Journal Entry
Where are the fiction book TV channels?
August 21st 2007 at 8:59 am
This is a Guardian UK article wondering where the book channels are:
The lack of book programmes on mainstream television channels is puzzling. Britain is ablaze with book festivals, beaconing the land, drawing hundreds of thousands of reading and writing pilgrims. To travel on the London Underground can be to travel in a mobile reading room. Radio hoovers up writers. Yet on television, set aside the adaptation industry, books are on the margins - Mariella Frostrup’s The Book Show on Sky and David Baddiel’s new quiz show on BBC4.
In the US we have Bookspan. Okay, Bookspan is somewhat useful to me, but I’d love to see some shows on it where better interviewers showcased the authors a bit more. Often authors left to drone in front of a camera with no expert to save them from themselves is painful to watch and I’ve been known to use Bookspan at night as a form of sleeping pill (1 hour 15 minutes is my record at not passing out while watching the channel).
I know that non-fiction is easier to sell and get media attention for. Non-fiction usually has a subject that’s easy to determine, therefore easy to define, therefore easy to explain why people should tune in. Fiction is amorphous. And yet, and yet I’m still compelled to wonder…
…whither Bookspan fiction TV? Cable TV should surely be able to do this, the channels are infinite. Even I occasionally tune into Bookspan, I would love to occasionally tune into Fictionspan.
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1. Steve Buchheit on Aug 21st, 2007 at 10:02 am
And not everybody gets Bookspan (I only get to see it when I’m at my Mom’s). But then, my cable sucks rocks, real scummy ones.
I’m not sure books/authors really translate to TV. Sure, I’d watch it. There’s the Cult Pop show and some other local access stuff. I’m not sure there’s enough audience for a general broadcast show. I think it maybe interesting to film and broadcast panels from conventions (which Bookspan does sometimes).
Thank the gods, though, for radio. Local and national shows profile authors all the time. That’s where I get my inter-con fix.
2. Lou Anders on Aug 21st, 2007 at 12:18 pm
I think Bookscan is a sure fire way to discourage reading. I find it downright depressing. With all the exciting book related events happening, and as the cost of good digitial media increasingly approaches “negligible”, I think we’ll see a lot more book-related media, if not there, then everywhere else.
3. Michele on Aug 21st, 2007 at 11:10 pm
Here in Canada we have BookTV. I really should subscribe, although it’s not all fiction and books. During the free preview, I saw an interview with Camilla Gibb, which is how I heard of her awesome book Sweetness in the Belly. Although I get annoyed with the amount of tv dramas and movies they show with only a loose connection to books.