Creating Television: Conversations With the People Behind 50 Years of American TV (A Volume in LEA's Communication Series) (Lea's Communication Series)

Creating Television brings television and its creators to life, presenting fascinating in-depth interviews with the creators of American TV. Having interviewed more than 100 television professionals over the course of his 15 years of research, Professor Robert Kubey presents here the 40 conversations that provide the most illuminating insights about the industry and the people working in it. These interviews bring television's creators to life, revealing their backgrounds, work, and thoughts about the audience and the television programs they create. Each interview tells a compelling tale of an individual's struggles and successes within a complex collaborative and highly commercial medium, offering readers rare insights on the human component in television's development. Featured in this volume are actors, agents, writers, directors, producers, and executives, representing television's earliest days through to the present day. Spanning shows from I Love Lucy and The Tonight Show through to Seinfeld, The Simpsons, and The Sopranos, these creators share the stories of how they gained entry to the industry and built their careers, offering readers a rare opportunity to meet, up close, the people involved in creating many of the most famous and successful programs in the medium's history, and linking the creators' personal histories to the television programs they create. With its unique insights on the people responsible for making television, this volume will be of interest to scholars and researchers in television history, sociology of culture, human creativity, television production, media studies, and mass media ethics. It will also be a popular reader for undergraduate and graduate students in courses addressing television, mass culture, media and society, American Studies, creativity, television history, and media ethics. "Creating Television brings television and its creators to life, presenting fascinating in-depth interviews with the creators of American TV. Having interviewed over 100 television professionals over the course of his 15 years of research, Dr. Robert Kubey presents here the 40 conversations that provide the most illuminating insights about the industry and the people working in it. These interviews bring television's creators to life, revealing their backgrounds, their work, and their thoughts about the audience and the television programs they create. Each interview tells a compelling tale of an individual's struggles and successes within a complex collaborative and highly commercial medium, offering readers rare insights on the human component of television's development." "Featured in this volume are actors, agents, writers, directors, producers, and executives, representing television's earliest days through to the present day. Spanning shows from I Love Lucy and The Tonight Show through Seinfeld, The Simpsons, and The Sopranos, these creators share the stories of how they gained entry to the industry and built their careers, offering readers a rare opportunity to meet, up close, the people involved in creating many of the most famous and successful programs in the medium's history, and linking the creators' personal histories to the television programs they create."--BOOK JACKET Bringing Television Creators To Life -- Individual Creativity In A Collaborative Medium -- The Pioneers : Creating The First Decade. Sid Caesar ; Bob Schiller And Bob Weiskopf ; Leonard Stern ; Steve Allen ; Fred Decordova ; Agnes Nixon ; David Levy ; Grant Tinker ; Lee Rich ; Carroll Pratt -- Writer-producers : Creating Breakthrough Television. Susan Harris ; Matt Groening ; Edward Zwick And Marshall Herskovitz ; Larry David ; Allan Burns -- A Different Kind Of Writer. Arla Sorkin Manson ; T.s. Cook ; Jean Rouverol ; Bob Ellison -- A Different Kind Of Producer. Gary Smith ; Marty Pasetta ; Dave Bell ; Bruce Sallan -- Two Directors. Jay Sandrich ; Walter Grauman -- The Actors. Ed Asner ; Betty White ; Henry Winkler ; Jason Alexander ; Aida Turturro ; Paul Petersen -- The Agents. Jeremy Zimmer ; Bill Haber ; Jay Bernstein ; Ray Solley -- A Different Kind Of Executive. Frank Dawson ; Gerry Laybourne ; Chris Albrecht. Robert Kubey. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. The beginnings of television, depending on what you read, date back to Philip Nipkow's 1885 patent for the idea of a television scanner, Boris Rosing's 1906 electronic picture tube, Vladimir Zworykin's 1923 invention of the iconoscope, or Philo T. Farnsworth's 1927 patent on an "image dissector." Creating Television presents fascinating, personal, in-depth interviews with 40 leading television creators from television's earliest days through to the present day, and in so doing, television and its creators come to life on the page.