Prime-time Television Research Articles

Fertile Ground

Yellowstone is an American, contemporary Western primetime television series which has evolved into a cultural phenomenon. In this article, we critically read purposive samples from this popular cultural text through the prism of the plaasroman (Afrikaans farm novel), a seminal subgenre in Afrikaans literature. Through an analysis of a range of tropes, we identify similarities between these seemingly disparate genres in terms of the representation of the Boer and Frontier myth, ownership and belonging, centre-periphery dichotomies, and identity. The value of this analysis is two-fold: First, it lies in what such a comparative analysis reveals about the contemporary moment in both a local and transnational context. The resurgence of nostalgic yearning for a particular brand of patriarchal, heteronormative, conservative, rural simplicity in the narratives of Yellowstone is read against the background of farm, and land, as depicted in the plaasroman. This is relevant given that there is a similar propensity for nostalgia in certain South African contexts which takes the form of appropriations of the construct of the Afrikaner Boer imaginary and the concomitant utopian farm ideal. Second, and perhaps more importantly, we argue that analysing Yellowstone from the theoretical vantage point of the plaasroman, which originates from a minor language and literary system, inverts the ways in which Global North genre-lenses are usually used to read Global South genres. The research follows a controlled case comparison approach and, building on a deep description of the plaasroman, presents an analysis and interpretation of Yellowstone’s first season.

Streaming with more diversity? A comparison of the representation of minorities in broadcasting versus streaming television content

This study focused on the representation of minority groups on television, following the idea(l) that television as a mirror of society should convey a well-balanced representation of society. The current study extends previous research in that it analyses the potential for differences between regular broadcasters and streaming platforms, due to the latter’s public commitments to diversity and inclusion. Our results reveal that on Dutch prime-time television and popular streaming platforms women and seniors are underrepresented, whilst sexual minorities are overrepresented on public broadcasters and ethnic minorities on all platforms. Furthermore, results revealed that public nor commercial broadcasters nor popular streaming platforms succeed in being a fully inclusive, diverse, equitable, and representative reflection of Dutch society.

Communication Policy to Reduce Health Disparities: A Cross-Language Content Analysis of YouTube Television Advertising

IntroductionThis study aimed to identify disparate health-related marketing across English- and Spanish-language television networks in New York City (NYC), ultimately to inform policy that can counteract disproportionate health-related marketing that provides harmful content to, and withholds beneficial information from, Latinx populations. MethodsA two-week composite sample of primetime English-language (NBC and CBS) and Spanish-language (Telemundo and Univision) television networks from YouTube TV was randomly drawn from September 7-27, 2022 in NYC. A total of 9,314 health-related television advertisements were identified for systematic media content analysis and coded into categories: alcohol, core or noncore foods/beverages, mental health/tobacco prevention, health insurance, medical centers, and pharmaceuticals. Analyses conducted in 2022-2024 included intercoder reliability, and descriptive and rate difference estimates using total advertisement broadcasting time in the full sample and sub-samples by language networks on YouTube TV. ResultsCompared to NYC primetime English-television networks, Spanish-television networks broadcasted greater health-adverse advertisements per hour for alcohol (Rate Difference [RD]=4.91; 95%CI=3.96,5.85) and noncore foods/beverages (RD=13.43; 95%CI=11.52,15.34), and fewer health-beneficial advertisements per hour for mental health/tobacco prevention (RD=-0.99; 95%CI=-1.45,-0.54), health insurance (RD=-1.00; 95%CI=-1.44,-0.57), medical centers (RD=-0.55; 95%CI=-1.23, 0.12), and pharmaceuticals (RD=-5.72; 95%CI=-7.32,-4.11). ConclusionsMulti-level policy innovation and implementation is required to mitigate primetime television marketing strategies that contribute to health inequities.

Spirituality and people with psychosis: A content analysis of influential primetime television programs.

This mixed methods study examined depictions of spirituality among people with psychosis in influential television programming. Spirituality is a central strength for many people with psychosis. Yet, despite the important role media plays in shaping perceptions, little research has examined the intersection between spirituality and psychosis in popular media. To address this gap, we conducted a content analysis of the 50 most viewed primetime fictional television shows over a 10-year period as determined by the Nielsen rating organization. Characters with psychosis were identified via keyword searches of online sources (wikis, IMDb, etc.) and subsequently independently coded by two individuals. Characters were rated on 18 items in three domains related to demographics, life status, and character framing. Inter-rater reliability ranged from good to excellent across variables. Of 120 identified focal characters with psychosis, just 16 percent (n = 19) had a spiritual identity. Analysis revealed few differences between spiritual and secular characters on demographic and life status variables. Conversely, an examination of framing variables revealed spiritual characters were comparatively less attractive, exhibited a greater negative impact on society, and were more likely to be referred to pejoratively (as a psychopath) and engage in criminal activity. Trend analysis indicated portrayals of spiritual characters decreased over time. The results suggest media depictions of spirituality contribute to the stigmatization of spirituality among people with psychosis, potentially mitigating access to important coping resources and discouraging professional help-seeking. Primary care physicians should consider incorporating a spiritual assessment into care to operationalize spiritual coping assets.

