The Documentary Site

(formerly Reality Film)

Subject Guides: Television

As early Hollywood exhibitors avoided or reluctantly showed documentaries in their theaters, television has embraced the form and provided a major outlet for it since early broadcasts. When many think of documentary, they think of documentary "film," but television deserves credit for bringing documentary to mass audiences for decades.

Subject Overview

Here are some general texts that provide an overview of this subject. These texts do not address documentary specifically.

• Allen, Robert C. and Annette Hill, eds. The Television Studies Reader. Routledge, 2003.
• Miller, Toby, ed. Television Studies. British Film Institute, 2002.
• Mittell, Jason. Genre and Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture. Routledge, 2004.
• Sterling, Christopher H. and John Michael Kittross. Stay Tuned: A History of American Broadcasting. 3rd ed. Lawrence Erlbaum, 2001.

Documentary

These are some texts that address these concepts and their intersection with documentary.

• Bluem, A Wiliam. Documentary in American Television: Form, Function, Method. New York: Communication Arts Books, 1965.
• Curtin, Michael. Redeeming the Wasteland: Television Documentary and Cold War Politics. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1995.
• Hill, Annette. Restyling Factual TV: News, Documentary and Reality Television. Routledge, 2007.
• Kilborn, Richard and John Izod. An Introduction to Television Documentary: Confronting Reality. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1997.
• Rosteck, Thomas. See It Now Confronts McCarthyism: Television Documentary and the Politics of Representation. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1994.

My list for watching at least one documentary a week for an entire year