CSTONLINE RE-LAUNCH: PART 2 by Kim Akass

Since CSTonline was last published at the end of June we have seen some seismic political shifts – the UK has voted to leave Europe in a total Brexit shocker, we have another female Prime Minister (let’s hope that’s all she has in common with the other one) and the US has just voted in a reality-TV star for President. Who would have thought that such huge changes would happen in a quarter of a year?

On TV, Bake Off has left our BBC screens bought for £25 million by Channel 4, losing 3 out of 4 of its stars along the way. Strictly continues to attract record audiences and even if Ed Balls fails to please the judges, the audience are enthralled. Narcos is into its second series, The (final) Fall has just finished, Cold Feet returned to huge success (and has been re-commissioned for another series), HBO’s Westworld meanders on and we await the final season of Game of Thrones.

Even as much changes on the outside, within the world of television, one series finishes and another begins, the ebb and flow of the TV world familiar and reassuring.

But CSTonline has changed.

Over the summer months, while Andy Murray was winning Wimbledon (and later becoming No 1 seed) many long hours have been spent re-designing the site, transferring content, adding links, categories and tags, loading photos and videos and generally doing everything needed to re-launch with a more up-to-date, eye-pleasing and fully searchable site.

It has been a long job that still isn’t finished, but I hope you agree that the website is fully functional and, while there is still more content to be added, as well as links within blogs still going back to the old site (which will remain online for at least another year), we are very nearly there.

It is a real shame that one of the original bloggers for CSTonline, our own David Lavery, is not here to see this new update. I would like to think that he would come out of blogging retirement to pen another Telegenic for us, I’m sure he would have written passionately about the American election, eviscerating Trump’s ability to preside over David’s home nation, leaving us in no doubt of where his loyalties lay. David’s untimely death robbed Critical Studies in Television of one of its founding editors, the TV community of one its forefathers and, for everyone who has worked alongside David, a genuinely big-hearted and loving colleague. I  wish that I could still shoot the breeze with David, putting the world to rights, kvetching over another glass of wine and discussing what his next blog would be about.  In his memory I am going to be re-running his Telegenics from the beginning.   They maybe about shows that are no longer onscreen (and some that still are) but I am sure everyone will enjoy the timeless quality of David’s writing.

To move towards a conclusion to this re-launch blog, I would like to thank Andrew Parker for doing the lion’s share of content uploading.   With over 550 blogs to upload this was a huge job and he did it efficiently and with good cheer. Thanks to Caitlin Akass, who earned some much needed holiday spending money helping out with the site. Big thanks go to Mediacitizens , in particular Andy Lewis for doing all the design work and creating the site, and my lovely husband Jon for continuing to support this website and providing administrative support for free.

Last, but not least, a huge shout out to Steven Adams, Associate Dean of Research in the School of Creative Arts, University of Hertfordshire for providing the funding needed to make this happen and continuing to support us into the future.

It is over 5 years since I first re-launched CSTonline. The blog I wrote then described everything that had changed on the site this time I’m going to let you find out yourselves. I have removed categories that are no longer needed – every University has its own website now and, as so many TV studies courses change yearly, it is impossible to keep up. I am no longer featuring books and there is a direct link to the hard copy journal (now residing with SAGE) and the url for the site has changed – CSTonline.net.

I would be grateful if you would draw my attention to a missing blog or a link or pictures not behaving themselves. Just email me with the information and I’ll do what I can.

You’ll notice (above) that I am still trying to work out how to centre youtube videos but, on the bright side, I now have a nifty plugin that means we can use as many footnotes as we want. ^[1]See.  And you can navigate back to the original spot but clicking on the arrow on the left – marvellous

All bloggers are requested to resume blogging – a rota will appear in the next few weeks.

Thanks to everyone for continuing to support CSTonline, we would be nothing without you.

 

Kim Akass is a Senior Lecturer in Film and Television (Department of Creative Arts) at the University of Hertfordshire.  She has written numerous articles and edited various collections on US TV (with Janet McCabe), is co-series editor of the Reading Contemporary TV Series with I.B. Tauris (with Mcabe), is one of the co-founding editors of Critical Studies in Television and is managing editor of CSTonline.  She is currently writing a book on the representation of motherhood on US TV for I.B. Tauris.