Fox Network Research Articles

Truncated Poisson–Dirichlet approximation for Dirichlet process hierarchical models

The Dirichlet process was introduced by Ferguson in 1973 to use with Bayesian nonparametric inference problems. A lot of work has been done based on the Dirichlet process, making it the most fundamental prior in Bayesian nonparametric statistics. Since the construction of Dirichlet process involves an infinite number of random variables, simulation-based methods are hard to implement, and various finite approximations for the Dirichlet process have been proposed to solve this problem. In this paper, we construct a new random probability measure called the truncated Poisson–Dirichlet process. It sorts the components of a Dirichlet process in descending order according to their random weights, then makes a truncation to obtain a finite approximation for the distribution of the Dirichlet process. Since the approximation is based on a decreasing sequence of random weights, it has a lower truncation error comparing to the existing methods using stick-breaking process. Then we develop a blocked Gibbs sampler based on Hamiltonian Monte Carlo method to explore the posterior of the truncated Poisson–Dirichlet process. This method is illustrated by the normal mean mixture model and Caron–Fox network model. Numerical implementations are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness and performance of our algorithm.

Taxability of Receipts from Live Transmission Rights as Royalty under the Domestic Law: A Critique of the Tax Tribunal Decision in the Fox Network Group Case

The recent ruling of an Indian tax tribunal in the Fox Networks Group case seeks to undo the 2012 amendment by India, which retrospectively clarifies that the term ‘process’ in India’s domestic law would include transmission by satellite, cable, optic-fiber or by any other similar technology, irrespective of whether such process is secret or not. This article intends to examine and review the law on the subject and jurisprudentially critique the Fox Networks Groupdecision in the light of the principles evolved to interpret the concept and context of royalty, both internationally as well as at the domestic level, post amendment.

The world view(ed) through the English-speaking media lens: foreign news coverage steadfastly narrow and uniform

ABSTRACT Do diverse mainstream media yield diverse world views? In a 197-nation accounting of international news flow, this study evaluates foreign news reporting by The New York Times, The Guardian, National Public Radio, Fox Network News, and Al Jazeera. The study evaluates news consonance, assessing the extent that foreign reporting by these diverse media organisations focused on the same nations. The study provides additional context by analyzing the agenda-setting role of three prominent news determinants: external events, geographical proximity, and population size. The results indicate that even through the collective lens of diverse news outlets, foreign news coverage by major English-language media remains strikingly narrow and uniform in its view of the world. The study also provides an alternate vision: How the view of the world would be substantially different if news coverage were commensurate with national population.

<em>The Simpsons</em> Do the Nineties

<em>The Simpsons</em> Do the Nineties

Screenings

The border-based dramedy Run, Coyote, Run (FOX Networks Group Latin America, 2017) ended its first season with the highest rating of any drama on Mexican TV. This column sketches the rapidly changing industrial mediascape that enables such novel productions in Mexico. Asking whether the new platforms made available by changing technology can facilitate content with new creative characteristics, the column explores industrial practice, professional profiles, and textual analysis to argue for Run, Coyote, Run as an example of a marquee series that incorporates the global/local nexus into the fabric of its complex televisual text.

24 by John McCullough (review)

