BBC-bashing is of course a venerable and well-cherished sport for the British press. A recent example was the ‘furore’ over the Corporation’s overly-enthusiastic use of Gary Barlow, particularly in his performance in Gary Barlow’s Big Ben Bash (BBC1), which aired from 11.15 on New Year’s Eve.

Who would have thought that the company behind the cuddly Great British Bake Off format would be embroiled in one of the biggest documentary ethics blow-ups of recent years? Love Productions is indeed behind both Bake Off and Benefits Street , a five-part Channel 4 series that has “prompted a storm of protest” and a 38 Degrees online petition signed by 50,000

I knew I’d really made it when the New York Times wanted to speak to me about ‘Monocles’ last week. The inquiry was based, said the Grey Lady’s email, on my work about food on television. That in turn derived from something in my dark past. Years ago, I did a spot on the Food Network’s immodest televisual autobiography for its Chefography series.

The holiday season is a particularly good time to enjoy television. All the broadcasters are pulling out the big guns, scheduling the most popular programmes, investing money in some big dramas, and in general trying to please the public through obviously popular fair that is also often very expensive to produce. And I do like my popular fair that has high production values.

Having since marked several dozen first year essays, Christmas is fast becoming a distant memory.

Kennedy set so much in motion in such a short period of time that the outcome of each narrative was unclear. Journalist and author Evan Thomas in American Experience ’s* *‘JFK’ (2013) The Kennedy assassination still marks a shared milestone for most Americans whether or not they were alive on November 22, 1963.

How many of us define ourselves as doing ‘Television Studies’, and state as such when asked by others what our field is? I ask this following an interesting discussion at the opening plenary at last week’s MeCCSA conference, brilliantly hosted by Bournemouth University.

‘I have this theory that your favourite Sherlock Holmes is the one you grew up with’ Amanda Field, author of The Wartime Files of Sherlock Holmes in Timeshift: ‘How to be Sherlock Holmes: the Many Faces of a Master Detective’ (BBC4, 12 January 2014). It has been hard to escape Sherlock Holmes in 2014.

There are only three sports I enjoy watching on television and each has a unique way of handling the articulation of player interiority through sound and vision.

In the introduction to their 2006 edited collection, Joanne Hollows and Rachel Moseley reflect on the decision to name their book *Feminism in Popular Culture *rather than Feminism and Popular Culture , arguing that ‘the idea of feminism *and *popular culture tends to presume that a “real” and “authentic” feminism exists outside of popular culture, and offers a position to

So, the first blog of the new year. Perhaps it should be about Christmas and television, a reminiscence of the supposed golden age when the nation was united around the tv set? But to be honest, television was a bit boring over Christmas and other people can write better about the two big moments: Matt Smith’s departure from Dr Who and Benedict Cumberbatch’s return from the dead as Sherlock;