It’s not like me to leave new episodes of MTV’s 16 and Pregnant languishing on my DVR, especially the first two episodes of a new season. What can I say? April is the cruelest month.
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TV
Parenting Teenage Style
The Mad-ness of Precarious Programming?
It is no longer impossible to imagine that AMC might move on, leaving its signature show behind.
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April Fools’ Day and the Ghosts of Media Past
On April 1, 2011, several websites joked around with media history.
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Egyptian State TV and the Challenge Posed by Reality
Trying to watch itself, Egyptian state TV has lost its collective mind. They have slid into a self-comforting psychosis. They don’t reject reality as much as they simply create a whole new one.
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From Veronica Mars to Pretty Little Liars
This post explores social power and millennial television. Where have we come from Veronica Mars’ Lily to Pretty Little Liars’ Alison? What do we make of this fascinatingly repeated trope of the dead, sexually-promiscuous girl who haunts the narrative in potent flashback?
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MTV Gets Some Skin in the Game
MTV’s adaptation of the British TV teen Drama Skins just may be one of those rare shows where what happens on screen is second in precedence to the responses surrounding the show.
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The Gilded Globes: Legitimacy Amidst Controversy
While some may have found Ricky Gervais' pointed remarks as host of this year's Golden Globes tough to swallow, it's hard to argue with his attack on the awards' legitimacy in light of recent controversy.
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Deracinated TV: Watching Misfits in America
Last month, I was in need of a new show. Upon the recommendation of Lainey Gossip and my Twitter feed, I decided on Misfits, a show about which I knew very little, save the following: 1.) It is British. 2.) It is about teenagers.
3.) I couldn't obtain it through strictly legal means.
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BET’s Got Game
Tonight, The Game, a sitcom originally produced for and aired on The CW, premieres its fourth season on its new home, BET. The story behind that move leaves me wondering about the future of "diversity" (whatever that might mean) on broadcast television.
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Survivor: Desert Island Politics
I had stopped watching news channels recently, and perhaps I kept watching Survivor because it became a metaphor for the political situation I was trying to avoid.
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Capitalizing on Multiculturalism: “Premium” Indian American Audiences and “American” advertisers
If we think of efforts by “American” entities to access “Indian American” spaces of culture, capital labor, and belonging as symptomatic of emergent modalities of the transnational, might we be able to see subtle shifts in the discourse of multiculturalism in the contemporary moment?
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Australian “Free” TV
Australia's digital channels pose a threat to the free-to-air channels, so how do the latter fight back?
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WikiLeaks “Bombshell”: The CBC is the Enemy
Considering the revelations which could emerge from WikiLeaks, news that U.S. Embassy Officials in Canada were vilifying CBC's fictional programming was...unexpected.
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Dancing with Democracy
While controversy is nothing new for reality TV, the political overtones of Bristol Palin's run on Dancing with the Stars illuminate the genre's tenuous relationship with the principles of democracy.
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Lessons from Los Angeles: Top Takeaways from the TV Academy (Part One)
The first in our two-part series on the Television Academy of Arts & Sciences Foundation's faculty seminar.
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