The technique of the two reporters, who stick their microphone in the faces of assorted communards and demand, "Who are you and what are you doing?," is obtrusive and alienating, and it seems to refer to an earlier, more naïve period when television journalism was rooted in the cinéma vérité style of the 1960's -- when Mr. Watkins was a producer for the BBC.
The success of that show, which had an audience of nearly 13 million viewers, and a previous 1997 special led to Mr. Blaine's current project, the culmination of which is to be broadcast during the final night of November's "sweeps" period, when television networks set advertising rates based on Nielsen ratings.
Few students of popular culture, amateur or professional, consider the 1960s a period when creativity flourished on American television.
If you're looking for a vast wasteland, try early-nineteen-sixties television, a period when advertising-supported content ruled supreme, aided by a lack of alternatives and the scarcity of remote controls.
Titling his show "Live and in Color," Mr. Adams adapts for his own purposes the exaggerated broadcast introductions of early television announcers, conjuring a period when so much about the medium was false and exaggerated — black stereotypes included, or maybe especially.
In 1976, a decision by the British government to treat inmates not as prisoners of war but as criminals led to riots and a period when the distinctive aerial photo of the jail became a norm on television news.
And the Obama campaign and its supporters have broadcast more ads during the morning news and prime-time periods when television viewership is highest.
This situation recalls the period when color television first appeared in the United States 30 years ago and sets were also too costly for most viewers.
Not being seen gave her a bit of freedom to craft a uniquely black and lesbian tale on camera during a time period when black lesbians were nowhere to be found on film or television.
When journalism was at its most blandly authoritative — probably in the period when the three television broadcast networks were in their heyday and local newspaper monopoly was beginning to become the rule — so were American politics and culture, and you have to be very media-centric to believe that the press established the tone of national life rather than vice versa.
They affected Horne too, and prevented her from appearing on film and television over a seven-year period when she was reaching her creative peak.
