| Dr. David Lavery is
Professor of English at Middle Tennessee State University (1993- ). The author
of over one hundred published essays (several on poetry and poetics), chapters,
and reviews, he is author / co-author / editor / co-editor of eighteen books,
including Joss: A Creative Portrait of the Maker of the Whedonverses and The
Essential Cult Television Reader. The organizer of international conferences
on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Sopranos, and Lost, a
founding co-editor of the journals Slayage: The Online International Journal
of Buffy Studies and Critical Studies in Television, he has lectured
around the world on the subject of television (Australia, Turkey, the UK,
Portugal, New Zealand, Ireland, Germany) and has been a guest/source for the
BBC, NPR, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, The New York Times, A
Folha de Sao Paulo, The Toronto Star. From 2006-2008, he taught at
Brunel University in London. |
David Bianculli has
been a TV critic since 1976, when he first got paid to write
columns about television for Florida's The
Gainesville Sun, while still a student at the University
of Florida. The starting pay was $5 per column, and the ending
pay wasn't much more - but those clips, and a Masters degree in
Journalism and Communications, were enough to land a full-time
job the following year, writing about television for The
Ft. Lauderdale News, which eventually became The
Sun-Sentinel.
From there, other TV critic
jobs followed: Ohio's The Akron Beacon
Journal (1980-83), Pennsylvania's The
Philadelphia Inquirer (1983-87), The
New York Post (1987-93), and, most recently, The
New York Daily News (1993-2007). On radio, he
provided a TV review for the inaugural nightly broadcast of
National Public Radio's Fresh Air
in 1987, and has been that show's TV critic ever since. He also
serves as guest host, substituting for Terry Gross.
Bianculli has written two books
on television and its impact: Teleliteracy:
Taking Television Seriously (1992) and its even more
clunkily titled sequel, Dictionary of Teleliteracy:
Television's 500 Biggest Hits, Misses, and Events (1996).
At this moment, he's hard at work on a third: Dangerously
Funny: The UnCensored Story of "The Smothers Brothers
Comedy Hour". He's also contributed chapters to
other books, including The Critical
Response to Kurt Vonnegut (1994), Mister
Rogers' Neighborhood: Children, Television, and Fred Rogers
(1996), and Reading Quality TV: American
Television and Beyond (2007).
His articles, columns and
reviews have appeared in TV Guide, The New
York Times Book Review, Rolling Stone, The Week, Variety, Film
Comment, The London Independent, Washington Journalism Review,
Electronic Media, Television Quarterly, Television Business
International, Taxi, Fame, Parents' Choice, Family Life,
Channels of Communication, and syndicated in hundreds
of daily newspapers.
He also teaches college courses
on television history and appreciation, introducing almost all
of his students to the likes of Rod Serling's Patterns
and the zany work of Ernie Kovacs. |