Research Catalog

Title

Not so prime time : chasing the trivial on American television / Howard Rosenberg.

Author

Rosenberg, Howard, 1938-

Publication

Chicago : Ivan R. Dee, 2004.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xviii, 269 pages; 24 cm

Summary

"In this witty and candid perspective on American television, critic Howard Rosenberg traces a disturbing pattern: TV's relentless pursuit of the mundane in its seeming quest to dumb down America." "Many of his essays in Not So Prime Time relate to television news, which the author charges has failed dismally in its shrilly self-proclaimed role as a Bethlehem star of enlightenment, its influence continuing to widen in circles that value tabloid over truth."--Jacket.

Subject

• Television broadcasting > United States
• Television programs > United States
• Television broadcasting
• Television programs
• Televisieprogramma's
• Reality-TV
• Nieuws
• Kritiek (algemeen)
• United States

Genre/Form

• Television programs.
• Émissions télévisées.

Note

• Includes index.

Contents

Team coverage of breaking news ; Poor Richard's almanac of horrors ; Obsession, not proportion, drives television news ; Her nose makes news ; Private lives and prying public ; First amendment, shmendment ; When ride-alongs take the public for a ride ; Foreign news? It's all alien to the networks ; Let's hear it (again) for old glory ; A lox named fox ; If you're not for yourself, who will be for you? ; The blurred lines of today's "reality" ; Celebrating fiction as fact ; Paul goes home ; Propping up the Berlin Wall ; Out of the anchor chair, into the fray ; The Russian roulette of live news coverage ; To air is human, especially when it's live ; Live from Iraq, ready or not ; Publicity, they name is Schwarzenegger ; The day the world shattered ; Ratting on Bill was her duty ; Wanna confess? Call Montel ; How was poor Jenny to know he was a ticking time bomb? ; Communing with nature by destroying it ; Transgressing all the way to the bank ; The art of rebounding ; When crummy acting and writing equal fun ; In "ark," Noah plays friars club ; A tale of two miniseries ; The face that launched a thousand cliches ; Infomercials disguised as conventions ; Judging political parties by their stagecraft ; And now, for my next rehearsed ad lib ; Do great moves make great presidents? ; When his presence is the message ; Our president: man or mannequin? ; Bush's image fails to fill the screen ; When no news is big news ; White meat or dark? ; D-day and the resonance of war now and then ; Looking to the past to see the present ; A new war, but the same old tube ; War as a sales tool ; Seeking symbolic moments in the tides of history ; Talking the talk before taking the walk ; Ultimate reality ; Timothy McVeigh: the closed circuit ; Let's bring camera's to death's door ; O.J. on trial ; The year of Simpson ; The case for cameras in courtrooms ; Give Bin Laden his (televised) day in court ; One picture can be worth a thousand clips ; The death of Challenger recalled ; Columbia: freeze this frame ; High noon in television's high court ; TV keeps the dreams, and dross, alive ; Big man, big laughs, big legacy ; Excellence, from "Marty" to the mafia ; I confess! I did watch Perry Mason! ; A toast for Kuralt and one for the road ; Contemplating Cosell ; The life of a national hero has its perils ; A "masterpiece theatre" of pomp and puff ; When the coverage is as senseless as the tragedy.

ISBN

• 1566635772
• 9781566635776

LCCN

2004045538

OCLC

• ocm54670076
• 54670076
• SCSB-1346644

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library