Thinking Outside the Box brings together some of the best and most challenging scholarship about TV genres, exploring their genesis, their functions and development, and the interaction of disparate genres. The authors argue that genre is a process rather than a static category and that it signifies much about the people who produce and watch the shows.

In addition to considering traditional genres such as sitcoms, soap operas, and talk shows, the contributors explore new hybrids, including reality programs, teen-oriented science fiction, and quality dramas, and examine how many of these shows have taken on a global reach. Identifying historical continuities and envisioning possible trends, this is the richest and most current study of how television genres form, operate, and change.

Gary R. Edgerton, professor and chair of the communication and theatre arts department at Old Dominion University, is the author or editor of five books, including Television Histories. Brian Rose teaches at Fordham University and is the editor of TV Genres and author of three books about television and performance.

Reviews:

"Edgerton and Rose have written and assembled a compelling collection of essays. The book makes a persuasive case for continued research into genres along with their function in communicating across texts, audiences, and industries."-Journalism and Mass Communication

"Television criticism has stepped up to a new level of maturity with this collection of scholarly writing on genres and genre-related studies."--Journal of American Culture

"First-rate . . . a readable and understandable volume that is accessible to students and scholars . . . It offers considerable breadth and sufficient depth for the student to gain a general overview of television and a sense of how television can be analyzed."--Journal of Popular Culture

"Edgerton and Rose have combined forces to revive and update genre research . . . This is a useful reading from a number of the key researchers helping to define a field of academic study."--Communication Booknotes Quarterly

"An important volume to those interested in furthering scholarship of television genre studies. The ideas that Edgerton and Rose have assembled here deserve to be discussed again and again by media scholars and students."--Television Quarterly

"This good, well-crafted collection will be a useful tool for the undergraduate scholar who wants to see the new direction television is headed."--J. Dennis Bounds, Regent University

"Provides its readers with thoughtful, comprehensive surveys of genre scholarship written by leaders in the field, and a soon-to-be influential call for a cultural, pragmatic approach to television genre scholarship."--Carolyn Anderson, University of Massachusetts

Edgerton and Rose have written and assembled a compelling collection of essays. The book makes a persuasive case for continued research into genres along with their function in communicating across texts, audiences, and industries.David P. Pierson, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly