Authenticity and performance of class in British factual TV series

The chapter characterises British ‘Reality TV’ as a hybrid of factual and fictional television genres, as signaled by the more accurate genre designation ‘structured reality’ television. From the 1990s onwards, in order to develop programmes that are attractive to audiences and inexpensive to produce, programme makers have focused on hybrids of dramatic and documentary modes. This chapter argues that many recent Reality TV programmes privilege soap opera’s emphasis on character, storyline and performance. This affects the ways that class authenticity is understood, undermining factual programmes’ usual claim to legitimacy based on reference to a pre-existing reality, and transforming hierarchies that separate highly-valued from low-valued types of programme.

Writing westwards: medieval English literature and its early modern Irish audiences

Quite a few texts from England were translated into Irish in the fifteenth and early-sixteenth centuries. The number of these texts was significant enough to suggest that foreign material of this sort enjoyed something of a vogue in late-medieval Ireland. Translated texts include Mandeville’s Travels, Guy of Warwick, Bevis of Hampton, Fierabras and a selection of saints’ lives. Scholars have paid little attention to the origins and initial readerships of these texts, but still less research has been conducted into their afterlife in early modern Ireland. However, a strikingly high number of these works continued to be read and copied well into the seventeenth century and some, such as the Irish translations of Octavian and William of Palerne, only survive in manuscripts from this later period. This paper takes these translations as a test case to explore the ways in which a cross-period approach to such writing is applicable in Ireland, a country where the renaissance is generally considered to have taken little hold. It considers the extent to which Irish reception of this translated material shifts and evolves in the course of this turbulent period and whether the same factors that contributed to the continued demand for a range of similar texts in England into the seventeenth century are also discernible in the Irish context.

Section of Television Laboratory at the New York Trade School

Several students are shown working in a section of the Television Laboratory at the New York Trade School. Black and white photograph with some damage due to writing in red ink along the long edges.

Closed-circuit Television Student Working

A student is show working with closed-circuit television at the New York Trade School. Black and white photograph.

Getting Hitched: Weddings and Reality Television

From watching reality shows like A Wedding Story on TLC, I have learned that planning a wedding is stressful, kills friendships, and is generally not fun. In my opinion, I think it’s crazy. So why do people do this? What is the allure of this madness? In addition to the general insanity of weddings, the institute of marriage has been shown to be deeply flawed and quite unequal, but we are still tuning in to watch Engaged & Underage and Perfect Proposal. The fantasy shows that we watch and the glossy magazines we read seem to cover up the fact that the institution of marriage has problems. I want to find out why we are obsessed with getting married, even though many of us won’t actually carry through with the event or will end our marriages in divorce. Is it just the pageantry? The attention one receives as a bride and a new wife? To me, the huge attention paid to marriage in the media these days brings out some really interesting questions.

Where did all these books come from? The Publishing Industry and American Intellectual Life

The American book publishing industry shapes the character of American intellectual life. While the newspaper and television industries have been accused of and investigated for bias and lowering America’s intellectual standards, book publishing has gone largely unexamined by scholars. The existing studies of the publishing industry have focused on finance, procedure and history. “There are few ‘theories’ of publishing – efforts to understand the ‘whys’ as well as the ‘hows.’ Few scholarly scientists have devoted significant scholarly attention to publishing” (Altbach and Hoshino, xiii). There are many possible reasons for this lacuna. First, there is a perception that books have always been around, that they are an “old” technology and therefore they don’t appear to have had as much of an impact on our society as television and other media (which were developed quickly and suddenly) seem to have had (Altbach and Hoshino, xiv). Also, despite books’ present and past popularity, television, radio, and now the internet reach more people more easily, and are therefore more topical points of study and observation. In studying the effects of mass media on everyday American life, television and the internet may be the most logical points of study. Regarding public intellectual life however, books play a much more important role. Public intellectual life has always been associated with independent thinkers publishing their work for the masses. For this reason, this I focus on trade publishing. Trade publishing produces fiction and non-fiction works for the general reading public, as opposed to technical manuals, textbooks, and other fiction and nonfiction books targeted to small and specific audiences. Although, quantitatively speaking, “the largest part of book publishing business is embodied in that great complex of companies and activities producing educational, business, scientific, technical, and reference books and materials,” (Tebbel 1987, 439) the trade industry publishes most of the books that most people read. It is the most public segment of the industry, and the most likely place to find public intellectualism. Trade publishing is not only the most public segment of the industry, but it is also the most susceptible to corruption and lowered intellectual standards. Unlike specialty publishing, which caters to a specific, known segment of society, trade publishers must compete with countless other publications, as well as with other forms of media, for the patronage of the general public. As John Tebbel (author of a widely referenced history of the publishing industry) puts it, “The textbook, scientific, or technical book is subjected to much more rigorous scrutiny by buyers and users, and in an intensively competitive market inferior products are quickly lost" (Tebbel 1987, xiv). Since the standards for trade publishing are not nearly as specific – trade books simply need to catch the attention of a significant number of readers, they don’t have to measure up to a given level of quality – the quality of trade books is much more variable. And yet, a successful trade publication can have a much greater impact on society than the most rigorously researched and edited textbook or scholarly study.

Closed-circuit Television Students Film a Voltage-regulator check by William C.H. Meyers

One of a series of photographs accompanying a press release by the New York Trade School announcing the development and demonstration of a new technique in closed-circuit TV. Student Dennis Mahoney serves as one of the cameramen as William C. H. Meyers of the Automotive Department performs the demonstration. Black and white photograph.

Nicholas Colon, Jr, Proprietor Tele-FM Television and Advanced Television Techniques graduate, 1954.

This is a photograph showing Nicholas Colon, Jr. a New York Trade School, Advanced Television Techniques graduate with an unnamed worker at his Tele-FM Television company. Original caption reads, "Nicholas Colon, Jr. - Advanced Television Techniques 1954, operates and up-to-date and successful television service shop. He is on the executive board of CETA (Certified Electronic Technicians Association). He prefers to employ graduate technicians of the New York Trade School Advanced Television Techniques course." Black and white photograph with caption glued to reverse.

Tecnologia digital móvel e educação: envolvendo jovens na discussão sobre o ECA

Pós-graduação em Televisão Digital: Informação e Conhecimento - FAAC

Metabolic risk and television time in adolescent females

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Television violence and young adults in Brazil: a content analysis of the popular telenovella, Malhação = Violência na televisão brasileira e jovens : uma análise de conteúdo da telenovela popular, Malahção

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)

Accessibility in Digital Television: Designing Remote Controls

Free to air television is still an important tool to provide information and communication in many countries. Therefore, the universal access to the television system is very important. This paper presents a set of Digital Television accessible remote control devices designed for the Brazilian Digital Television. A research was conducted, interviewing people with disabilities in Brazil. Three remote control models were proposed, consolidating the main identified requirements, being accessible for a diverse group of impairments.