Communication in Eastern Europe: The Role of History, Culture, and Media in Contemporary Conflicts
1996; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 22; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2161-430X
Autores Tópico(s)Media Studies and Communication
ResumoDaniel, Douglass K. Grant: The Making of TV's Top Newspaper Drama. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1996. 269 pp. $17.95. How delightful to read a well-told tale about the all-time most popular TV drama dealing with newspaper journalism. Lou followed on the heels of the popular Mary Tyler Moore Show,' running from 1977 until its cancellation by CBS in 1982. During its five-year run, the one-hour weekly drama depicting Grant working on a big city newspaper with a little family of people* won acclaim from various quarters. Critics awarded the program and its individual actors an impressive list of Emmys, Directors Guild, Writers Guild (and other) awards; a consistently high number of loyal viewers tuned in week after week; and journalists praised the program for its realistic, even sympathetic, portrayal of what it is they do and how they go about doing it. Why study Lou Grant? Douglass K. Daniel, an assistant professor in the A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications at Kansas State University, suggests the program deserves an examination both as an enduring artifact of American television history and for the way in which the show portrayed journalists and their work. He sets his task as one of understanding how Lou presented the craft of journalism and what viewers told through the show about the field. The analysis also attempts to explain the show's success and the reasons for its cancellation. Daniel's methods include a review of all 114 episodes of the series; interviews with the cast of characters, including creators, producers, journalists consulted by the production team, and the actors (Ed Asner, who played has contributed the foreword to the book); and research into a variety of documents, including newspaper and magazine accounts of the program and unpublished CBS material. Appendixes include CBS character sketches, Daniel's synopses of the episodes, editorial cartoons about Lou Grant, and photos from the series. All of this produces a highly readable account of the series. Readers are taken through the five years of Lou Grant, from its conception to its demise. Daniel makes much of the initial research that both producers and the actors undertook to accurately portray newsroom situations and to play their roles (most of the seven actors spent considerable time in newsrooms-the Los Angeles Times opened its doors to the Lou producers and actors-shadowing the sort of person they to be on the TV screen). He explains the role of the Program Practices group, a monitoring division of CBS charged with ensuring that program plots and character portrayals were appropriate for the television airwaves; in other words, that they overly offended no one. …
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