Teaching Television (Panel #12)

Panel Columnist: Derek Kompare (Southern Methodist University)
Participants: Chuck Kleinhans (Northwestern University), Kathleen Tyner (University of Texas at Austin), Bernard Timberg (East Carolina University)
Moderator: Mattie Akers (University of Texas at Austin)

Question: Television Studies, particularly in the United States, has long had a somewhat checkered relationship with television makers. Critical attention has long been focused on audiences, texts, and sociohistorical contexts (in that order), leaving important issues of cultural production under- and un-examined. This gap is especially problematic considering the opportunities long available to television scholars to teach potential television makers. We may pride ourselves on training critical media consumers, but to the neglect of training critical media producers. How can we approach this issue without merely replicating auteurism and its ilk? What are useful methods for researching and theorizing the television production process (past and present)? What are the most pressing institutional opportunities and obstacles towards this goal? Are there any relevant models from other countries or fields that might facilitate this? Most importantly, how can we then adapt this attention towards training the next generations of media makers?