Synopses & Reviews
Nickelodeon is the highest rated daytime channel in the country, and its cultural influence has grown at an astounding pace. Why are Nickelodeon shows so popular? How are they developed and marketed? And where do they fit in the economic picture of the children's media industry?
Nickelodeon Nation, the first major study of the only TV channel just for children, investigates these questions.
Intended for a wide range of readers and illustrated thorughout, the essays in Nickelodeon Nation are grouped into four sections: economics and marketing; the production process; programs and politics; and viewers. The contributorswho include a former employee in Nick's animation department, an investigative journalist, a developmental pyschologist who helped develop Blue's Clues, and television and cultural studies scholorsshow how Nickelodeon succeeds, in large part, by simultaneously satisfying both children and adults. For kids, Nick offers gross-out jokes and no-holds-barred goofiness, while for adults it offers a violence-free world, ethnic and racial diversity, and gender parity. Nick gives kids the fun they want by gently violating adult ideas of propriety, and satisfies adults by conforming to their vision of "quality" children's programming.
Nickelodeon Nation shows how, in only twenty years, Nickelodeon has transformed itself from the "green vegetable network"distasteful for kids but "good for them," according to parentsinto a super-cool network with some of the most successful shows on the air. This ground-breaking collection fills a major gap in our understanding of both contemporary children's culture and the television industry.
Contributors include: Daniel R. Anderson, Sarah Banet-Weiser, Henry Jenkins, Mark Langer, Vicki Mayer, Susan Murray, Heather Hendershot, Norma Pecora, Kevin S. Sandler, Ellen Seiter, Linda Simensky, and Mimi Swartz.
Review
"A succinct and well-researched study. Essential." -Choice,
Review
"An important contribution to the history of Russian Jewry, the Haskalah, and traditional Jewish society. I heartily recommend it."-Michael Stanislawski,Nathan J. Miller Professor of Jewish History, Columbia University
Review
"The phenomenal success of Nickelodeon reveals a great deal about the changing nature of the modern media, and about changing conceptions of childhood. Nickelodeon Nation offers a comprehensive account of the channel's evolution, providing fascinating insights into production and programming, and the responses of children themselves."-David Buckingham,Institute of Education, University of London
Review
"With both dispassionate market analyses and insiders' personal accounts, Nickelodeon Nation covers the channel's history and evolving philosophies thoroughlylike a bucket of Nick's signature green slime! Even 'Nicksperts' will find new insights and understanding."-David W. Kleeman,Executive Director, American Center for Children and Media
Synopsis
Long before there were Jewish communities in the land of the tsars, Jews inhabited a region which they called medinat rusiya, the land of Russia. Prior to its annexation by Russia, the land of Russia was not a center of rabbinic culture. But in 1772, with its annexation by Tsarist Russia, this remote region was severed from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; its 65,000 Jews were thus cut off from the heartland of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. Forced into independence, these Jews set about forging a community with its own religious leadership and institutions.
The three great intellectual currents in East European Jewry--Hasidism, Rabbinic Mitnagdism, and Haskalah--all converged on Eastern Belorussia, where they clashed and competed. In the course of a generation, the community of Shklovthe most prominent of the towns in the areawitnessed an explosion of intellectual and cultural activity.
Focusing on the social and intellectual odysseys of merchants, maskilim, and rabbis, and their varied attempts to combine Judaism and European culture, David Fishman here chronicles the remarkable story of these first modern Jews of Russia.
About the Author
Heather Hendershot is associate professor of media studies at Queens College, City University of New York. She is the author of Saturday Morning Censors: Television Regulation Before the V-Chip and Shaking the World for Jesus: Media and Conservative Evangelical Culture.