Television 4

The fourth edition has been officially released!

More details and ordering information (including a link for a complimentary exam copy) are available on Routledge’s Website.

The final stage of the production process — at least from the perspective of the author — has been completed! The page proofs have been indexed, corrected and submitted to Routledge.

This means we are on track for the book being released in December 2011!

Whew! Indexing is hard work!

I just submitted nearly a gigabyte of digital materials to the publisher for use in the online Television companion. Here are the details:

For Students

1. The glossary as an Excel file, suitable for conversion into flash cards.
2. Online glossary.
3. A do-it-yourself video editing exercise. A 2-minute TV commercial (from circa 1960, and in the public domain) tells the story of a family buying a new car. The original has been divided it into its individual shots — one shot per file. There’s no dialogue in the original spot so students may easily rearrange the order of the shots in video editing software (e.g., iMovie or Premiere Elements) and see how shot order has an impact on the story. The video files are prepared in archives that may be used on either Windows or Mac computers. A more-compact version of the original video in MPEG-4 format is provided in case the instructor wishes to put the video on his/her own Website. Also provided, in MPEG-4 format, are six editing variations created by a University of Alabama student.
4. A DIY sound exercise. Again, a 2-minute, public-domain TV commercial from around 1960 is provided in a video file. Also provided are different music clips that may be combined with the video in video editing software to see what impact sound has on image. The student is encouraged to provide his/her own music to see how the image can be manipulated. A more-compact version of the original video in MPEG-4 format is provided in case the instructor wishes to put the video on his/her own Website.
5. Tutorials (which will continue to be hosted on TVCrit.com):
   • Capturing Stills From Video. Last fully revised in 2006. Much information is dated, but a lot still applies.
   • Capturing Stills From High-Definition Video.
   • Clip-DVD Tutorial (For Mac).

For Instructors

1. PowerPoint slide shows for each chapter. They contain all of the book’s illustrations.
2. Chapters from the third edition that do not appear in the fourth:
   • “Music Television,” by Blaine Allan
   • “Animated Television: The Narrative Cartoon”
   • “A History of Television Style,” by Gary Copeland
3. A sample chapter from the current edition.
4. A sample syllabus (fall 2010), by Jeremy Butler. See also, syllabi based on earlier editions:
• Tara McPherson, CTCS 191: Introduction to American Television, USC
• Shelley Rodrigo, HUM206: Introduction to Television, Mesa Community College
5. Sample student papers.
• As the World Turns, Karen Johnson, University of Alabama
• Designing Women, Jeremy Butler (originally included in the first edition of Television).
• Friends, Maggie Phillips, University of Alabama
• Integrated Science 7, Tim Cook, University of Alabama
• Two Guys, A Girl and A Pizza Place, Tim Cook, University of Alabama
6. All of the book’s illustrations in JPEG format.
7. List of video links.

We’ve moved chapters around a bit for the fourth edition and streamlined the number of chapters by eliminating two of them. (They’ll remain available online.) The new table of contents looks like this:

Part I: Understanding Television’s Structures and Systems

• 1 An Introduction to Television Structures and Systems: Television’s Ebb and Flow in the Postnetwork Era
• 2 Narrative Structure: Television Stories
• 3 Building Narrative: Character, Actor, Star
• 4 Beyond and Beside Narrative Structure
• 5 The Television Commercial

Part II: Television’s Style: Image and Sound

• 6 An Introduction to Television Style: Modes of Production
• 7 Style and Setting: Mise-en-Scene
• 8 Style and the Camera: Videography and Cinematography
• 9 Style and Editing
• 10 Style and Sound

Part III: Television Studies

• 11 An Introduction to Television Studies
• 12 Textual Analysis
• 13 Discourse and Identity

Glossary
Appendix I Sample Analyses
Appendix II Mass Communication Research

Probable cover design for Television: Critical Methods and Applications.

I haven’t seen the final design for the cover, but the editors and I all liked this one.

If you’re familiar with previous editions, you’ll note that we’ve continued the theme of older scenes of television viewing. In this case, Francis Miller’s photograph was originally captioned, “High school students watching a educational television program.” It was shot September 1, 1958 for Time/Life and documents the home schooling that went on while Little Rock, Arkansas, schools were closed to avoid integration.

We’re licensing it from Getty Images. More information is online.

I’ve just heard from the Routledge (well, actually, Taylor & Francis) editor that she has completed the copyediting.

So, we’re making good progress now. Next up: book layout! Once I receive PDFs from the layout person I’ll be working on the index–one of my least favorite aspects of book writing. But, of course, a good index can greatly increase the usability of a book.

I’m also working on PowerPoint slides to accompany the book. This will be the first edition to have them! Once I get them into reasonable shape, I’ll share a chapter’s slides here.

Onwards!

We’ve run into a short production delay.

The book should be available in January 2012, in time for spring classes.

Sorry for any inconvenience this causes.

As 2010 came to a close, we completed the manuscript and submitted it to Routledge. This should put us on schedule to have it published by the start of fall 2011 semester.

The last chapter to be revised was the first one: “Television’s Ebb and Flow in the Postnetwork Era.” This chapter provides students with an overview of the current turmoil in which traditional network television is currently embroiled. Perhaps surprisingly, or perhaps not, the situation has not changed that much since our last edition. Despite pundits declaring that “television is dead,” conventional over-the-air networks and cable networks are still capturing more eyeballs than online and VOD services.

And no one has yet figured out how to effectively blend TV and the computer — as two recent articles attest:

1. “Smart TV: Still The Tech World’s Afghanistan?,” Huffington Post, January 4, 2011.
2. “What the hell is going on with TV?, Fortune, January 2, 2011.

So, the most we could reasonably add to our own discussion of the turmoil is an expanded section on YouTube and streaming video and a few comments on transmedia storytelling. And we reiterate that the next five or six years are going to be very interesting for television.

Once this chapter was completed, we updated the preface with a list of “what’s new” in the fourth edition (see below), checked on the dozens of illustrations to be included, and digitally shipped the whole thing off via Dropbox (oh, how we love Dropbox!).

Still to come, of course, are indexing and caption writing and additional video preparation; which we’ll chronicle in the “pages” of this blog. For now, however, we’re taking a breather and looking at some other projects.

Whew!

New to the Fourth Edition

As we announced earlier, some of the chapters from previous editions of Television are moving online and will not be included (or updated) in the next edition. Specifically, the “Music Television” and “Animated Television: The Narrative Cartoon” will not be in future print editions.

It’s become obvious to us that it’s also impossible to keep Gary Copeland’s “History of Television Style” chapter up-to-date during this time of TV turmoil. And so we have decided not to include it in the next edition. We have placed a PDF of it online and hope that it might still be a resource for those interested in how stylistic elements such as color evolved in US television.