Author: CSTonline

Mapping medical television is a complicated task. Not only because of the ubiquity of medically themed programmes, or because of the generic, stylistic and formal hybridity that characterises them, but also because, for some...

In this post, I want to explore television programming. Not the kind of programming we might typically associate with TV (i.e. the content, or the act of commissioning and scheduling) but the sort of programming that happens...

‘Remember the Red Indian. When he saw the first steam train, his savage mind thought it an illusion, too.’ Thus begins Doctor Who in 1963 when two teachers Ian and Barbara enter a police box and swiftly find themselves...

The Germans. Among my ancestors. The bad people who tried to bring down Greek radicals. The good people who welcomed Syrian sufferers. The bad people who tried to deceive the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)....

The last weekend in September saw a buzzing festival of television organised by the Radio Times on the green opposite Hampton Court Palace.  There were a number of massive tents (including the Eric Tent and the Ernie Tent),...

I wasn’t going to write another blog about diversity—or the lack of it—in contemporary television. But when Viola Davis became the first woman of colour to win the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, during the...

Daily Show (Image: Liz Giuffre) Jon Stewart’s work on The Daily Show has been an amazing international media ambassador for America. It’s been a token, yes, but proof that there is more substance and nuance to the global media...

Television scholars of my generation tend to have a reflex towards medium specificity, a desire to establish what it was about television that made it television. That was useful in the days when we were trying to emerge from a...

I should probably state at the outset that this blog is not affiliated in any way with the BBC’s current campaign encouraging the nation to ‘get creative’ with all things digital, though byte-sized technology and the Corporation...

What connects a ménage a cinque in Edwardian England, lesbian salons in 1920s Paris, finger snapping and cannibalism? The answer is the harpsichord. As any companion to western music explains, a harpsichord is an historic...

The BBC is under threat like never before. That seems to be the consensus about the two events of past weeks: a budget raid by the Chancellor that saddled the BBC with absorbing the £630 million cost of free TV licences for the...

In 2011, the BBC’s social media guidance was simply “don’t do anything stupid”, equally Channel 4 adopt an approach of ‘if you wouldn’t say it on air, don’t post it online’ (Broadcast, 23/02/12). Yet as the recent ‘Queen has...

Did you enjoy 1864 (2014)? I sure did. That’s because I watched it on fast-forward. I am not sure I should admit this on a forum dedicated to all things television and I am slightly embarrassed. But more of my red ears of shame...

I’ve been thinking about childish memories. Just as I now turn to obituaries before sports in my morning paper, I frequently think in childish terms. ‘Childish memories’ signifies something pejorative, as opposed to ‘childhood...

Earlier this year Sia released a new single, Elastic Heart, with an accompanying music video that drew controversy for featuring Hollywood actor Shia LaBeouf and Dance Moms star Maddie Ziegler performing a contemporary dance...