Heartland TV

Victoria E. Johnson is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine, and she is also the President-Elect of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies (2021-2023). She is the author of Heartland TV: Prime Time Television and the Struggle for U.S. Identity (2008) and Sports Television (2021).

• Acknowledgments Introduction: TV, the Heartland Myth, and the Value of Cultural Populism 1 "Essential, Desirable, and Possible Markets": Broadcasting Midwestern Tastes and Values 2 Square Dancing and Champagne Music: Regional Aesthetics and Middle America3 "Strictly Conventional and Moral": CBS Reports in Webster Groves 4 "You're Gonna Make It After All!": The Urbane Midwest in MTM Productions' "Quality" Comedies 5 "There Is No 'Dayton Chic'": Queering the Midwest in Roseanne, Ellen, and The Ellen Show 6 Fertility Among the Ruins: Reconstituting the Traumatized Heartland Epilogue: Red State, Blue State, Purple Heartland Appendix Notes Index About the Author

Johnson shows how the opposition of "heartland" and various urbane, coastal foils went through a series of permutations, alternately deprecating and valorizing middle America through the 1960s, 1970s, and 1990s. (Choice) &%8220;Network chieftains, advertising executives, and primetime performers generally fly over the heartland with barely a glance, but it's never far from their thoughts, or ours. In this remarkable analysis of American television, Victoria Johnson cogently explains why Middle America matters: on the screen, in the home, and in public life. - Michael Curtin,author of Playing to the World's Biggest Audience