The end of my university career approaches as a result of my (reluctant) acceptance of voluntary redundancy. I will finish in November 2017 after 25 years of teaching media at the University of Waikato. There is a bigger picture; by leaving in November, my colleagues will not have to go through a demeaning process of re-applying for their jobs. But they will also be hard pressed to cover all our courses and satisfy student demands.
The Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board, or BARB, tells us the who what, when, where, and how of watching British TV and computer screens. Jointly owned by ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, Sky, the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, and the BBC, it has been going in its current form for many years, shifting as required to keep track of changes caused by deregulation and the proliferation of consumer technologies.
As the media firestorm surrounding the Netflix TV series 13 Reasons Why continues apace, I have become increasingly concerned by several vaunted claims made by commentators in relation to the potential effects of the programme’s depiction of suicide.
A long time ago, in a galaxy not so far away, Friday nights were (all too briefly) enlivened by a pair of young scamps with a penchant for critiquing popular culture, whether mounting toy-based parodies of contemporary film and television, utilising Star Wars figurines to skewer trash TV formats, or dispensing Vinyl Justice to the mad, bad and (occasionally) dangerous of rock ‘n’ pop.
In a recent Sight and Sound article (March 3 2017) Nick James made an interesting observation about BBC1’s latest historical/period drama, Taboo (BBC1, 2017, Scott, Hardy et al). Likening its look and characters to an Alan Moore graphic novel (“ From Hell ”), Taboo , according to James, has a “peculiar iconography” that “yearns to be linked…with the shadows…only graphic novelists care
First, and for the record, let me state that I’m not a huge fan of superheroes.
Music video program Rage made its debut on ABC TV 30 years ago this week, on Friday April 17 1987. At the time of its debut Rage was one of five similar music video programs on Australian TV including Video Hits and a local version of MTV. As the others slowly died, morphed or were replaced, Rage has continued with an unwavering commitment to giving Australian audiences access to the weird and wonderful world of music videos.
In endeavoring to comprehend the current conjuncture, I’ve been trying to think back a hundred, fifty, twenty, even ten years. Could I have imagined, just a decade ago, that the following would be progressive nostra today?
In 2016, several UK universities regrettably adopted the use of trigger warnings to signal ‘potentially disturbing’ material on course syllabi.
Viewing practices in the age of second screens Watching television has always been a social activity. Recently, audience practices have been changing with the introduction of new forms of media technologies such as smartphones and tablet computers. Audience members have the option to log onto the Internet anytime and anyplace – even while watching television.