Reviewed by: 24 by John McCullough Cynthia Cravens 24 John McCullough Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2014 24 is one of the latest entries in the TV Milestones series edited by Barry Keith Grant and Jeannette Sloniowski. Each monograph in the series offers a comprehensive account of a particular television show by placing it within the dual contexts of television and socio-cultural history. Previous titles in the series include Bewitched, The Flip Wilson Show, West Wing and The Wire, and with McCullough's 24, the series continues to be an erudite and valuable resource for scholars and fans alike. Incorporating the work of prominent cultural theorists and critics alongside published interviews with the producers and actors of the show, 24 is a meticulous study of the distinguishing characteristics, landmark innovations and cultural influences of this early example of "terrordrama." Airing from November 2001 to May 2010 on the Fox network, each season of the series tracks one 24-hour period in the life of counter-terrorism agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland). One season is thus comprised of 24 episodes, with each episode representing one real-time hour, including brief ellipses of the narrative to account for commercial breaks. To accommodate the range of characteristics covered in the study, McCullough organizes the book into three chapters. Chapter 1 is an analysis of the cultural forms appropriated by the series, most notably its adherence to the melodramatic mode as delineated by Linda Williams, and most compellingly, its recasting of the Western genre, an argument introduced by Stacy Takacs in her 2012 Terrorism TV: Popular Entertainment in Post-9/11 America and expanded here to apply specifically to Jack Bauer through McCullough's detailed character analysis. Chapter 2 focuses on the innovative style of the show. Here, McCullough argues that the visual design, editing, sound, and performances all mark the series as distinctly postmodern, following Jameson's description of an aesthetic style that "employs pastiche and imitation as its defining strategies" (47). McCullough concludes this chapter by stating that although certain moments in the 8-season narrative seem to suggest critiques of post-9/11 culture, ultimately these critiques are contradictory and, in the end, incoherent. Finally, Chapter 3 delves into the various themes and meanings of the series. Here, in arguably the strongest of the three chapters, McCullough articulates his over-arching argument: "[24] is ostensibly about the contemporary reality of terrorism, and [the show] gained extraordinary attention because of its perceived symmetry with history," but because the series necessarily departs from historical accuracy, it actually obfuscates the reality behind its fiction (97). While the extent to which viewers expect a primetime drama to recreate history is debatable, there were moments, nevertheless, over the course of the show's 8-season run that seemed uncannily to line up with real-life geopolitical events. In one example, McCullough refers to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's defense of torture tactics and his remark that by resorting to methods of torture, "Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles" (101). But these moments are more the result of unnerving coincidence than any kind of creative intentionality. After all, McCullough reminds us, the show was meant to entertain. Overall, he argues repeatedly against the notion that 24 corresponded to actual historical events, as if this were a general point of contention. But other than an anecdotal mention of the show's popularity "in the halls of power in America" (9), he doesn't make clear who, if anyone, ever made this claim. He does helpfully note quite a few of the occasions that make use of actual historical events or seem even to foretell actual events—such as the Democratic nominee for president being an African American in the 2001 premiere season—but emphasizes the ways in which the show [End Page 82] ultimately and necessarily departs from real events. McCullough does complicate this premise in the end. 24's commercial success, he argues, is really the only aspect of the show that accurately reflects its historical moment. While its stylistic innovations have proven hugely influential in the realm of "quality TV" and are considered landmarks in television history, it is the convergence of its...

American Dreams and Demons

In the fall of 2013—just months after the start of Barack Obama's second term as US president—the fantasy television program Sleepy Hollow debuted on the Fox network. A revision of Washington Irvin...

Intersectionality of Race, Class and Gender: The Complex Representation of Bipolar Disorder on Fox Network's Empire

ABSTRACTCritical analysis of representations of mental illness in television programming are woefully lacking, due in part to the limited existence of major characters with mental illness in entertainment media. Much of the theoretical work done on the topic has relied upon parasocial relationships the audience may develop with characters with mental illness, and normative determinations of the positive or negative nature of representations of mental illness. Fox Network's show Empire provides an opportunity to examine the representation of mental illness through a major character, Andre Lyon. Through narrative analysis, the author argues that Empire presents a complex and sometimes problematic representation of bipolar disorder. This depiction provides the opportunity to explore the intersectionality of race, class, and gender with the representation of mental illness, and this nuanced view may offer audiences the narrative probability and fidelity needed to guide the ways we understand and interact with individuals who have a mental illness.

Reading the Bible in Sleepy Hollow

The first season of the Fox network's television show Sleepy Hollow is based on a biblical premise. This article explores how the Bible is portrayed in the series, through the lens of iconic books. It is argued that what makes books iconic is their power to “save” (“salvation”). In the case of the Bible in Sleepy Hollow, this involves representing the Bible as a grimoire. This representation only becomes clear as the use of the Bible throughout the season is surveyed in its role as a performative text.

Teaching GLEE-dership

In a world where more and more emphasis is being put on the importance of teaching leadership skills to work ready undergraduate students, instructors are often met with the challenge of finding current, engaging, real world examples to use in their classrooms. In the case of this application, the instructors propose the use of the characters and video clips from current Fox Network television show Glee to aid in the instruction of Blake & Mouton’s Leadership Grid during a larger discussion of leadership styles.

