Prime Time Authorship

Douglas Heil is professor of communication at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. He is the writer and producer of the short film The Story of the Cat. He has also published numerous essays, short dramas, and reviews.

This is an impressive work, a major advance in the field. . . . Heil has built on what the rest of us have done and gone further.-- "Tom Stempel, author of Storytellers to the Nation: A History of American Television Writing" Aspiring TV writers will find practical insight via studies of Marion Hargrove (Maverick; The Waltons), Joseph Dougherty (Thirtysomething) and Michael Kozoll (Hill Street Blues), complete with sample scripts, in Prime-Time Authorship: Works About and by Three TV Dramatists by Douglas Heil (writer and producer of the film The Story of the Cat). Pointing to recent shows like Xena: Warrior Princess, The Sopranos and La Femme Nikita that have revitalized the dramatic genre, he posits that "auterism" as it exists in film "the notion that a motion picture can embody the intentions and sensibility of a single person" can likewise surface in TV writing.-- "Publishers Weekly"