Illusions of Participation in Kenya’s Contemporary Television Broadcastscape

Discourses on active and meaningful participation and inclusion in social and cultural spaces in Kenya are not just of significant scholarly and intellectual value, they are germane in the rebuilding and democratisation of a Kenyan nation-state in the post-2007 election violence that exposed deep and historical “ethnic” fragmentations. I argue that although several contemporary television broadcasters in Kenya continue to create a perception of increasing and robust audience participation in televised content, significant forms of current participation on Kenyan television broadcasts are illusionary and futile as they largely entrench television’s power among media elites. I propose that these forms of participation, which continue to marginalise ordinary people and gate-keep everyday events, are passive and minimalist. Anchoring my conceptual discourses on convergence culture and debates on self-representation, and through a critical textual analysis of prime-time television content sampled from four television broadcasters in Kenya, I conclude that the Kenyan television broadcastscape still extensively manifests traditional approaches of “old media.” Kenyan citizenry is afforded token and peripheral participation in contemporary television workflows in which content is still largely, and in many cases almost exclusively, conceived, shaped, distributed and controlled by media elites—bodies whom they consequently largely benefit.

Editorial Gatekeeping in Sports News During Prime Time Television in a Public Broadcaster

Abstract Introduction. Based on Shoemaker's model of gatekeeping, this study addresses two questions: What social representations of sports are promoted by the prime time news program of the public television broadcaster Radio Televisão Portuguesa (RTP)? How do editors assess sports news stories during the editorial decision-making process? Material and Methods. For this, we quantitatively examined all the sports content in the prime time ‘Telejornal’ daily news program of RTP during a trimester. Moreover, we studied the factors that influenced editorial decisions, by conducting naturalistic participant observation and semi-structured interviews. Results. Results indicate that facts of greater public protagonism, which cause a significant emotional reaction and are relatable to the public, are more newsworthy. The main constraints influencing the editorial decisions were organized in three co-dependent areas: Social System (macro level), RTP Organization (meso level) and Telejornal Newsroom (micro level). Conclusions. Findings contribute to a reduction in social stereotypes created by television broadcasters, and to sports actors optimizing their communication strategy.

Containing visions of justice: on the assimilation, alienization, and disappearance of Black Lives Matter in Scandal’s “The Lawn Chair”

ABSTRACT When the primetime television show Scandal aired its Ferguson-inspired episode “The Lawn Chair” in March 2015, they sought out to envision what racial justice “should” mean. This vision assimilated Black Lives Matter’s (BLM) radical systemic critique of white supremacy into a binary logic of guilt and innocence, alienized the political power of black anger, and disappeared Black queer women from the narrative, projecting an image of activists as ineffectual and an image of white political actors as the arbiters of social change. Through critical rhetorical analysis, I argue that “The Lawn Chair” effectively functions to contain the liberatory potential of BLM, bounding the movement’s intersectional critique within the liberal fantasy of inclusion and recognition. In so doing, I map out what I call the three dominant forms of rhetorical containment—assimilation, alienization, and disappearance—to better understand how the force of containment both recurs and accumulates within the dominant cultural memory and the social imaginary.

New Narratives of Madness in Popular US Television

Abstract This article examines a 2010s wave of US primetime television shows centered around the experiences of mad or distressed characters. Drawing upon research in critical disability and mad studies, the article identifies positive trends in US media surrounding mental disability, distress, and medication. Although the portrayals of madness in the shows discussed are complex and not without issue, this article argues that these series make space for alternative narratives of madness in popular culture that do not rely wholly on stereotypes of crime, genius, or violence.

The Art of Listening.

The Art of Listening.

Older Adult Representations, Stereotypes, and Interpersonal Competence in Christmas Television

ABSTRACT Recognizing the need to monitor the television depictions of older adults (OAs) we used social cognitive theory to study OA representations, stereotypes, and appearances in the understudied genre of Christmas television, specifically Hallmark Christmas movies (N = 50). We extended social cognitive theory to understand the effect of positive stereotypes on older adults’ appearances by employing interpersonal competence theory and coding OA interactions for positive and negative altercasting, defined as casting of one’s interactant into a valued or disvalued identity. Unlike primetime television analyses, OAs were not underrepresented relative to the U.S. population. OAs appeared in more minor than supporting roles, and participated in Christmas traditions like celebrating with family and affirming Christmas traditions and spirit. Over 60% of OAs portrayed positive stereotypes like Sage, Golden Ager, Perfect Grandparent and John Wayne Conservative. As theorized, net positive altercasting completely mediated the effect of three positive OA stereotypes on the frequency of OA appearances. Implications for studying Christmas television, aging stereotypes, and media portrayals of interpersonal competence are discussed.

