Table of Contents

Part I The People Who Lead Programmes; Chapter 1 Introduction; Chapter 2 What Do Presenters Do?; Chapter 3 Where Do Presenters Come From?; Chapter 4 What Makes a Successful Presenter?; Chapter 5 Presenters and Celebrity; Part II The Content of Presentation; Chapter 6 Discourses of Sobriety, Maybe; Chapter 7 Opportunity Knocks; Chapter 8 Instruction, Information and Infotainment; Chapter 9 Ethical Lives; Chapter 10 Conclusion;

About the Author

Frances Bonner is Reader in Television and Popular Culture at the University of Queensland, Australia, and author of Ordinary Television: Analyzing Popular TV

Reviews

'In this book Bonner continues her vital work analysing those aspects of television routinely ignored but which are central to how the medium offers meanings and communicates with its viewers. Offering in-depth analyses of contemporary case studies, as well as covering appropriate contexts such as ethics, genre, aesthetics, gender and celebrity, this book is novel, insightful, readable, and well-researched.' Brett Mills, University of East Anglia, UK 'Bonner’s work on the presenter not only provides a remarkably fresh avenue into the interpretation of television, it works through the formation of identity and presentation of the public persona as it is refracted through the particularities of television’s engagement with the self and the audience’s conception of self with detail and imagination.' P David Marshall, Deakin University, Australia ’... Bonner looks at an impressive range of programs and presenters from both the British and Australian television industries... In her acknowledgements, Bonner writes of the challenge of ’fighting the data into shape’, and this is certainly a book underpinned by wide-ranging and detailed research. Alongside its admirable diversity of programs and presenters, Bonner’s book also provides an insightful and detailed consideration of recent and classic academic writing dealing with the intersection between television, its viewers and everyday life.’ Media International Australia 'This fascinating book by Frances Bonner is like a journey into the personae of selected television celebrities in England, focusing especially on television presenters. ... Bonner opens one door into a rich and still unvisited site of investigations for social scientists and academics in Media Studies. Scholars working in languages other than English could someday draw on parts of this analysis in other cultural contexts with different television programmes.' Discourse and Communication