FILM & T V
Bright Signals
A History of Color Television
Television Cities charlot te brunsdon
susan murr ay In Television Cities Charlotte Brunsdon traces television’s
First demonstrated in 1928, color television remained little more
representations of metro‑
than a novelty for decades as the
politan spaces to show how
industry struggled with the con‑
they reflect the medium’s
siderable technical, regulatory,
history and evolution, thereby
commercial, and cultural com‑
challenging the prevalent assumptions about televi‑
plications posed by the medium.
Courtesy of the National Museum of Scotland.
Only fully adopted by all three
sion as quintessentially suburban. Brunsdon shows how the BBC ’s
networks in the 1960s, color
presentation of 1960s Paris in the detective series Maigret signals
television was imagined as a new
British culture’s engagement with twentieth-century modernity and
way of seeing that was distinct from both monochrome television
continental Europe, while various portrayals of London—ranging
and other forms of color media. It also inspired compelling popular,
from Dickens adaptations to the 1950s nostalgia of Call the
scientific, and industry conversations about the use and meaning
Midwife—demonstrate Britain’s complicated transition from Victorian
of color and its effects on emotions, vision, and desire. In Bright
metropole to postcolonial social democracy. Finally, an analysis of
Signals Susan Murray traces these wide-ranging debates within
The Wire’s acclaimed examination of Baltimore marks the profound
and beyond the television industry, positioning the story of color
shifts in the ways television is now made and consumed. Illuminating
television, which was replete with false starts, failure, and ingenuity,
the myriad factors that make television cities, Brunsdon complicates
as central to the broader history of twentieth-century visual culture.
our understanding of how television shapes perceptions of urban
In so doing, she shows how color television disrupted and reframed
spaces, both familiar and unknown.
the very idea of television while it simultaneously revealed the ten‑
Charlotte Brunsdon is Professor of Film and Television Studies at the
sions about technology’s relationship to consumerism, human sight,
University of Warwick and the author of several books, including London in
and the natural world.
Cinema: The Cinematic City Since 1945 and The Feminist, the Housewife,
Susan Murray is Associate Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication
and the Soap Opera.
at New York University, the author of Hitch Your Antenna to the Stars: Early
SPIN OFFS A series edited by Lynn Spigel
Television and Broadcast Stardom, and the coeditor of Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture. SIGN, STOR AGE, TR ANSMIS SION A series edited by Jonathan Sterne and Lisa Gitelman
“A very welcome addition to both TV and urban studies, Television Cities combines spatial analysis and attention to the changing nature of TV production and viewership to suggest how urban space is produced and experienced
“What a terrific, innovative book! In this pioneering study of the development
in particular televisual ways.”— PAMEL A ROBERTSON WOJCIK , author
of color television, Susan Murray brilliantly intertwines the technological
of The Apartment Plot: Urban Living in American Film and Popular Culture,
evolution of the device with prevailing notions about how people perceive
1945 to 1975
color and its affective impact on our subjectivity and how we view the world. Murray breaks new ground by tracing how an understanding of the human eye was built into the technology from the very start. Highly original, engaging, and, yes, eye-opening.”— SUSAN J. DOUGL AS , Catherine Neafie Kellogg Professor of Communication Studies, University of Michigan
36
TELE VISION/HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY
TELEVISION/URBAN STUDIES
June 328 pages, 105 color illustrations
February 248 pages, 74 illustrations
paper, 978‑0‑8223‑7130‑4, $26.95/£21.99
paper, 978‑0‑8223‑6920‑2, $24.95/£20.99
cloth, 978‑0‑8223‑7121‑2, $99.95/£83.00
cloth, 978‑0‑8223‑6894‑6, $94.95/£79.00
Available as an e‑book
Available as an e‑book