Profiles in ambiguity: how three 1960s American TV dramas “broached the unbroachable”—Vietnam

ABSTRACT Although American prime-time TV in the 1960s witnessed an “eruption” of comedies and dramas with military or combat settings, series television, like big-screen Hollywood films, virtually never dealt with Vietnam, ostensibly because the topic was “too hot” or “toxic.” Yet three overlooked series of the period did engage the war, with relative levels of explicitness and critique: Route 66 (1960–64), The Lieutenant (1963–64), and I Spy (1965–68). This paper analyzes the ways each of these dramas represented the Vietnam War, probes the implicit and explicit ideological positions each show articulated (or avoided), and offers a more nuanced account of the historical and industrial context that shaped and constrained the treatment of Vietnam in American prime-time television storytelling.

Entertainment-Education: What Are Grey's Anatomy and Saving Hope Teaching Us About Death?

In this article, we examine primetime television as a source of entertainment-education on death. Using directed (deductive) and conventional (inductive) approaches to content analysis, we describe how death and dying are being depicted on two primetime medical television series, Grey's Anatomy and Saving Hope. We then discuss what kinds of information viewers may be taking from these series. Our deductive content analysis suggests that much of the messages obtained are fairly representative of what occurs in real hospital settings, with the exception of emotional display. From the inductive analysis, we identified four thematic categories: 'the person dies, but life goes on', 'the tragic death', 'the purposeful death', and 'the well-timed death'. Regardless of category, no rituals are conducted at the moment of death and little space is made for grieving on primetime medical television shows. While death is often present, displays of grief are avoided.

The MetaPharmacy: What Happens When Big Pharma Goes Virtual?

The MetaPharmacy: What Happens When Big Pharma Goes Virtual?

Linguistic Characteristics of Interracial Interactions on Primetime TV: A Quantitative Content Analysis

Media depictions of interactions between members of different ethnic/racial groups can have either constructive or detrimental social impact depending on the characteristics of these representations. To advance understanding of these interracial dynamics, the linguistic characteristics of interracial interactions in scripted primetime television shows were examined. Human and computer-assisted analysis of 548 interactions involving 578 characters revealed a relatively egalitarian pattern of representation of interracial interactions. Furthermore, in line with communication accommodation theory, characters generally matched each other’s language use (i.e., converged) during interracial interactions.

Platformized Seriality: Chinese Time Travel Fantasy from Prime-time Television to Online Streaming

While seriality has long been associated with broadcast and cable television, the global rise of online streaming has brought development of what I call platformized seriality: assemblages of online platform infrastructure design, content regulation, generic convention, and experimentation. The notion of platformized seriality points to a complex refiguration of specific media content and genre forms that are usually overlooked in platform studies. This essay analyzes time-travel serials—now immensely popular in the context of China’s growing video-streaming industry, convergence culture, and the financial boom of digital platforms. Analyzing the trope of the female time traveler in historical romance, this essay examines how chuanyue, or the Chinese time-travel genre, subtly unsettles contemporary gender-related anxiety and the dominant discourse on development and progress, something that partly explains the pleasure it generates. The genre of chuanyue benefited from the rise of platform infrastructure designs such as bullet screens and pay-on-demand-in-advance services that direct new forms of audience engagement and new practices of binge-watching. Focusing on the fantasy genre and the mutability of the time traveler’s gender, sexuality, and class, I explore how the trope of traveling backward marks a reconfiguration of conceptions of time, space, and history and thus opens a space to negotiate with the neoliberal narratives of linear and progressivist temporality.

“It Encourages Family Discussion”: A Mixed-Methods Examination of the This Is Us Alzheimer’s Disease & Caregiving Storyline

The average United States (U.S.) adult spends approximately one hour interacting directly with a healthcare professional but 2,000 hours watching primetime television annually. Thus, television storylines may be a powerful vehicle for promoting awareness about Alzheimer’s disease and caregiving, which affect an estimated 9 million U.S. adults. We used a mixed-methods approach consisting of an online survey of U.S. adult This Is Us viewers (n = 720) and 4 focus groups (n = 12) with a subset of survey respondents to systematically assess viewer perceptions of an Alzheimer’s disease and caregiving storyline from the This Is Us television show and the storyline’s influence on viewer behavioral intent toward planning for aging. Triangulation of survey and focus group results suggests the storyline may motivate viewers to discuss plans for aging with their family because of a reduction in stigma and seeing on-screen family tensions related to senior care. Results suggest investments in collaborative partnerships between public health and the entertainment industry may be a valuable way to positively impact those affected by Alzheimer’s disease and caregiving. Clips from this storyline could also be used as part of health communication campaigns to encourage advanced care planning discussions.

