Transatlantic Television Drama
Industries, Programs, and Fans
Michele Hilmes, Matt Hills, and Roberta Pearson
Author Information
Michele Hilmes, Professor Emerita, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Matt Hills, Professor of Media and Film, University of Huddersfield, and Roberta Pearson, Professor of Film and Television Studies, University of Nottingham
Michele Hilmes is Professor Emerita at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she taught media studies for more than twenty years. Her books include Hollywood and Broadcasting: From Radio to Cable, Radio Voices: American Broadcasting 1922-1952, Network Nations: A Transnational History of British and American Broadcasting, and Only Connect: A Cultural History of Broadcasting in the United States.
Roberta Pearson is Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Nottingham. Her books include Many More Lives of the Batman, Star Trek and American Television, Reading Lost: Perspectives on a Hit Television Show and Cult Television.
Matt Hills is Professor of Media and Film at the University of Huddersfield, UK, and co-director of the Centre for Participatory Culture based there. His monographs include Fan Cultures, The Pleasures of Horror, Triumph of a Time Lord and Doctor Who: The Unfolding Event. He has published more than a hundred journal articles/book chapters on media fandom.
Contributors:
Christine Becker is Associate Professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame specializing in film and television history and critical analysis. Her book It's the Pictures That Got Small: Hollywood Film Stars on 1950s Television (2009) won the 2011 IAMHIST Michael Nelson Prize for a Work in Media and History. She is currently working on a research project comparing contemporary American and British television production and programming. She is also the Associate Online Editor for Cinema Journal and runs the News For TV Majors blog.
Jonathan Bignell is Professor of Television and Film at the University of Reading. He specializes in the history of television drama, especially in Britain, and also works on children's media and toys. His articles about television include contributions to Critical Studies in Television, the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Media History, and Screen. His books include Beckett on Screen, Big Brother: Reality TV in the Twenty-first Century, Postmodern Media Culture, A European Television History (edited with Andreas Fickers) two editions of British Television Drama: Past, Present and Future (edited with Stephen Lacey), and three editions of An Introduction to Television Studies. His recent research has been on science fiction TV of the 1960s, and the history and legacy of Harold Pinter's television dramas and film screenplays.
Paul Booth is Associate Professor at DePaul University, Chicago. He is the author of Crossing Fandoms (2016), Digital Fandom 2.0 (2016), Playing Fans (2015), Game Play (Bloomsbury, 2015), Time on TV (2012) and Digital Fandom (2010). He has edited Seeing Fans (2016, with Lucy Bennett), Controversies in Digital Ethics (2016, with Amber Davisson), and Fan Phenomena: Doctor Who (2013). His most recent editorial work involved compiling and introducing 34 chapters for A Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies (2018).
Gary Cassidy is Lecturer in Acting at Bath Spa University. He has recently completed his AHRC-funded doctoral research at the University of Reading. His thesis explored the rehearsal process of playwright Anthony Neilson, using filmed footage of rehearsals and interviews. He trained as an actor at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (now Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) and has thirteen years of acting experience - Equity name Cas Harkins - covering film, theatre, television and radio. He has published in the International Journal of Scottish Theatre and Screen, and co-authors the blog strand 'What Actors Do' for CSTOnline. Plans for future research focus on using his research methodology to explore the working processes of other contemporary theatre practitioners.
Lincoln Geraghty is Reader in Popular Media Cultures in the School of Media and Performing Arts at the University of Portsmouth, UK. He is the author of multiple books, including Living with Star Trek (2007), American Science Fiction Film and Television (2009) and Cult Collectors (2014). He has also edited numerous titles, including The Influence of Star Trek on Television, Film and Culture (2008) and, with Mark Jancovich, The Shifting Definitions of Genre (2008). His most recent collection, Popular Media Cultures: Fans, Audiences and Paratexts, was published in 2015, and he has recently contributed chapters to the Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies (2018) and the Routledge Companion to Media Fandom (2018).
Matt Hills is Professor of Media and Film at the University of Huddersfield, where he is also co-Director of the Centre for Participatory Culture. Matt is additionally co-editor (with Dan Hassler-Forest) on the 'Transmedia' book series for Amsterdam University Press. This published its first title, Fanfiction and the Author by Judith Fathallah, in 2017, and four further volumes in the series are now available. Matt has written six sole-authored monographs himself, starting with Fan Cultures in 2002 and coming up to date with Doctor Who: The Unfolding Event in 2015, as well as editing New Dimensions of Doctor Who (2013) for the programme's fiftieth anniversary year. He has also published more than a hundred book chapters or journal articles on media fandom and cult film/TV. Among other projects, Matt is currently working on a follow-up to his first book for Routledge, entitled Fan Studies.