And yet essays by Christopher Hitchens

navigated the flux of his inner life, which included everything—observations, emotions , places visited, conversations overheard , texts old and new, and experiences personal and shared—that came together to form the man who gave his name to an age. One hopes Young Tom is just the first installment of what promises to be the definitive life. Eliot may never have so understanding a biographer. Bernard F. Dick Fairleigh Dickinson University Christopher Hitchens. and yet . . . essays. New York. Simon & Schuster. 2015. 339 pages. Christopher Hitchens died in December 2011 from cancer, long before publication of four dozen of his previously uncollected essays, all commissioned by some blue-ribbon sources. The lowercase title with open punctuation of this posthumous collection signifies Hitchens’s ability to qualify his polemical arguments, virtually as if he were thinking a new idea on the instant, with utmost celerity and clarity. Devastatingly ironic, vitally analytical, the essays (many of which are book-review articles) create an anthology of pugnacious or mocking rhetorical punishment for assorted subjects: national and international politics, national security, the American Deep South (“where all politics is yokel”), NASCAR events (where God is popularly regarded as “a Republican, with a good chance of being white”), Thanksgiving (of which he approved), Christmas (which he detested), the Fox network, etc. His venom is always potent (especially against the Clintons, Saddam Hussein, and Hezbollah), but history has already come to mock several of his arguments—none so much, perhaps, as his virtually hysterical championing of the second Gulf War, a crime that is most responsible for the current chaos in the Middle East. To his credit, he did not refrain from self-criticism or self-satire—as his Vanity Fair essays on physical self-improvement show with deadly, hilarious efficacy. His piece on the agonies of Brazilian waxing should be compulsory entertainment for the most serious essayists, while his descriptions of his own ugly physical attributes show that his malice did not spare even himself. But politics were his bedrock, as displayed in splendid essays on Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Somalian survivor of genital mutilation and civil war), Gertrude Bell (who created the map of Iraq), Rosa Luxemburg (the “most brilliant of Marxist intellectuals ”), Oriana Fallaci’s incomparable art of the interview, Chesterton’s reactionary sensibility , Arthur Schlesinger’s role as courtier -apologist, Erdoğan’s “xenophobic demagoguery ” (alas, he makes no comparable comment on Netanyahu’s), and Obama’s cool-cat quality (until disenchantment sets in). Politics also supplied a crucial layer in his literary criticism of Forster, Rushdie , Naipaul, Paul Scott, and Ian Fleming, but Hitchens remained a superior stylist, demonstrating a rare literary sensitivity to Joan Didion’s “blues” and Charles Dickens’s “inner child.” An intellectual omnivore (like Clive James), Hitchens almost matched Orwell in intellectual integrity and independence, while also coming as close as anybody has (to quote his own words on Edmund Wilson) to making “the labour of criticism into an art.” Keith Garebian Mississauga, Ontario Krisztián Nyáry. Merész magyarok, 30 emberi történet. Budapest. Corvina. 2015. 278 pages. Merész magyarok (Bold Hungarians) is Krisztián Nyáry’s second collection of sketches and short essays within two years. It Eugene Vodolazkin Laurus Trans. Lisa Hayden Oneworld Fifteenth-century Europe serves as the vast stage for a roving Russian healer who leaves his village on a journey of repentance, turmoil, and growth toward Jerusalem. Vodolazkin’s expertise in the medieval world rounds out this tale that defies the restrictions of this longago time and place in its treatment of universal human pains and regrets. Ivan Vladislavić The Folly Archipelago Books A mysterious interloper with big plans disrupts the quiet, restrained domestic life of Mr. and Mrs. Malgas in the suburbs of South Africa. The unsettling yet compelling nature of their new neighbor draws the characters into his proposals. Mr. and Mrs. Malgas begin to abandon their unquestioning complacency, a process that could be dangerous or revitalizing. Vladislavić skillfully crafts characters and an intriguing plot in what seems like an ordinary, bland world. Nota Bene WORLDLITERATURETODAY.ORG 109 ...

