Author: CSTonline

FRESH MEAT, CHANNEL 4, THURSDAYS 10PM The second season of the hour long comedy drama Fresh Meat prompts the obvious question: why is this the first successful comedy about students since… well how long exactly? Some critics...

My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound...

After the spectacle and drama of live television during an obsessive month of watching the Olympics and Paralympics, the television schedules began to turn to something like normal in the beginning of September and it became...

‘Dear Mr Miller John Lewis PLC has let us know that you recently bought TV equipment. However, we can’t find a record of a TV license for this address.’ The quotation above comes from a letter I received, signed by Carl...

As television criticism goes, HBO’s The Newsroom probably set a new record for the number of scathing, negative reviews that it received.  From its “pedantic lectures disguised as rat-a-tat-tat dialogue” (Grunwald) to its...

‘Performance and Television Space’, a one day symposium held at the University of Glamorgan’s Cardiff School of Creative and Cultural Industries on 20th April 2012, was the second in a series of three conferences organised by...

It’s complicated, being an American, having the money and the bad conscience, both at the same time. (Louis Simpson from ‘On the Lawn at the Villa,’ Selected Poems, 1965) I haven’t given up yet on Aaron Sorkin’s newest...

I’ve got the Bieber fever. I am going to hold up a giant placard, with Justin’s name on, outside his St. Kilda hotel, with a thousand other screaming fans. I am going to shout, ‘I love you Justin’. Justin, just touch my hand....

The Royal Television Society may claim to be ‘Britain’s leading forum for television and related media’ but it can still look like a rather old-fashioned institution. The Prince of Wales is its Patron and John Logie Baird was...

In seeking to capture and manage attention within a competitive media landscape, promotion has become a major component of broadcast output, from the exponential increase in promos, logos, idents and trailers, to new forms of...

On Tuesday this week I arrived back in Australia, early in the morning, from three weeks conferencing and researching in Europe. I spent the day engaged in the gently restorative process of unpacking, washing, and sorting...

As the ‘History of Television for Women in Britain’ team heave a collective sigh of relief at the completion of our main ‘impact’ activities for this project, I thought I would take advantage of the opportunity of blogging...

I must admit that, when I first thought about writing something for this month, I planned on writing about the personal impact of season finales, like Mad Men’s or Justified’s or The Walking Dead’s. Although the rational part of...

As the whole world is about to discover, Britain is more than usually wet this year. As Charlie Brooker puts it, we will be trying to stage the Olympics under water. So imagine my delight at BBC One’s latest primetime...

There was an eerie feeling in Mexico City’s Benito Juárez Airport on the morning of July 1 as I made my way to Guadalajara to talk about global Hollywood, greening the media, cultural citizenship, and the new right of cultural...

I am currently sifting through some of the data from our 100+ interviews with television and digital media producers from the BBC, Channel 4 and the independent television and digital sector. Some of our central questions have...

I have decided to turn over a new leaf and to stop moaning about the lack of HBO on my TV screen. It all came about last weekend when I realised that I had been carrying this bitter burden for nearly a year now.  Rather than...

A lifetime of television viewing often encourages me to make unlikely connections.  Consider the wildly successful ‘Most Interesting Man in the World’ advertising campaign for Dos Equis beer (2007-present) produced by the...

As I wrote earlier this year, my TV viewing habits have, over the past 12 months, undergone a radical change.  Quality US drama series, once my favoured viewing choice, have now been moved exclusively to Sky Atlantic HD, which...

The BBC’s coverage of the Queen’s Jubilee is an example of the megaspectacle that Douglas Kellner (2003) suggests dominates contemporary life. The coverage had all the ingredients of the heightened event and attempted to dazzle...

In a fascinating micro-study a couple of years ago, my colleague Karen Lury looked at how her neighbours were managing the digital transition (‘Close viewing: stories of technology in the move from analog to digital media’,...

Glee has almost all the elements of a perfect TV show for me: high school setting, teens bursting into song at the drop of a hat, lively dance numbers, generally up-beat storytelling, fast-paced dialogue and storylines that...