Thesis (B.A.)--Haverford College, Dept. of History, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references.

The thesis offers a revised institutional history of US cable network Home Box Office that expands on its under-examined identity as a monthly subscriber service from 1972 to 1994. This is used to better explain extensive discussions of HBO’s rebranding from 1995 to 2007 around high-quality original content and experimentation with new media platforms. The first half of the thesis particularly expands on HBO’s origins and early identity as part of publisher Time Inc. from 1972 to 1988, before examining how this affected the network’s programming strategies as part of global conglomerate Time Warner from 1989 to 1994. Within this, evidence of ongoing processes for aggregating subscribers, or packaging multiple entertainment attractions around stable production cycles, are identified as defining HBO’s promotion of general monthly value over rivals. Arguing that these specific exhibition and production strategies are glossed over in existing HBO scholarship as a result of an over-valuing of post-1995 examples of ‘quality’ television, their ongoing importance to the network’s contemporary management of its brand across media platforms is mapped over distinctions from rivals to 2007. Suggesting much longer institutional continuities and influences for understanding HBO’s success, the thesis outlines the development and influence of these strategies through a critical chronology of the network’s history. In doing so, the thesis aligns with trends for rigorous media histories that consider the origins, long-term precedent and cyclical institutional strategies that govern contemporary industry practices.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin, 1965. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 132-136).

This thesis is asking whether the television series Community (2009-) can be defined as a Sitcom, combined with a look at how other genres that generally are considered to be non-comic are incorporated in the series and how those are identifiable as well as whether or not they compromise Community’s possible label as a Sitcom. In seeking to define this show’s place in its own genre I found that whilst Community does not follow the archetypal technical conventions of Sitcom, it still does follow some of its setups, tropes and ideas. It does not suffice as a classical Sitcom, but it does lean on some of the genres conventions and has not yet passed over the line where it would be part of a completely different genre. Instead I state that the series fits the term New Comedy, as devised by Antonio Savorelli, not a genre but a term representing the heightened use of metatextuality on four levels in Comedy. Thus Community suffices as a part of an evolved version of the Sitcom genre.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2003. / Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

This dissertation investigates the dynamics of production surrounding United States Spanish-language television by analyzing the strategies followed by newcomer Azteca America in it attempts to become an attractive television option for Latinos. Given the scarcity of research on the production approach of U.S. Latino media, this study interrogates the site of production of Spanish-language Television--that is, the site in which professional routines and presumably legitimate knowledge about audiences are the basis for the reproduction of particular representations of Latinos in the United States. The incursion of Azteca America into this realm allows me to reflect on the structural and complex relationship between the U.S. Latino and Mexican television industries. Azteca America's process of creating a network identity, along with strategies of production, representations, and distribution reveal longstanding assumptions about television's formulas of success, which are the result of the way in which U.S. Latinos are imagined by the corporation. My analysis is informed by the cultural economy perspective that evaluates corporate practices as relevant cultural objects with economic value; it is also informed by Pierre Bourdieu's theory of logic of practice, which allows me to situate the corporation as a social space as I evaluate its corporate routines as a site of the expression of larger social dynamics. A global approach gives me the theoretical tools to think about the transnational character of the U.S. Latino industry, its audiences, and the crossborder nature of Azteca America's venture. The presence of Azteca America in U.S. broadcasting television reaffirms, on some level, the ways in which Latin Americans claim "authentic" knowledge regarding the programming and representations delivered to Latino audiences. This process is possible because of the fluid identity with attendant flexible meanings that accompanies the hybrid and multilayered identities of the Latina/o population in the U.S. / text

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

No description available.

This study is concerned with the problem of whether the public's attitudes toward economic well-being could be compared with the types of television programs made popular over a thirty-year period. Two measures were used to determine the public's attitudes toward economic well-being: 1) answers to questions of an economic nature; and 2) answers to questions that asked what was the most important problem. All data were compiled from Gallup polls administered during 1955 through 1984. The television genre data were compiled from sources by Brooks and Marsh, McNeil and Norback and Broadcasting magazine. No association existed among the three measures.

The thesis examines American teen dramas on Australian television in the period 1992 to 2004. It explores the use of the genre by broadcasters and its uptake by teenagers in an environment where American popular culture has frequently been treated with suspicion and where there are perennial arguments about the Americanisation of youth and their vulnerability to cultural imperialism. The thesis argues concerns about Americanisation and cultural imperialism in relation to youth culture, young people and the media are misplaced. American teen dramas are investigated as an example of the ways imported programs are made to cohere with national logics within the Australian mediasphere (Hartley, 1996). Utilising Yuri Lotman's (1990) theory of cultural 'translation' this thesis argues teen drams are evidence of dynamic change within the system of television and that this change does not result in a system dominated by imported product, but rather a system that situates foreign programming amongst domestic frames of reference.