Research Guides
Communication Studies: Television (TV)
This subject guide is a starting point for communication-related research, including mass media, speech communication, and more.
Encyclopedias & Handbooks
- A Companion to Reality Television
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- Encyclopedia of American Animated Television Shows
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- Encyclopedia of Television: Series, Pilots, and Specials
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- Encyclopedia of Television Shows, 1925 through 2007
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- Historical Dictionary of African American Television
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- Race in American Television: Voices and Visions That Shaped a Nation
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Gateways to TV Info on the Web
TV Broadcasting Directories
TV Online - current and historical archives
Here are a few resources for finding TV online. Remember to check for copyright clearance and permission to post. For more information on public performance rights, see the Video & Streaming Video guide.
- American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB)AAPB is a growing collection of pubic radio & public television broadcasts
- CBC Digital ArchivesDigitized radio and tv newsclips from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
- C-SPANDaily coverage of Washington and more than 200000 hours of extensively indexed and archived C-SPAN video.
- FORA.tvDiscourse, discussions and debates on the world's political, social and cultural issues. Most videos are several years old.
- IMDb TVSome free TV shows and films.
- Julian P. Kanter Political Commercial ArchiveCommercials dating back to 1936 for radio and to 1950 for television and represent candidates running for offices ranging from the U. S. Presidency to school boards throuohout the United States, by political action committees, advertisements sponsored by corporations and special interest groups on public issues, and more.
- JustWatch"...find out where to watch your favorite movies & TV shows in the United States."
- Meet the Press This link opens in a new window
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Streaming video archive of the weekly American television news/interview program, 1947-2003.
- Open Vault"Online access to unique and historically important content produced by the public television and radio station WGBH."
- POV (Point of View)"Public television's annual award-winning showcase for independent non-fiction films."
- Seattle ChannelNews, analysis, and stories about Seattle's civic and cultural landscape.
- Television @ Internet ArchiveCollections of items recorded from television, including commercials, old television shows, government proceedings, and more.
- Television ArchiveA library of world perspectives concerning September 11, 2001"
- Television News Archive This link opens in a new window
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Archive of national television news broadcasts, 1968 to present. Includes streaming video from CNN and NBC.
- TVWOffers unedited coverage of Washington state government and reporting on government, politics, and public policy. Archival programming back to 1995.
- UWTVUWTV is UW's education-oriented channel.
- World Newsreels Online: 1929-1966American, French, Dutch & Japanese newsreels primarily covering WWII era. ProQuest Terms & Conditions
- World Wide Internet TVWorld Wide Internet TV is a clearinghouse of links to online TV broadcasts from around the globe.
Book Sampler
The UW Libraries has many books about television. To find additional books, use UW Libraries Search.
Broadcasting Politics in Japan: NHK and Television News by
The aftermath of Japan's 1945 military defeat left its public institutions in a state of deep crisis; virtually every major source of state legitimacy was seriously damaged or wholly remade by the postwar occupation. Between 1960 and 1990, however, these institutions renewed their strength, taking on legitimacy that erased virtually all traces of their postwar instability. How did this transformation come about? This is the question Ellis S. Krauss ponders in Broadcasting Politics in Japan; his answer focuses on the role played by the Japanese mass media and in particular by Japan's national broadcaster, NHK. Since the 1960s, television has been a fixture of the Japanese household, and NHK's TV news has until very recently been the dominant, and most trusted, source of political information for the Japanese citizen. NHK's news style is distinctive among the broadcasting systems of industrialized countries; it emphasizes facts over interpretation and gives unusual priority to coverage of the national bureaucracy. Krauss argues that this approach is not simply a reflection of Japanese culture, but a result of the organization and processes of NHK and their relationship with the state. These factors had profound consequences for the state's postwar re-legitimization, while the commercial networks' recent challenge to NHK has helped engender the wave of cynicism currently faced by the state. Krauss guides the reader through the complex interactions among politics, media organizations, and Japanese journalism to demonstrate how NHK television news became a shaper of Japan's political world, rather than simply a lens through which to view it.
Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth by
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An NPR Best Book of the Year "A thorough and damning exploration of the incestuous relationship between Trump and his favorite channel." --The New York Times "A Rosetta Stone for stuff about this presidency that doesn't otherwise make sense to normal humans." --Rachel Maddow, MSNBC "Stelter's critique goes beyond salacious tidbits about extramarital affairs (though there are plenty of those) to expose a collusion that threatens the pillars of our democracy." --The Washington Post The urgent and untold story of the collusion between Fox News and Donald Trump from the New York Times bestselling author of Top of the Morning. While other leaders were marshaling resources to combat the greatest pandemic in modern history, President Donald Trump was watching TV. Trump watches over six hours of Fox News a day, a habit his staff refers to as "executive time." In January 2020, when Fox News began to downplay COVID-19, the President was quick to agree. In March, as the deadly virus spiraled out of control, Sean Hannity mocked "coronavirus hysteria" as a "new hoax" from the left. Millions of Americans took Hannity and Trump's words as truth--until some of them started to get sick. In Hoax, CNN anchor and chief media correspondent Brian Stelter tells the twisted story of the relationship between Donald Trump and Fox News. From the moment Trump glided down the golden escalator to announce his candidacy in the 2016 presidential election to his acquittal on two articles of impeachment in early 2020, Fox hosts spread his lies and smeared his enemies. Over the course of two years, Stelter spoke with over 250 current and former Fox insiders in an effort to understand the inner workings of Rupert Murdoch's multibillion-dollar media empire. Some of the confessions are alarming. "We don't really believe all this stuff," a producer says. "We just tell other people to believe it." At the center of the story lies Sean Hannity, a college dropout who, following the death of Fox News mastermind Roger Ailes, reigns supreme at the network that pays him $30 million a year. Stelter describes the raging tensions inside Fox between the Trump loyalists and the few remaining journalists. He reveals why former chief news anchor Shep Smith resigned in disgust in 2019; why a former anchor said "if I stay here I'll get cancer;" and how Trump has exploited the leadership vacuum at the top to effectively seize control of the network. Including never before reported details, Hoax exposes the media personalities who, though morally bankrupt, profit outrageously by promoting the President's propaganda and radicalizing the American right. It is a book for anyone who reads the news and wonders: How did this happen?
The Queer Fantasies of the American Family Sitcom by
Winner of the 2019 John Leo and Dana Heller Award for the Best Work in LGBTQ Studies from the PCA The Queer Fantasies of the American Family Sitcom examines the evasive depictions of sexuality in domestic and family-friendly sitcoms. Tison Pugh charts the history of increasing sexual depiction in this genre while also unpacking how sitcoms use sexuality as a source of power, as a kind of camouflage, and as a foundation for family building. The book examines how queerness, at first latent, became a vibrant yet continually conflicted part of the family-sitcom tradition. Taking into account elements such as the casting of child actors, the use of and experimentation with plot traditions, the contradictory interpretive valences of comedy, and the subtle subversions of moral standards by writers and directors, Pugh points out how innocence and sexuality conflict on television. As older sitcoms often sit on a pedestal of nostalgia as representative of the Golden Age of the American Family, television history reveals a deeper, queerer vision of family bonds.
Recasting History: How CBC Television Has Shaped Canada's Past by
Since 1952, CBC television has played a unique role as the primary mass media purveyor of Canadian history. Yet until now, there have been no comprehensive accounts of Canadian history on television. Monica MacDonald takes us behind the scenes of the major documentaries and docudramas broadcast on the CBC, including in Explorations (1956-64) and the series Images of Canada (1972-76), The National Dream (1974), The Valour and the Horror (1992), and Canada: A People's History (2000-02). Drawing on a wide range of sources, MacDonald explores how producers struggled to represent the Canadian past under a range of external and internal pressures. Despite dramatic shifts in the writing of history over this period, she determines that television themes and interpretations largely remained the same. The greater change was in the production and presentation, particularly in the role of professional historians, as journalists emerged not only as the new producers of Canadian history on CBC television, but also as the new content authorities. A critique of public history through the lens of political economy, Recasting History reveals the conflicts, compromises, and controversies that have shaped the CBC version of the Canadian past.
