Creating Television: Conversations With the People Behind 50 Years of American TV
A Volume in LEA's Communication Series, © Copyright 2004
Robert Kubey (kubey@scils.rutgers.edu)
Director, Center for Media Studies (www.mediastudies.rutgers.edu)
Professor, Dept of Journalism & Media Studies, Rutgers University
To the Point: Television’s creative minds reveal increased competition in the U.S. television industry and their challenge to create inspired programming.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For more information, contact:
Robert Kubey
Rutgers University
kubey@scils.rutgers.edu
www.mediastudies.rutgers.edu
New Brunswick, N.J. -- The U.S. television industry is more competitive today than at any time in its 50-year history, according to some of its most revered creators featured in Creating Television: Conversations with the People Behind 50 Years of American TV, a new book by Robert Kubey, director of the Center for Media Studies and professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers University.
Creating Television chronicles the history of the medium through interviews Kubey conducted over more than 15 years of research. Actors, agents, writers, directors, and producers are well represented, along with executives working in TV from its earliest days to the present on shows ranging from I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners to more recent programs like Seinfeld, The Simpsons and The Sopranos.
Common themes emerge among TV insiders. Most agree that the day-to-day business climate in Hollywood is more serious and “cutthroat” than it was only a few years ago. Major networks that once saw themselves as having a public responsibility increasingly operate now as profit-driven businesses obsessed with the bottom line. (View quotes from the book: How has the television industry changed?)
TV creators contend that the industry sometimes underestimates the intelligence of the American viewing audience. More sophisticated television programs could be created, say these insiders, if television would only free itself from its focus on ratings. The book also explores what impact creators believe television has on its audience. (View quotes from the book: How Has the Audience Changed?, What about Television's Influence On The Culture?)
The pressure for ratings drives creators to pull out all the stops to
attract and hold viewer attention. And because most every creator
ardently believes that the attention span of the American public has grow
increasingly short, many believe that they must produce programs that will
cater to that shortened span. (View quotes from the book: Has the Attention Span of the American Public Grown Shorter?)
“What makes these stories [in Creating Television] so revealing,” writes Bernard S. Redmont in the forthcoming May issue of Television Quarterly “is their utter frankness. Many of these television creators are among the medium's harshest critics. You would not think they would bite the hand that feeds them, but they do, and very eagerly.” (View quotes from the book: Why do some TV programs turn out badly?)
But the news isn’t all bad. Though a highly competitive industry, the book documents how the creative vision of individual television creators still manages to emerge. “The voice and vision of each creator is still critical to the success of many programs,” said Professor Kubey. “That is what makes the best programs, the ones that have a personality and identity of their own.” (View quotes from the book: How Does A Creator's Personal Style and Vision Survive In Television?)
Published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, N.J., Creating Television offers readers a rare opportunity to meet, up close, the people involved in creating many of the most well known and successful programs in the medium’s history. “Readers will come to understand how people first managed to enter the industry and how their careers have developed,” Kubey said. “The book serves as a primer for those interested in working in television.” Readers will also learn how highly successful television creators think and feel about their celebrity and wealth. (View quotes from the book: What's It Like Being a Celebrity?, Does Having a Great Deal of Money Make You Happy?)
Among the 40 creators interview are such pioneers as Sid Caesar, Steve Allen, Agnes Nixon, Grant Tinker, and Lee Rich; innovative writer-producers of breatkthrough programs such as Matt Groening, (The Simpsons), Larry David (Seinfeld), Susan Harris (Soap, The Golden Girls), and Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz (thirtysomething and Once and Again); and actors from Ed Asner, Betty White, Henry Winkler, and Paul Petersen, to Aida Turturro (The Sopranos) and Jason Alexander. Agents and publicists include Jeremy Zimmer and Jay Bernstein. Rounding out the executives interviews are Geraldine Laybourne of Nickelodoen and Oxygen, and Chris Albrecht, CEO of HBO.
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