Young Eliot: From St. Louis to The Waste Land by Robert Crawford

108 WLT MAY–AUGUST 2016 US Southwest, a literature that “negotiates between Anglo society and the Mexican community” in search of its own identity. A key component of this type of literature is that it bridges frontiers because writers and readers are continuously crossing over political, social, and cultural boundaries in search of a community of their own. Bonazzi comments that in “these narratives of otherness, we begin to hear the emerging chorus of genuine diversity.” Outside the Margins: Literary Commentaries excels in its analytical commentaries because there are selections from a diverse group of writers that represent a unique style of writing and a rich thematic approach. José Banuelos Montes Roanoke College Robert Crawford. Young Eliot: From St. Louis to The Waste Land. New York. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. 2015. 493 pages. In his essay on Philip Massinger, T. S. Eliot wrote that good poets steal but convert their thefts into something new or at least different. Robert Crawford has shown that they also absorb whatever impinges on their consciousness. By tracing the arc of Eliot’s life from his St. Louis boyhood to the publication of The Waste Land, Crawford has opened the vaults of Eliot’s memory bank, releasing his myriad influences. His Eliot, whom he affectionately calls Tom, was the youngest of six siblings, including four sisters. He was a bookish lad whose mother also wrote poetry and whose father quoted Latin. He was girlshy but, like most adolescents, hormonal and eager to lose his virginity. If one feels currents of sexuality rippling throughout The Waste Land with its motifs of impotence , sterility, mechanical lovemaking, lost innocence, and even homosexuality (Mr. Eugenides propositioning the speaker ), Crawford supplies evidence that Eliot was much obsessed with sex, quoting his scatological limericks that can still evoke a blush. Although Crawford has tracked down Eliot’s sources, he presents his findings in a conversational way, as if the reader were in his seminar, and Crawford is sharing his research with colleagues, suggesting that Prufrock’s surname may have been inspired by the Prufrock Furniture Company in St. Louis and that Eliot’s fascination with the Grail myth may have originated with Bullfinch ’s Legends of King Arthur. Family and friends may have thought of him as Tom, but within the boy was a poet who, like Prufrock, had an inner and outer self. Within Tom Eliot was T. S. Eliot who, as Crawford shows, kept evolving as he World Literature in Review navigated the flux of his inner life, which included everything—observations, emotions , places visited, conversations overheard , texts old and new, and experiences personal and shared—that came together to form the man who gave his name to an age. One hopes Young Tom is just the first installment of what promises to be the definitive life. Eliot may never have so understanding a biographer. Bernard F. Dick Fairleigh Dickinson University Christopher Hitchens. and yet . . . essays. New York. Simon & Schuster. 2015. 339 pages. Christopher Hitchens died in December 2011 from cancer, long before publication of four dozen of his previously uncollected essays, all commissioned by some blue-ribbon sources. The lowercase title with open punctuation of this posthumous collection signifies Hitchens’s ability to qualify his polemical arguments, virtually as if he were thinking a new idea on the instant, with utmost celerity and clarity. Devastatingly ironic, vitally analytical, the essays (many of which are book-review articles) create an anthology of pugnacious or mocking rhetorical punishment for assorted subjects: national and international politics, national security, the American Deep South (“where all politics is yokel”), NASCAR events (where God is popularly regarded as “a Republican, with a good chance of being white”), Thanksgiving (of which he approved), Christmas (which he detested), the Fox network, etc. His venom is always potent (especially against the Clintons, Saddam Hussein, and Hezbollah), but history has already come to mock several of his arguments—none so much, perhaps, as his virtually hysterical championing of the second Gulf War, a crime that is most responsible for the current chaos in the Middle East. To his credit, he did not refrain from self-criticism or self-satire—as his Vanity Fair essays on physical self-improvement show...

Trafficking in TV crime: remaking Broadchurch

As a genre that has evolved from a complex mix of literary, filmic, documentary and radio sources, many of which have been circulating globally for some time, television crime drama provides an illuminating lens through which to explore the issue of the television remake in an era when the transnational traffic in television renders the impulse to translate an original into a different cultural location more questionable than ever. Employing a case study approach, this essay investigates the possible motives underlying the American remake of the British crime drama Broadchurch. While the failure of Gracepoint to find an American audience may have been a disappointment to the Fox network and BBC America, as this essay will argue, it came as no surprise to reviewers and fans of Broadchurch as this had earlier been the fate of previous UK/US crime series adaptations including Cracker, Prime Suspect and Life on Mars. Success in the long run, however, may well be measured in economic rather than aesthetic returns.