Rube Tube: CBS and Rural Comedy in the Sixties by
Historian Sara Eskridge examines television's rural comedy boom in the 1960s and the political, social, and economic factors that made these shows a perfect fit for CBS. The network, nicknamed the Communist Broadcasting System during the Red Scare of the 1940s, saw its image hurt again in the 1950s with the quiz show scandals and a campaign against violence in westerns. When a rival network introduced rural-themed programs to cater to the growing southern market, CBS latched onto the trend and soon reestablished itself as the Country Broadcasting System. Its rural comedies dominated the ratings throughout the decade, attracting viewers from all parts of the country. With fascinating discussions of The Andy Griffith Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, and other shows, Eskridge reveals how the southern image was used to both entertain and reassure Americans in the turbulent 1960s.
RuPaul's Drag Race and the Shifting Visibility of Drag Culture by
This book identifies and analyzes the ways in which RuPaul's Drag Race has reshaped the visibility of drag culture in the US and internationally, as well as how the program has changed understandings of reality TV. This edited volume illustrates how drag has become a significant aspect of LGBTQ experience and identity globally through RuPaul's Drag Race, and how the show has reformed a media landscape in which competition and reality itself are understood as given. Taking on lenses addressing race, ethnicity, geographical origin, cultural identity, physicality and body image, and participation in drag culture across the globe, this volume offers critical, non-traditional, and first-hand perspectives on drag culture.
Technicolored: Reflections on Race in the Time of TV by
From early sitcoms such as I Love Lucy to contemporary prime-time dramas like Scandal and How to Get Away with Murder, African Americans on television have too often been asked to portray tired stereotypes of blacks as villains, vixens, victims, and disposable minorities. In Technicolored black feminist critic Ann duCille combines cultural critique with personal reflections on growing up with the new medium of TV to examine how televisual representations of African Americans have changed over the last sixty years. Whether explaining how watching Shirley Temple led her to question her own self-worth or how televisual representation functions as a form of racial profiling, duCille traces the real-life social and political repercussions of the portrayal and presence of African Americans on television. Neither a conventional memoir nor a traditional media study, Technicolored offers one lifelong television watcher's careful, personal, and timely analysis of how television continues to shape notions of race in the American imagination.
Up All Night: ed Turner, CNN, and the Birth of 24-hour News by
The wild inside story of the birth of CNN and dawn of the age of 24-hour news How did we get from an age of dignified nightly news broadcasts on three national networks to the age of 24-hour channels and constantly breaking news? The answer--thanks to Ted Turner and an oddball cast of cable television visionaries, big league rejects, and nonunion newbies--can be found in the basement of an abandoned country club in Atlanta. Because it was there, in the summer of 1980, that this motley crew somehow, against all odds, launched CNN. Lisa Napoli's Up All Nightis an entertaining inside look at the founding of the upstart network that set out to change the way news was delivered and consumed. Mixing media history, a business adventure story, and great characters, Up All Night tells the story of a network that succeeded beyond even the wildest imaginings of its charismatic and uncontrollable founder, and paved the way for the world we live in today.
We Now Disrupt This Broadcast: How Cable Transformed Television & the Internet Revolutionized It All by
The collision of new technologies, changing business strategies, and innovative storytelling that produced a new golden age of TV. Cable television channels were once the backwater of American television, programming recent and not-so-recent movies and reruns of network shows. Then came La Femme Nikita, OZ, The Sopranos, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, and The Walking Dead. And then, just as "prestige cable" became a category, came House of Cards and Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video, and other Internet distributors of television content. What happened? In We Now Disrupt This Broadcast, Amanda Lotz chronicles the collision of new technologies, changing business strategies, and innovative storytelling that produced an era termed "peak TV." Lotz explains that changes in the business of television expanded the creative possibilities of television. She describes the costly infrastructure rebuilding undertaken by cable service providers in the late 1990s and the struggles of cable channels to produce (and pay for) original, scripted programming in order to stand out from the competition. These new programs defied television conventions and made viewers adjust their expectations of what television could be. Le Femme Nikita offered cable's first antihero, Mad Men cost more than advertisers paid, The Walking Dead became the first mass cable hit, and Game of Thrones was the first global television blockbuster. Internet streaming didn't kill cable, Lotz tells us. Rather, it revolutionized how we watch television. Cable and network television quickly established their own streaming portals. Meanwhile, cable service providers had quietly transformed themselves into Internet providers, able to profit from both prestige cable and streaming services. Far from being dead, television continues to transform.
