Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status

Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status

I want you to help me change all that. From a one-time high of nineteen such programs, at this writing there are just four. The precariousness of the soaps within the broadcast network business model became especially clear in the late s, where there were still eight soaps on air. First, CBS canceled the longest-running show in US broadcast history, Guiding Light , which had transitioned to television from radio in ; then it announced the end of the second longest-running soap, As the World Turns , which debuted in As of , ABC still had three soaps, but within a few years two of those would be canceled.

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It was within this context that feature film actor James Franco approached General Hospital about wanting to play a part on the show. Claiming his role on the soap was an experiment in that tradition, he explained,. A Journey to the End of Taste. In this period, many soaps experimented with stunt episodes that attracted publicity for their affinities with prime time and their distinction from typical soap fare. In , Guiding Light offered weekly episodes focused exclusively upon one character.

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In one such episode, police officer, wife, and mother Harley Cooper turned into a superheroine named The Guiding Light as the program interspersed panels from a tie-in comic book. The gradual move of daytime soaps to high-definition production during this same period was also articulated to strivings for legitimacy.

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Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status explores how and why television is gaining a new level of cultural respectability in the 21st. PDF | On Feb 29, , Michael L. Wayne and others published Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status, by Newman, M. Z., & Levine, .

The first television programs to be produced and distributed in HD were live sports broadcasts, followed by the HD distribution of upscale prime-time dramas like The Sopranos. The CBS soap The Young and the Restless was the first daytime program to be shot in HD, begun remarkably early, in , a move the production staff saw as a signal of their growing status.

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To purchase short term access, please sign in to your Oxford Academic account above. You may send this item to up to five recipients. Allen identifies the paradigmatic complexity of soap-opera narrative as a key feature of the genre and the pleasures it offers. An American Film Culture. If you originally registered with a username please use that to sign in.

Most of the soaps converted to HD between and —not getting the conversion in this period was, in retrospect, a sign of imminent cancellation. In keeping with prime-time series, a number of soaps began to air producing, directing, and writing credits keyed over the screen during the first act of each episode as opposed to during closing credits only.

In the case of GH , these efforts at distinction also wound their way into the stories that got told. GH began its tale of the emotionally tortured mobster before The Sopranos even appeared, but the attention and acclaim that series generated lent General Hospital a degree of artistic credibility. Franco made just two requests for his GH character: Obsessed with death and, we soon learn, a serial killer himself, Franco admires Jason and seeks to emulate his work. It is not surprising that the show involved Franco with Jason, of all characters. Not only was he central to many masculinized storylines, but his portrayer Steve Burton was popular with fans.

Burton also shared a manager, Miles Levy, with the real-life Franco.

Legitimating Television Media Convergence and Cultural Status

Burton got to brandish a gun, act tough, and try to stop a psycho from hurting those he loves, a role taken on by many an action hero, while Franco got to engage in a postmodern meta-performance, accruing to himself the elite status of the art world. In so doing, the storyline furthered the masculinist focus of these plots. Yet Franco also injected intimations of queerness into the narrative.

Legitimating Television: The Striving Soap Opera

The actor has long had a queer star image, which his soap appearance drew upon. In the GH narrative, the exhibit turned into a showdown between Franco and Jason, but it was a showdown of no consequence to the broader soap storylines. Other control number Other physical details ill. Subject Television -- Technological innovations Television broadcasting -- Social aspects.

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James Zborowski; Legitimating Television: Legitimating Television is the impressive outcome of an ambitious undertaking. Newman and Elana Levine offer their book's Most users should sign in with their email address. If you originally registered with a username please use that to sign in.

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