Fight Kids: The Future of Mixed Martial Arts or a Detriment to America's Youth? A Call to Regulate Children's MMA

Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) is a full-contact combat sport that has been labeled the “fastest growing sport in the world.” MMA consists of hand-to-hand combat between two fighters trained in various forms of martial arts. Typical MMA bouts consist of punches, kicks, elbow and knee strikes, joint manipulation, and strangulation techniques. MMA bouts end in a submission (a “tap out”), knockout, or by a judge's decision. MMA is well known for its violence and brutal nature, with many fighters suffering lacerations, concussions, and broken or manipulated joints and bones. The Ultimate Fighting Championship, the largest MMA promotion company, has become immensely popular, landing itself on the FOX network and increasing its viewership by the millions. Many viewers include children who now practice and compete in MMA. The problem, however, is that there are no laws or rules that govern or regulate underage MMA competitions. This has led to unregulated MMA competitions featuring children fighters, which poses a serious health risk to the children. A longstanding debate exists whether children should participate in MMA fights or whether MMA should be banned entirely. This Note balances the competing views and rejects the proposal for banning MMA and instead calls for the regulation of children MMA competitions. This Note will offer three proposals in which regulating children's MMA can be accomplished. Keypoints for the Family Court Community Addresses an ongoing and unaddressed problem of underage children competing in mixed martial arts (MMA) Educates the reader as to what is MMA, giving a brief background and information as to this sport which has exploded in popularity over recent years With the inconsistent regulation of MMA in this country, this is a problem that will worsen without giving it the necessary attention Helps to dilute the misconceptions and misunderstanding of MMA as a whole Addreses the health concerns and risks to underage children participating in MMA Discusses and suggests several alternatives to help resolve this issue

Introduction

Many of our Earth years will pass, longer, in fact, than it takes a multi generation starship to reach the galactic hub, before sci-fitv outgrows its rather silly image. (Richard Johnson 28)Writing in the Radio Times the week that The X-Files (US 1993-2002) first aired in the UK on BBC 2, critic Richard Johnson took the opportunity to do a brief survey of television sf. As the above quotation demonstrates, he argued that television sf was, essentially, juvenile entertainment. It is ironic that the series whose beginning prompted these musings was about to release sf from the perceived trappings of camp and turn television sf into something very serious indeed. It did so through a combination of significant factors. First, it relocated sf narrative away from outer space and the future and placed it firmly on contemporary earth. Second, while allowing an identifiable (and delightful) thread of humour to run throughout, it never approached its sf premise with anything other than the utmost reverence. Third, it incorporated its sf within a web of generic hybridity, mixing sf with horror, with conspiracy, with police procedural and, of course, with just a hint of romantic spice. The show that Johnson mockingly announced was about to 'beam down to BBC 2' was, in fact, about to make alien abduction and colonisation an integral part of the cultural discourse of the 1990s.Of course, The X-Files was not new in treating sf on television seriously, nor indeed in hybridising it. It harked back to, and was arguably openly derivative of, key sf and telefantasy television texts like the Quatermass serials (UK 1953, 1955, 1958-9), The Twilight Zone (US 1959-64), Night Gallery (US 1969-73), and Kolchak: The Night Stalker (US 1972-3). What The X-Files did, after sf on television had gradually become synonymous with space opera and Star Trek (US 1966-9) - particularly following the successful launch of Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1987 - was resurrect and re-imagine the genre for a new audience, an audience more responsive to the series' contemporary and earthbound setting. In doing so it would become itself a touchstone, a significant influence in terms of genre, visual style, narrative structure and aesthetic experimentation on the shows that would follow, including Babylon 5 (US 1994-8), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (US 1997-2003), Roswell (US 1999-2002), Alias (US 2001-6), The 4400 (US 2004-7), Battlestar Galactica (US 2004-9), Flashforward (US 2009-10), Haven (2010-) and, perhaps most directly, Fringe (US 2008-13).The first episode of The X-Files was shown on the Fox Network at 9pm on 10 September 1993. It was a gamble for Fox, an attempt for the relatively new network at an industry staple of an hour-long drama series, while its previous successes lay largely in the fields of reality television (Cops (US 1989-)), comedy (Married with Children (US 1987-97) and The Simpsons (US 1989-)) and teen dramas (Beverly Hills 90210 (US 1990-2000)). Chris Carter, creator and executive producer, had never produced a television show before, and the two leads - Mulder (David Duchovny) and Scully (Gillian Anderson) - were played by largely unknown actors, although Duchovny would be familiar to some for his minor appearance as DEA agent Denise Bryson in Twin Peaks (US 1990-1), a series which is generally acknowledged to be an influence on The X-Files. It nearly did not pay off. The first season aired in autumn 1993 in the Friday night graveyard slot, with Fox hoping that the show might pick up ratings by following The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. (US 1993-4).1 By January 1994, The X-Files was only averaging 102nd place out of 118 shows in the ratings (Thomas 10). In the second season, things began to change as the show won a Golden Globe for Best TV Series Drama and the ratings began to rise, causing UK fantasy magazine Starburst to report that 'The X-Files has, this year, graduated into the big league, becoming in the process the cult show loved by both Fantasy fans and the general public alike' (Anon. …

