One of the most common questions I get asked when I am at a conference abroad is what television is like in my own country. As a researcher mainly interested in British and American television, people ask me if Spanish TV is of the same quality as English-speaking productions.

The first question that I necessarily ask myself when deciding upon case studies for the ‘Forgotten Television Drama’ project is, “Can I accurately call this programme forgotten?” Thinking about this too hard is often an invitation to indecision. A case can be made that almost any old television drama has been forgotten.

In his 1990 autobiography, Days of Vision (London: Methuen) the late television director and writer, Don Taylor, rhetorically asked what the television studio could offer that film, by then the established mode for drama production, could not. He gave the following heartfelt and poetic answer: ‘…an empty space. A prepared canvas ready to paint on; the vacuum of an open mind waiting to be filled.

Jason Jacobs and Stephen Peacock  recently published a book on TV Aesthetics – Television Aesthetics and Style – in which they argue that discourses surrounding style and aesthetics are ‘curiously absent from many critical appraisals of contemporary television’ (2013: 1). They suggest that, instead, ‘academic work on television remains, for the most part, entrenched in theoretical frameworks’ (2).

BBC-bashing is of course a venerable and well-cherished sport for the British press. A recent example was the ‘furore’ over the Corporation’s overly-enthusiastic use of Gary Barlow, particularly in his performance in Gary Barlow’s Big Ben Bash (BBC1), which aired from 11.15 on New Year’s Eve.

Who would have thought that the company behind the cuddly Great British Bake Off format would be embroiled in one of the biggest documentary ethics blow-ups of recent years? Love Productions is indeed behind both Bake Off and Benefits Street , a five-part Channel 4 series that has “prompted a storm of protest” and a 38 Degrees online petition signed by 50,000

I knew I’d really made it when the New York Times wanted to speak to me about ‘Monocles’ last week. The inquiry was based, said the Grey Lady’s email, on my work about food on television. That in turn derived from something in my dark past. Years ago, I did a spot on the Food Network’s immodest televisual autobiography for its Chefography series.

The holiday season is a particularly good time to enjoy television. All the broadcasters are pulling out the big guns, scheduling the most popular programmes, investing money in some big dramas, and in general trying to please the public through obviously popular fair that is also often very expensive to produce. And I do like my popular fair that has high production values.

Having since marked several dozen first year essays, Christmas is fast becoming a distant memory.

Kennedy set so much in motion in such a short period of time that the outcome of each narrative was unclear. Journalist and author Evan Thomas in American Experience ’s* *‘JFK’ (2013) The Kennedy assassination still marks a shared milestone for most Americans whether or not they were alive on November 22, 1963.

How many of us define ourselves as doing ‘Television Studies’, and state as such when asked by others what our field is? I ask this following an interesting discussion at the opening plenary at last week’s MeCCSA conference, brilliantly hosted by Bournemouth University.