Hot from the press: Not Only Entertainment
Just released: my book on television entertainment offering a theory of entertainment and analysing its revaluation in the past 25 years. Available at Herbert van Halem Verlag in Colgne or at amazon.de for the equivalent of 25 Euros.
‘Since the introduction of commercial broadcasting in Europe and the emergence of digital media, entertainment has become a dominant cultural concept in political, economic, pedagogical, scholarly and aesthetic discourses. In his collected essays on the Pragmatics and Aesthetics of Television Entertainment, I develop an aesthetically grounded theory of entertainment and analyses the revaluation of entertainment as cultural concept and practice. My critical analyses of trend-setting programs and genres of television since its deregulation, such as football programming, music videos, soap operas, American quality drama series, show how television entertainment works as a formative economic and aesthetic power in the digital media landscape. In constant dialogue with academic debates, my book not only contributes to a new understanding of entertainment, it also sketches out new perspectives for the research into media entertainment in an era of convergence and participatory media.’