Clothed in Robes of Sovereignty: The Continental Congress and the People Out of Doors (review)

Clothed in Robes of Sovereignty: The Continental Congress and the People Out of Doors. By Benjamin H. Irvin. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. 392. Cloth, $34.95).Reviewed by Robert ParkinsonIn February 2011, hours before the game started, the Fox network began its television coverage of Super Bowl XLV with a video montage featuring current and former NFL players reciting phrases from the Declaration of Independence. Starting in the forum of the National Archives with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and former Secretary of State Colin Powell, players read Jefferson's words from an assortment of patriotic venues across the United States - in front of the Golden Gate Bridge, on an aircraft carrier, at the Statue of Liberty. This performance was the latest, and most direct, effort to conflate what has become America's two holiest national days, the Fourth of July and Super Bowl Sunday. After reading Benjamin Irvin's book, Clothed in Robes of Sovereignty, it is clear that had the delegates to the Continental Congress tuned in, they would have loved it. For Congress, Irvin argues, had dedicated substantial creative energies (281) to the exact same project of affecting American emotions and trying to inspire patriotic feeling long before Jefferson's words - now delivered by quarterbacks and former coaches - existed.Irvin argues that the Continental Congress, through careful, strategic appeals to emotion, passion, faith, morality, sensibility, and aesthetics, forwarded a volitional model of governance, but rather an affective one (5). Irvin sets aside studies of Congress that highlight internal factions, diplomatic or military policy decisions, or the philosophical expressions of the rational Enlightenment. Instead, Clothed in the Robes of Sovereignty focuses on the material and ceremonial culture that the members of Congress cultivated almost incessantly throughout the Revolution: flags and insignia, anthems and songs, parades and military display, monuments and statues, holidays and commemorations. It is a contribution to the literature on how nations invent traditions, a concept most associated with a 1983 collection of essays edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger.1 That book focused on how European authorities attempted to legitimize their rule by wrapping themselves in the mantle of cultural expressions that were thought to be ancient and traditional but were in fact brand new. Irvin explains how the Continental Congress - a body without a shred of constitutional legitimacy or legal standing - began to dedicate an impressive amount of time and resources into the same cultural processes as soon as it convened in the fall of 1774. In these efforts of political culture even more than in policy statements there emerged the shape of what political leaders believed the Revolution was about, Irvin argues. He examines how Congress tried to police public morals in the Continental Association, how they crafted a currency that projected appropriate values, and how they approved medals and fast days to solidify unity.The motivation undergirding all this work was readily apparent, according to Irvin. Although historians have given short shrift to their efforts to mold an American political culture, delegates to Congress understood that many Americans were paying attention. Public trust was in the balance. How the American people responded to their efforts of cultural suasion was critical to whether or not the resolutions passed by Congress would be followed. Martial resistance, the legitimacy of independence, the promotion of a national identity, the support of public morale: All these depended on how Congress won the battle of political culture.To illuminate how the public received these efforts, Irvin focuses on the local context of Congress - i. …