From text to screen: Gentleman Jack then and now

As part of the growing genre of post-heritage quality drama for television, Sally Wainwright’s BBC-HBO production of Gentleman Jack stands out in terms of its close adherence to the original Lister diaries. While in many ways season one of Gentleman Jack follows the conventional narrative of courtship and marriage that defines much historical costume drama—as in, for example, the adaptations of Jane Austen novels—it also continually subverts the form through its unique queer content, closely based on the Lister diaries. While Gentleman Jack is not the BBC’s first queer lesbian historical series, the uniqueness of the source text, which includes explicit descriptions of Lister’s sexual practices in code, positions the series as ground-breaking in terms of prime-time television. This essay considers the ways in which the series adapts, mediates and reconfigures the original diaries for a contemporary audience. It will analyze how these transcriptions are supplemented through the performative and the visual and how to read the ideological coding of episodes that move away from the diaries into the realm of the fictional, such as the Lister-Walker marriage proposal at the end of the series. It also asks what the responsibility of the series is to the historical archive on the one hand, and to its contemporary audience on the other.

LEGAL AND BUSINESS STUDY STOP PRESS EARLY WARNING TSUNAMI AT PRIME TIME ON INEWS

<span class="fontstyle0">Early warning tsunami iis the right of every citizen to know, guaranteed by the 1945 Constitution, and the Regulation of the Minister of Communication and Information No. 20/2006. The Minister of Communication and Informatics clearly states that broadcast media are obliged to broadcast Stop pressing contains early warning tsunami after the earthquake disaster. The impression took at least 30 seconds, with a high tone. This is the dilemma of broadcast media managers. Namely showing Stop press as a statutory obligation when the zone prime time television. During this time duration prime time the price is very expensive. However, Inews still prioritizes the interests of the community, by broadcasting Stop pressing,<br />should reduce the duration. This is part of the responsibility and protection of legal rights for the community. In addition, Inews does not want to receive criminal sanctions, just for not broadcasting Stop pressing early warning tsunamis.</span> <br /><br />

Play Like the Pros? Solving the Game of Darts as a Dynamic Zero-Sum Game

The game of darts has enjoyed great growth over the past decade with the perception of darts moving from that of a pub game to a game that is regularly scheduled on prime-time television in many countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, and Australia, among others. It involves strategic interactions between two players, but to date, the literature has ignored these interactions. In this paper, we formulate and solve the game of darts as a dynamic zero-sum game (ZSG), and to the best of our knowledge, we are the first to do so. We also estimate individual skill models using a novel data set based on darts matches that were played by the top 16 professional players in the world during the 2019 season. Using the fitted skill models and our ZSG problem formulation, we quantify the importance of playing strategically—that is, taking into account the score and strategy of one’s opponent—when computing an optimal strategy. For top professionals, we find that playing strategically results in an increase in win probability of just 0.2%–0.6% over a single leg but as much as 2.2% over a best-of-31-legs match. Summary of Contribution: Dynamic zero-sum games (ZSGs) are of considerable interest, as they arise in many applications including sports, the management of communication networks, interdiction games, and heads-up poker—an important topic in modern artificial intelligence. In this study we consider the game of darts, which is growing increasingly popular around the world today. We formulate the game of darts as a ZSG and solve it iteratively by formulating each player’s best-response problem as a stochastic shortest-path (SSP) problem. We then solve these SSPs using standard dynamic programming methods. In solving the ZSG, we are able to accurately quantify the importance of top professionals playing strategically.

Portrayal of Parent- Children Relationship in Television Drama Serials of Pakistan

Purpose: The current research investigates the portrayal of the parent- children relationship in prime-time entertainment television dramas of Pakistan. Relationship between parenting style and socio-economic status of the parents has been analyzed.
 Design/Methodology/Approach: Quantitative Content Analysis has been applied to measure the portrayal of parents in Drama serials. Top three entertainment channels ARY Digital, Hum TV and Geo TV were the targeted channels and parent-children based episodes were selected through purposive sampling. Out of 147 episodes, 308 scenes were selected. Scenes were coded on the predefined categories found in existing literature.
 Findings: The results showed that there was not much significant relationship found between socio-economic status of the parents and their parenting style. However, generation raised by parents with high socio-economic status showed submissive behavior towards their parents while the children raised by parents with low socio-economic status showed disrespectful behavior to their parents.
 Implications/Originality/Value: The findings suggest policy consideration to Pakistan Media Regulatory Authority regarding parents’ portrayal in drama serials. As respecting parents is our cultural value without any difference in socio economic status. But more materialistic approach is being projected in TV channels which need a second thought as the social norms.