Local TV - (The Peabody Media History) by Annie Laurie Sullivan & Lauren Herold

Book Synopsis

Local TV offers critical analyses of an expansive range of practices, policies, and debates in local television histories from the United States. Television is typically perceived as a commercial and/or national form of communication with the potential to reach millions of viewers. Yet from the earliest years of television through the present, communities have participated in the production of television, creating media relevant to their needs and concerns. This collection broadens our notion of what this medium can achieve, allowing for innovative representation and community use that disrupts the political, economic, national, and social norms of mainstream offerings. Lauren Herold and Annie Laurie Sullivan have gathered methodologically distinctive chapters that assess the possibilities and limitations of television's mission to serve local publics. In doing so, they are attentive to the diverse histories, technologies, and functions of local television that have emerged in different cities over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Collectively, this book amplifies the use of television by marginalized groups--whose perspectives are too often sidelined or distorted in mainstream fare--as a site for community formation, cultural expression, civic engagement, and political action.

Review Quotes

The field of television studies has been focused largely on the present and on the national. This anthology addresses a significant lacuna in the history, historiography, and archival research into U.S. television by focusing on local TV from the 1940s to the 1990s and beyond. The editors and contributors provide sharp analysis on the importance of place and the complexities of defining 'the local' in diverse kinds of local television. I especially value how contributors expand our understanding of audiences and the ways that local television has enabled different forms of viewing community and engagement. This volume provides important and much needed new knowledge and models for further research.--Aniko Bodroghkozy "author of Equal Time: Television and the Civil Rights Movement and editor of Companion to the History of American Broadcasting"

Local TV is a superb collection of essays that at once showcases diverse methodological approaches to the study of local television while underscoring its importance and richness as a field of inquiry. Lauren Herold and Annie Laurie Sullivan have assembled a fantastic range of chapters that span distinct geographies, historical periods, television genres, modes of production and distribution, imagined audiences, aesthetic practices, and political commitments.--Allison Perlman "author of Public Interests: Media Advocacy and Struggles over U.S. Television"

About the Author

Annie Laurie Sullivan (Editor)
ANNIE LAURIE SULLIVAN is an assistant professor in the Department of English, Creative Writing & Film at Oakland University. Her work examines the ways race, cultural identity, and locality intersect with histories of media infrastructure. She has a PhD in screen cultures from Northwestern University and lives in Ferndale, Michigan.

Lauren Herold (Editor)
LAUREN HEROLD is an independent scholar whose research explores community media, television history, and feminist and LGBTQ cultural production. Her work has been published in Jump Cut; Television & New Media; Velvet Light Trap; Communication, Culture & Critique; and New Review of Film and Television Studies. She has a PhD in screen cultures from Northwestern University.