Beaten into action: A perspective on blood sports

Beaten into action: A perspective on blood sports

Book Review: African Americans in Television: Behind the Scenes

African Americans in Television: Behind the Scenes. Gregory Adamo. New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2010. 200 pp. $119 hbk. $32.95 pbk.Gregory Adamo, an assistant professor at Morgan State University in Baltimore, goes behind the scenes of the television production industry to describe the experiences of African American producers and writers early in the twenty-first century. The account is based on interviews with seventeen industry professionals between 1998 and 2005, and it describes the hurdles they face in a business where success depends as much on who you know as what you know.Adamo, a former general manager of a college radio station in New York, began this project as part of his doctoral work at Rutgers University. He focuses on what he calls the new normal, the time in the late 1990s and early twenty-first century when black shows became a standard part of the network TV repertoire. Adamo argues that the success of shows like Sister, Sister and Everybody Hates Chris was due to five factors: the Fox network's strategy to gain viewership by appealing to an urban market, the creation of the UPN and WB networks in 1995, the expansion of cable channels, the mainstreaming of hip-hop culture, and the African American writers themselves, who, seeing the opportunities, seized them.It is the last point on which this book is primarily focused. Through the interviews, Adamo tells how these writers and producers started in show businesses and fought their way to positions of influence. Although Adamo is white, he says that the interviewees spoke candidly about their experiences within the Hollywood system. Some of the revelations are not surprising: college connections and internships do matter; network executives are reluctant to take risks with unknown talent and unorthodox ideas; and well-placed mentors can steer novices to success. These keys to employment and promotion are true regardless of race.The strength of this book lies in its description of less obvious aspects of the black experience in Hollywood, particularly those issues on which the interview subjects disagree.One of those issues is the role of affirmative action in aiding the careers of black television industry professionals. Rose Catherine Pinkney, senior vice president of Comedy Development at Paramount Communications, tells Adamo that she is proud that she is a product of affirmative action because her experience is proof that such programs can work to provide the industry with talented workers. But Shirley Salomon says that she was offended when she found out that she was hired as a director's assistant on the soap opera One Life to Live primarily because she was a minority. …

Depictions of Tobacco Use in 2007 Broadcast Television Programming Popular Among US Youth

To determine the quantity of tobacco use in network television programming popular among US youth and to examine variation in tobacco depictions by TV Parental Guidelines system rating and television network. A content analysis was conducted of broadcast network television programming popular among youth. Nielsen viewership rating data were used to identify a sample of top-rated television series for youth aged 12 to 17 years during the fall 2007 television season. Depictions of tobacco use per television episode were examined by TV Parental Guidelines rating and television network. χ(2) testing was used to examine differences in proportions of tobacco depictions across television episode ratings and networks. Data collection and analysis were conducted at the American Legacy Foundation (now known as Legacy). Broadcast television viewers in 2007. Tobacco use depictions on broadcast television were examined. Forty percent of television episodes examined had at least 1 depiction of tobacco use. Of these depictions, 89% were of cigarettes. Among episodes rated TV-PG (ie, parental guidance suggested) (N = 73), 50% showed 1 or more incidents of cigarette use, in contrast to 26% of TV-14 (ie, parents strongly cautioned) episodes. The percentage of episodes with any tobacco use depictions was highest on the FOX network (44%; n = 32), followed closely by The CW (CBS-Warner Brothers) (41%; n = 30). Substantial tobacco use was observed in television shows popular among youth. It is projected that almost 1 million youth were exposed to tobacco depictions through the programming examined. Tobacco use on television should be a cause for concern, particularly because of the high volume of television viewing among younger audiences.

Blackness, Animation, and the Politics of Black Fatherhood in The Cleveland Show

In 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama gave a Father’s Day speech in which he called for fathers to actively participate in their family’s lives. Obama’s remarks were taken by civil rights leader Jesse Jackson to be a moral chastisement of African Americans. Following Obama’s speech, Jackson was filmed making inappropriate remarks about Obama’s supposed intent and his desire to castrate the presidential hopeful. In the midst of the media firestorm surrounding Jackson’s remarks, African American animator Layron DeJarnette took the occasion to lampoon Jackson. Foregrounding this debacle is a mass-mediated negotiation of what it means to depict and negotiate representations of the black family in popular culture. In this paper, I examine connections between blackface minstrelsy, animation, and televised representations of the black family. I look specifically at The Cleveland Show, the Fox Network’s animated series depicting an African American family. I argue that the show lampoons blackness through a racial discourse while troubling black fatherhood through a sexual discourse.