Inside Prime Time / Edition 1

by Todd Gitlin

Overview

With a New Introduction

Unsurpassed since its first publication, Inside Prime Time is the only book to take us behind the scenes to reveal how prime-time shows get on the air, stay on the air, and are shaped by the political and cultural climate of their times. Using more than 200 interviews with network executives, producers, writers, agents, and actors, as well as months of on-set investigation during the networks' more prosperous years, sociologist and critic Todd Gitlin takes us into a frantic world searching for hit shows. The result is both a lucid picture of the mechanics of prime time and a series of vivid stories of what succeeded or failed, and why. His analysis includes a blow-by-blow account of how the exceptional police series Hill Street Blues succeeded against all odds before eventually succumbing to formula itself.

No one else has analyzed, as Gitlin has, the inside track that links executives and producers, or the efforts of worried advertisers, hopeful writers, and the lobbyists of the fundamentalist right to shape America's waking hours. In a new introduction, Gitlin describes the elements of the new television order, and argues that the proliferation of cable channels and the decline of the old networks have not fundamentally changed the business mentality that guides decisions about the entertainment that will fill Americans' leisure time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520217850
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	01/04/2000
Edition description:	First Edition, With a New Introduction
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.88(d)

About the Author

Todd Gitlin is Professor of Culture, Journalism, and Sociology at New York University. His books include Sacrifice (1999), The Twilight of Common Dreams (1995), The Sixties (1987), and The Whole World Is Watching (California, 1980).

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION TO THE 2000 EDITION
PROLOGUE
PART 1 NOTHING SUCCEEDS LIKE SUCCESS
1. The Problem of Knowing
2. Predicting the Unpredictable
3. By the Numbers
4. Making Schedules
5. The Triumph of the Synthetic: Spinoffs, Copies,
Recombinant Culture
6. "Another American Dream Gone Astray"
PART II THE TELEVISION-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
7. Inside Tracks in a Small World
8. The Deal Is the Art Form
9. Movies of the Week
PART III THE POLITICS OF PRIME TIME
10. The Turn Toward "Relevance"
11. Shifting Right: Yesterday's Vietnam, Today's FBI
12. The "Far Righteous" Shake the Temple of Commerce
13. The Temple Stands
14. Hill Street Blues: "Make It Look Messy"
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTES
INDEX
 

Editorial Reviews

Perhaps the best book ever written about the thinking of the insulated men and women in the executive suites of Century City, Burbank and Television City.

Los Angeles Book Review

‘Todd Gitlin's Inside Prime Time is perhaps the best book ever written about the thinking of the insulated men and women in the executive suites of Century City, Burbank and Television City.' - Los Angeles Times

‘This is very likely the most concentratedly intelligent book yet written about television' - Film Quarterly

‘Inside Prime Time presents the richest information ever collected on the inner workings of America's chief culture industry' - Commonweal

From the Publisher