Michele Hilmes is Professor Emerita of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research and publication focus on media history, with an emphasis on radio and sound studies and on transnational media flows. Her books include Radio Voices: American Broadcasting 1922-1952 (1997), Network Nations: A Transnational History of British and American Broadcasting (2011), and Only Connect: A Cultural History of Broadcasting in the United States (4th edition, 2013). In 2017 she received the Distinguished Career Achievement Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.
Simone Knox is Lecturer in Film and Television at the University of Reading. Her research interests include the transnationalisation of film and television (including audio-visual translation), aesthetics and medium specificity (including convergence culture, and acting and performance), and representations of minority and marginalised identities, as well as the lived experience of screen culture. She sits on the board of editors for Critical Studies in Television and her publications include essays in Film Criticism, Journal of Popular Film and Television, New Review of Film and Television Studies and the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, as well as the co-authored blog strand 'What Actors Do' for CSTOnline.
Lori Morimoto is an independent researcher of transcultural fan cultures and transnational media marketing. She has published influential essays on transcultural fandom and the Japanese female fandom for overseas stars, in Transformative Works and Cultures and Participations, as well as contributing work on transnational Japanese cinema to Scope and Asian Cinema. Lori's recently published book chapters have included co-authored and sole-authored contributions to the likes of Fandom - Second Edition (2017), the Routledge Companion to Media Fandom (2018) and the Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies (2018).
Robin Nelson remains a Professorial Fellow at the University of London, Royal Central School, where until semi-retirement (2015) he was Director of Research and Professor of Theatre and Intermedial Performance. He is also Professor Emeritus at Manchester Metropolitan University where he held a number of posts over twenty years. He has published widely on the performing arts and media and on "Practice as Research" as a research methodology. His books include: Practice as Research in the Arts (2013); Stephen Poliakoff: on stage and screen was (2011); Mapping Intermediality in Performance (co-edited with Bay-Cheng, S et al, 2010); State of Play: Contemporary "High-end" TV Drama (2007). Prof. Nelson is also a co-founding editor of Critical Studies in Television, for which he guest co-edited a special issue on Archiving (2010).
Roberta Pearson is Professor of Film and Television Studies at the University of Nottingham. Among her most recent publications are the co-authored Star Trek and American Television (2014), and the co-edited Many More Lives of the Batman (2015) and Storytelling in the Media Convergence Age: Exploring Screen Narratives (2015). She is in total the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of fourteen books, and author or co-author of over eighty journal articles and book chapters.
Karen Petruska is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Gonzaga University. Her research interests include digital distribution, television history, and regulatory policy. A graduate of Georgia State University, Dr. Petruska has published in Creative Industries, Spectator, Popular Communication, and The Velvet Light Trap. She has also co-edited a special issue of Convergence, contributed to four anthologies, and published online through In Media Res, Flow, Antenna, and MIP Research.
Eva Novrup Redvall is Associate Professor in film and media studies at The University of Copenhagen where she founded and headed the research priority area on Creative Media Industries from 2012-2016. Her research focuses on European film and television production, e.g. screenwriting practices, co-production strategies and specific production frameworks. She has published widely in international books and journals. Among her latest books are the monograph Writing and Producing Television Drama in Denmark: From The Kingdom to The Killing (2012), the edited collection European Cinema and Television: Cultural Policy and Everyday Life (with Ib Bondebjerg and Andrew Higson, 2015) and Transnational European Television Drama: Production, Genres and Audiences (co-authored with Ib Bondebjerg et al., 2017.) She has been a film critic for the daily Danish newspaper Information since 1999 and is part of the Adjudication Committee for The Nordic Council Film Prize 2011-2020.
Paul Rixon is Reader in Radio and Television at the University of Roehampton. He specialises in the field of Broadcasting with a particular interest in American TV programmes and popular/professional TV criticism, and has published two sole-authored monographs on these subjects: American Television on British Screens: A Story of Cultural Interaction (2006) and TV Critics and Popular Culture: A History of British Television Criticism (2011). Paul has also published a number of articles and chapters on newspaper television critics, American TV programmes, and the Iraqi war.
Sam Ward is Project Director at the branding and cultural insight consultancy Canopy Insight. He completed a PhD in the Institute for Screen Industries Research at the University of Nottingham, before becoming a lecturer at the University of Roehampton. He moved to Canopy in 2016, where he has led research projects for international clients across the media, communications and publishing industries.
Faye Woods is Lecturer in Film & Television at the University of Reading. Her monograph, British Youth Television, is published by Palgrave. Her work has appeared in the journals Television & New Media, Cinema Journal, Critical Studies in Television and Journal of British Cinema and Television, as well as the edited collections From Networks to Netflix, Television Aesthetics and Style, Shane Meadows: Critical Essays and Multiplicities: Cycles, Sequels, Remakes and Reboots in Film & Television.