the late 1990s and the struggles of cable channels to produce (and pay for) original, scripted programming in order to stand out from the competition. These new programs defied television conventions and made viewers adjust their expectations of what television could be. Le Femme Nikita offered cable's first antihero, Mad Men cost more than advertisers paid, The Walking Dead became the first mass cable hit, and Game of Thrones was the first global television blockbuster. Internet streaming didn't kill cable, Lotz tells us. Rather, it revolutionized how we watch television. Cable and network television quickly established their own streaming portals. Meanwhile, cable service providers had quietly transformed themselves into Internet providers, able to profit from both prestige cable and streaming services. Far from being dead, television continues to transform.

We Now Disrupt This Broadcast: How Cable Transformed Television and the Internet Revolutionized It All (Mit Press)

Programming

The MIT Press

How the internet disrupted the recorded music, newspaper, film, and television industries and what this tells us about surviving technological disruption. Much of what we think we know about how the internet "disrupted" media industries is wrong. Piracy did not wreck the recording industry, Netflix isn't killing Hollywood movies, and information does not want to be free. In Media Disrupted, Amanda Lotz looks at what really happened when the recorded music, newspaper, film, and television industries were the ground zero of digital disruption. It's not that digital technologies introduced "new media," Lotz explains; rather, they offered existing media new tools for reaching people. For example, the MP3 unbundled recorded music; as the internet enabled new ways for people to experience and pay for music, the primary source of revenue for the recorded music industry shifted from selling music to licensing it. Cable television providers, written off as predigital dinosaurs, became the dominant internet service providers. News organizations struggled to remake businesses in the face of steep declines in advertiser spending, while the film industry split its business among movies that compelled people to go to theaters and others that are better suited for streaming. Lotz looks in detail at how and why internet distribution disrupted each industry. The stories of business transformation she tells offer lessons for surviving and even thriving in the face of epoch-making technological change.

Media Disrupted: Surviving Pirates, Cannibals, and Streaming Wars

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Television Studies

Television Studies provides an overview of the origins,central ideas, and intellectual traditions of television studies.The book charts the establishment of the field, and examines itsvarious approaches and objects of study. What have been the primary areas of inquiry in television studies?Why and how did these areas develop? How have scholars studiedthem? How are they developing? What have been televisionstudies’ key works? The book answers these questions, bytracing the history of the field right up to present and emergingscholarship. For all those wondering how to study television, or even why tostudy television, Television Studies will provide a clearand engaging overview of key topics. The book works as astand-alone introduction and by placing key works in a broadercontext it can also provide an excellent basis for an entirecourse.

Humor & Entertainment

Gray, Jonathan

Television

Polity

Television Studies provides an overview of the origins, central ideas, and intellectual traditions of television studies. The book charts the establishment of the field, and examines its various approaches and objects of study.

The Television Will be Revolutionized

Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2008After occupying a central space in American living rooms for the past fifty years, is television, as we’ve known it, dead? The capabilities and features of that simple box have been so radically redefined that it’s now nearly unrecognizable. Today, viewers with digital video recorders such as TiVo may elect to circumvent scheduling constraints and commercials. Owners of iPods and other portable viewing devices are able to download the latest episodes of their favorite shows and watch them whenever and wherever they want. Still others rent television shows on DVD, or download them through legal and illegal sources online. But these changes have not been hastening the demise of the medium. They are revolutionizing it. The Television Will Be Revolutionized examines television at the turn of the twenty-first century &#8212:what Amanda D. Lotz terms the “post-network” era. Television, both as a technology and a tool for cultural storytelling, remains as important today as ever, but it has changed in fundamental ways as the result of technological innovations, proliferating cable channels targeting ever more specific niche audiences, and evolving forms of advertising such as product placement and branded entertainment. Many of the conventional practices and even the industry’s basic business model are proving unworkable in this new context, resulting in a crisis in norms and practices.Through interviews with those working in the industry, attendance of various industry summits and meetings, surveys of trade publications, and consideration of an extensive array of popular television shows, Lotz takes us behind the screen to explore what is changing, why it’s changing, and why these changes matter.

