Redesigning women : television after the network era / Amanda D. Lotz.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lotz, Amanda D., 1974-

Series:

Feminist Studies and Media Culture

Feminist studies and media culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women on television.

Women's television programs--United States.

Women's television programs.

Television and women--United States.

Television and women.

Television broadcasting--Social aspects--United States.

Television broadcasting.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (241 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, c2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In the 1990s, American televison audiences witnessed an unprecedented rise in programming devoted explicitly to women. Cable networks such as Oxygen Media, Women's Entertainment Network, and Lifetime targeted a female audience, and prime-time dramatic series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Judging Amy, Gilmore Girls, Sex and the City, and Ally McBeal empowered heroines, single career women, and professionals struggling with family commitments and occupational demands. After establishing this phenomenon's significance, Amanda D. Lotz explores the audience profile, the types of narrative and characters that recur, and changes to the industry landscape in the wake of media consolidation and a profusion of channels.Employing a cultural studies framework, Lotz examines whether the multiplicity of female-centric networks and narratives renders certain gender stereotypes uninhabitable, and how new dramatic portrayals of women have redefined narrative conventions. Redesigning Women also reveals how these changes led to narrowcasting, or the targeting of a niche segment of the overall audience, and the ways in which the new, sophisticated portrayals of women inspire sympathetic identification while also commodifying viewers into a marketable demographic for advertisers.

Contents:

1. Women's brands and brands of women : segmenting audiences and network identities

2. Fighting for families and femininity : the hybrid narratives of the action drama

3. Sex, careers, and Mr. Right in comedic dramas : the "new" new women of Ally McBeal and Sex and the city

4. Same story, different channel? Returning home and starting over in protagonist-centered family dramas

5. Of female cops and docs : the reformulation of workplace dramas and other trends in mixed-sex ensembles.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [203]-214) and index.

ISBN:

9786613895899

9781283583442

1283583445

9780252091766

0252091760

OCLC:

842262469