in Television: Channels of Listening. Edited by James Deaville. (Routledge and Screen Media Series.) New York and London: Routledge, 2010. [xi, 238 p. ISBN 9780415881357 (hardcover), $95; ISBN 9780415881364 (paperback), $32.95.] examples, illustrations, index. During much of twentieth century, television music was largely ignored by scholars. Television itself has often been considered a redheaded stepchild of film studies, and those who did study television often ignored any musical aspects. Like - wise, study of film music was not considered proper by most American musicologists until at least 1970s, and many of those scholars had no interest in television. Recently, however, this has begun to change, as evidenced in growing number of texts available on subject (such as Ron Rodman's Tuning In: American Narrative Television [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010]) as well as articles from Popular Music, and Moving Image, and Music, Sound, and Moving Image, and other similar journals. It is in this context that in Television: Channels of Listening came into existence. Touted by editor James Deaville as the first collaborative book devoted to general topic of television music in English (p. 2), this text is worth acquiring by those who have an interest in television music or in popular music in general both for its value as a resource and for several of its compelling articles. As Deaville notes, collection as a whole is not designed to be comprehensive, but rather to provide a sampling of what is available and to act as a stepping stone for further research (p. 2). in Television is divided into two sections-Practices and of Television Music and Case Studies in Television Music-each of which contains five articles. The selections in Practices and Theories are generally designed to be broader than those in Case Studies, though Colin Roust's article on NBC news documentaries could easily fit in second section. As is typical for a collection of this type, text covers a variety of topics, including documentaries, cartoons, science fiction, cop shows, and concerts on television. Approaches vary, too, from primarily sociological studies (Norma Coates' It's What's Happening, Baby! Tele - vision and Politics of War on Poverty) and cultural studies (Kip Pegley's 'The Rock Man's Burden': Consuming Canada at Live 8) to visual studies of musicians ( Julie Brown's Channeling Glenn Gould: Masculinities in Television and New Hollywood) to more technical analyses of music itself (Ron Rodman's 'Coperettas,' 'Detecterns,' and Space Operas: and Genre Hybridization in American Television) The articles are not particularly theoretical, though; college students who can read music should be comfortable reading any article in collection. Indeed, given its broad range of topics and approaches, this text would be ideal as a supplement for an introductory film music or television music course. Perhaps most useful for those endeavoring to further their knowledge of field is opening chapter, A Discipline Emerges: Reading Writing about Listening to Television. In it, Deaville compiles a chronological historiography of television that is both readable and extremely useful for those who have a strong background in music and are interested in getting into field of television music. The author concentrates on academic sources (primarily but not exclusively in English), but does touch upon other, more popular sources as well. The information is well researched, and footnotes are extensive, providing for a good overall summary; however, given nature of article, an actual bibliography would have made use of such information easier. (Indeed, given nature of book, an overall bibliography for text as a whole would be particularly helpful for classroom. …
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