NYU Press

Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2008After occupying a central space in American living rooms for the past fifty years, is television, as we've known it, dead? The capabilities and features of that simple box have been so radically redefined that it's now nearly unrecognizable. Today, viewers with digital video recorders such as TiVo may elect to circumvent scheduling constraints and commercials. Owners of iPods and other portable viewing devices are able to download the latest episodes of their favorite shows and watch them whenever and wherever they want. Still others rent television shows on DVD, or download them through legal and illegal sources online. But these changes have not been hastening the demise of the medium. They are revolutionizing it. The Television Will Be Revolutionized examines television at the turn of the twenty-first century :what Amanda D. Lotz terms the 'post-network' era. Television, both as a technology and a tool for cultural storytelling, remains as important today as ever, but it has changed in fundamental ways as the result of technological innovations, proliferating cable channels targeting ever more specific niche audiences, and evolving forms of advertising such as product placement and branded entertainment. Many of the conventional practices and even the industry's basic business model are proving unworkable in this new context, resulting in a crisis in norms and practices. Through interviews with those working in the industry, attendance of various industry summits and meetings, surveys of trade publications, and consideration of an extensive array of popular television shows, Lotz takes us behind the screen to explore what is changing, why it's changing, and why these changes matter.

Cable Guys: Television and Masculinities in the 21st Century

From the meth-dealing but devoted family man Walter White of AMC's Breaking Bad, to the part-time basketball coach, part-time gigolo Ray Drecker of HBO's Hung, depictions of male characters perplexed by societal expectations of men and anxious about changing American masculinity have become standard across the television landscape. Engaging with a wide variety of shows, including The League, Dexter, and Nip/Tuck, among many others, Amanda D. Lotz identifies the gradual incorporation of second-wave feminism into prevailing gender norms as the catalyst for the contested masculinities on display in contemporary cable dramas. Examining the emergence of 'male-centered serials' such as The Shield, Rescue Me, and Sons of Anarchy and the challenges these characters face in negotiating modern masculinities, Lotz analyzes how these shows combine feminist approaches to fatherhood and marriage with more traditional constructions of masculine identity that emphasize men's role as providers. She explores the dynamics of close male friendships both in groups, as in Entourage and Men of a Certain Age, wherein characters test the boundaries between the homosocial and homosexual in their relationships with each other, and in the dyadic intimacy depicted in Boston Legal and Scrubs. Cable Guys provides a much needed look into the under-considered subject of how constructions of masculinity continue to evolve on television.

The emergence of "male-centered serials" such as The Shield, Rescue Me, and Sons Of Anarchy and the challenges these characters face in negotiating modern masculinities. From the meth-dealing but devoted family man Walter White of AMC’s Breaking Bad, to the part-time basketball coach, part-time gigolo Ray Drecker of HBO’s Hung, depictions of male characters perplexed by societal expectations of men and anxious about changing American masculinity have become standard across the television landscape. Engaging with a wide variety of shows, including The League, Dexter, and Nip/Tuck, among many others, Amanda D. Lotz identifies the gradual incorporation of second-wave feminism into prevailing gender norms as the catalyst for the contested masculinities on display in contemporary cable dramas. Examining the emergence of “male-centered serials” such as The Shield, Rescue Me, and Sons of Anarchy and the challenges these characters face in negotiating modern masculinities, Lotz analyzes how these shows combine feminist approaches to fatherhood and marriage with more traditional constructions of masculine identity that emphasize men’s role as providers. She explores the dynamics of close male friendships both in groups, as in Entourage and Men of a Certain Age, wherein characters test the boundaries between the homosocial and homosexual in their relationships with each other, and in the dyadic intimacy depicted in Boston Legal and Scrubs. Cable Guys provides a much needed look into the under-considered subject of how constructions of masculinity continue to evolve on television.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lotz, Amanda D.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Lotz, Amanda D.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lotz, Amanda D.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Redesigning Women: Television after the Network Era (Feminist Studies and Media Culture)

REDESIGNING WOMEN: Television after the Network Era (Feminist Studies and Media Culture)

We Now Disrupt This Broadcast: How Cable Transformed Television and the Internet Revolutionized It All (Mit Press)

Media Disrupted: Surviving Pirates, Cannibals, and Streaming Wars

Television Studies

Television Studies

The Television Will be Revolutionized

The Television Will be Revolutionized

Cable Guys: Television and Masculinities in the 21st Century

Cable Guys: Television and Masculinities in the 21st Century