ABSTRACT
This collection of essays responds to the recent surge of interest in popular television in Eastern Europe. This is a region where television's transformation has been especially spectacular, shifting from a state-controlled broadcast system delivering national, regional, and heavily filtered Western programming to a deregulated, multi-platform, transnational system delivering predominantly American and Western European entertainment programming. Consequently, the nations of Eastern Europe provide opportunities to examine the complex interactions among economic and funding systems, regulatory policies, globalization, imperialism, popular culture, and cultural identity.This collection will be the first volume to gather the best writing, by scholars across and outside the region, on socialist and postsocialist entertainment television as a medium, technology, and institution.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|91 pages
Popular Television in Socialist Times
chapter 1|17 pages
Television Entertainment in Socialist Eastern Europe
chapter 4|16 pages
The Carnival of the Absurd
chapter 5|21 pages
An Evening with Friends and Enemies
part II|72 pages
Commercial Globalization and Eastern European TV
chapter 6|18 pages
From a Socialist Endeavor to a Commercial Enterprise
chapter 7|18 pages
Intra-European Media Imperialism
chapter 8|18 pages
To be Romanian in Post-Communist Romania
chapter 9|16 pages
Post-Transitional Continuity and Change
part III|99 pages
Television and National Identity on Europe's Edges