Television Personalities: Stardom and the Small Screen. James Bennett. New York: Routledge, 2011. 225 pp. $35.95 pbk.James Bennett has written on a variety of media topics from digital media to intellectual property, with a strong focus on television and performance. A growing number of scholars are examining fame and celebrity, and this treatment fits into a continuum of perspectives from celebrity-as-demotic to celebrity-as-aristocratic, with a particular focus on what the author sees as the underexplored area of TV celebrity (which he places at the demotic end of the spectrum).Bennett is chair of Media, Information and Communications at London Metropolitan University and an editor at the new Celebrity Studies Journal published by Routledge. In framing this study, Bennett draws on the work of other television studies scholars, largely those who have turned their attention to reality TV. In terms of like work on television fame, Bennett liberally references both Joshua Gamson (Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America; University of California Press, 1994) and Graeme Turner (Understanding Celebrity; Sage, 2004), though Television Personalities doggedly maintains its focus on the specific aspect of TV celebrity.The author defines TV personalities as those who play themselves as distinct from television actors. Think Arthur Godfrey, Oprah Winfrey, Benny Hill, and the scores of personalities populating the world of reality TV. Where many observers have commented that TV personalities are agreeable voids, famous for being famous without having to work hard or exercise any skill, Bennett argues that is an undervalued aspect of this hybrid form of celebrity that requires both labor and achievement. By Bennett's characterization, the most salient feature of TV personalities is their function of familiarity. They seem to be like us, unlike movie stars who are remote, idealized versions. The everydayness and ordinariness of these TV personalities is what we like about them and connect to, and rather than positioning these qualities as a deficiency, Bennett stresses this authenticity and intimacy as the site of their cultural importance.The book progresses chronologically and is divided into three parts. In part 1, Bennett addresses televisual fame in the 1950s, including performers' transition from Vaudeville to radio to television. One interesting note is the perceived risk by many performers, given that their mugs would be on screen for a potentially very large audience to see rather than a mere theaterful or effectively blind radio audience. In part 2, he speaks to the political economy of the 1980s and 1990s and the development of the TV personality system in mass broadcasting. Along the way, he touches on femininity, glamour, and visual spectacle, and how time slots and schedule (i.e., flow) and distribution and production affect the perception and reception of TV personalities.Part 3 tackles the lifestyle TV regime, DIY fame, and the impact of digital media. This includes the entrepreneurial position of TV personalities in the commercial economics of the medium (e.g., Simon Cowell's nasty judge image on the U.K. Pop Idol was exported to the U.S. American Idol, and also allowed Cowell to create and profit from similar formats in other shows, globally) and in the political economy of public service broadcasting (i.e. ongoing debates about presenter pay and televisual skill required by personalities appearing as themselves). This latter relates to the underlying question about TV personalities who present as their real selves about whom one might ask, is their work? What is the value of their fame? In his attempt to position this work as skilled performance and as valuable, Bennett argues that they provide pleasure and social meaning. …