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Did your favorite series get the axe because of the writers' strike? What did Gunsmoke have to do with Gilligan's Island getting canceled? Who was Armed and Famous? From Weekends with Maury and Connie to Friday Night Lights, TV Series Finale gets into the details on some of your favorite shows -- how they started, why they were canceled, what cast members are doing now. The site focuses on shows that are no more but also has plenty on current series. (EK) From This is True for 6 January 2008 Suggestions for further reading:
 By: Neal Brower List Price: $16.95 Amazon Price: $11.53 Editorial Review: For the past five years, Neal Brower has written a column called "Professor Brower's Class" in the Bullet, the official newsletter of The Andy Griffith Show Rerun Watchers Club. Each column centers on one episode from the popular television series, The Andy Griffith Show. Brower researches each episode with help from the show's writers, actors, and producers. His essays include their insights as well as Brower's own observations about production, photography, musical scoring, etc. In this first volume of a projected three-volume series, Brower covers the 79 episodes that were written by writers Harvey Bullock, Everett Greenbaum, and Bill Idelson and their partners. Some of the episodes covered in Mayberry 101 include: "The Pickle Story," "Man in a Hurry," "My Fair Ernest T. Bass," "Opie the Birdman," "Mr. McBevee," "Prisoner of Love," "Rafe Hollister Sings," "Class Reunion," "Opie's Hobo Friend," "A Date for Gomer," and "The Darlings are Coming."  By: James Branch Cabell List Price: $3.99 Amazon Price: $3.99 Editorial Review: James Branch Cabell (1879-1958) was an American author of fantasy fiction and belles lettres. He worked from 1898 to 1900 as a newpaper reporter in New York City, but returned to Richmond in 1901, where he worked several months on the staff of the Richmond News. In 1902, seven of his first stories appeared in national magazines and over the next decade he wrote many short stories and articles, contributing to nationally published magazines including Harper's Monthly Magazine and the Saturday Evening Post, as well as carrying out extensive research on his family's genealogy. In the early 1920s he became the leader of a group of writers known as "The James Branch Cabell School", which included such figures as H. L. Mencken, Carl Van Vechten and Elinor Wylie. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1937. Amongst his best known works are: The Eagle's Shadow (1904), The Cords of Vanity: A Comedy of Shirking (1909), and The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck: A Comedy of Limitations (1915).  By: Professor Su Holmes List Price: $27.50 Amazon Price: $27.50 Editorial Review: Despite its enduring popularity with both broadcasters and audiences, the quiz show is marginalized in studies of popular television. Su Holmes takes a fresh approach to quiz shows while also revisiting, updating, and expanding existing quiz show scholarship. Discussing Double Your Money, The $64,000 Dollar Question, Twenty-One, The Price is Right, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and The Weakest Link, Holmes addresses the relationship between quiz shows and the television genre; the early broadcast history of the quiz show; questions of institutional regulation; quiz show aesthetics; the social significance of "games;" "ordinary" people as television performers, and questions of quiz show reception, from interactivity to on-line fandom.  By: Edgar Rice Burroughs List Price: $1.00 Amazon Price: $1.00 Editorial Review: The novel begins with the organization of an expedition to rescue Bowen J. Tyler, Lys La Rue, and the other castaways marooned on the large South Pacific island of Caprona, whose tropical interior, known to its inhabitants as Caspak, is home to prehistoric fauna of all eras. Tyler's recovered manuscript detailing their ordeal is delivered to his family, and the relief effort is put together by Tom Billings, secretary of the Tyler shipbuilding business. The expedition's ship, the Toreador, locates Caprona, and while the bulk of the crew attempts to scale the encircling cliffs Billings flies over them in an airplane. Billings' plane is attacked by flying reptiles and forced down in the interior of Caspak. He saves a native girl, Ajor, from a large cat and a group of ape-men, and undertakes to accompany her back to her people, the fully-human Galus, while she educates him in the language and mysteries of the island.  By: Vicki AbtLeonard Mustazza List Price: $20.95 Amazon Price: $20.95 Editorial Review: Coming After Oprah is the first book-length study assessing a decade of talk that makes the quiz-show scandals of the 1950s look innocuous by comparison. More than just a commentary on the aesthetics of the genre, this book looks at the evolution and cultural significance of these programs, disputing claims that they are nothing more than harmless entertainment. In the book's revealing first half, Vicki Abt and Leonard Mustazza uncover the mechanics of the talk-show game. The book's second half examines the behind-the-scenes economic games and their implications,revealing a web of complex commercial and political interests that influence their production. (A detailed description of the corporate players and the revenues they are generating is also provided.) The study concludes with suggestions for what we as a culture might do to protect ourselves from its inherent deceptions and misinformation. The transformation of TV talk shows over time is the quintessential illustration of how material culture (technology, the media) affects our cultural narratives and symbols. |
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