There is a lot of talk about mental well-being at the moment, and it’s great to see that we also contribute to this, not least Kerr Castle in his recent blog, based on his PhD, on comfort television. I saw Kerr present last year at the Critical Studies in Television conference, and it really triggered something in me – suggesting that this is something I at once recognised and felt I needed to think more about.

What could be simpler than a week without TV? The idea of avoiding television completely – whether on a TV set, computer, tablet or mobile device – sounds like a straightforward, perhaps even liberating, challenge; and, in many ways, it was.

The Learning on Screen (British Universities & Colleges Film and Video Council) termly magazine, ViewFinder is now open for submission – and October’s theme is MIGRATION. We are inviting Professors, Academics, Research Students and Practitioners to send pitches and proposals to ViewFinder Magazine.

When I started working for the soap operas production industry in Portugal I was always a little bit afraid of talking about it with my friends and family. No particular reason for that…just a strange feeling that I was part of something terrible: low quality television content for the masses, rubbish television. I started working mostly in production, but I later moved to something even more daunting: selling soaps!

In 1963 Doctor Who began with the purported intention of using drama to teach science. Since then it has inspired many people to pursue scientific careers and the science presented in it has lived on in new contexts from stage shows to the classroom. The program is now the world’s longest running science fiction series.

Editors: Dr. Daniel Farr, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer of Sociology, Kennesaw State University (dfarr4@kennesaw.edu) Dr. Melanie D. Holm, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of English, Indiana University of Pennsylvania (mdholm@iup.edu) Project Contact email : GrimmCollection@gmail.com

Jointly organized by the Faculty of Human Sciences (Universidade Católica Portuguesa), the Center for Media@Risk at the Annenberg School for Communication (University of Pennsylvania), the School of Journalism and Communication (Chinese University of Hong Kong), the Department of Media and Communications (London School of Economics and Political Science) and the Faculty of Social Sciences (University of Helsinki), the Second Lisbon Winter School

A volume of scholarly essays to be collected under the title: Bitch or Badass: Anti-heroines of Contemporary Literary Media, Television, and Cinema (working title) Edited by Melanie A. Haas (Texas Woman’s University ) and N. A. Pierce (Old Dominion University)

Special issue #18 of VIEW journal: a history of television and health. We are presently accepting propositions for a special issue of VIEW on the history of television and health. The special issue follows the thematic lines of the Tele(visualising) Health conference on the history of TV, public health, its enthusiasts and its publics.

The broadcast schedule has been much on my mind of late – and not just because, at the time of writing, it has recently experienced two disruptions: one comparatively minor, and the other guaranteed to send shockwaves down the spines of all ITV daytime viewers.

How to write about a television programme that you love and that has even moved you to tears? Many years of teaching Film and TV have not really prepared me for this. In the eighties, when I first started teaching, we were largely in the grip of the Screen journal pleasure is suspicious era. (Indeed at PCL it was pretty much required as a critical approach on the MA Film &