Cable TV, Marriage Is Hard, America’s Prisons Problems

Amanda Lotz is a professor of media studies at the University of Michigan. She is the author of the soon to be released We Now Disrupt this Broadcast: How Cable Transformed Television and the Internet Revolutionized It All. Her research focuses on U.S. television, specifically the industrial shifts since the end of the network era and on representations of gender on television and in the media. Early this Spring, ESPN announced that they were laying off more people.  Over the past two years, ESPN has lost around 7 million subscribers. Cable subscriptions, in general, have been on a decline since companies such as Sling, Netflix, and Hulu has taken over the entertainment industry.  But does the downfall of ESPN show a stronger trend in the decline of cable television?  Amanda Lotz explains where she thinks the TV industry is headed in the future.

Jordan Johnson is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and clinical member of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT). For the past 8 years, Jordan has been helping individuals, couples, and families overcome issues that get in the way of living a productive and fulfilled life. It's no secret that marriage looks a lot different today than it has in years past. Change is inevitable, and as time progresses each new generation of married couples has a fresh set of distinct challenges and problems to navigate. With the increasing societal acceptance of cohabitation, out of wedlock births and single parenting, the institution of marriage has become less important in society’s eyes. Jordan Johnson on how to deal with the difficulties of marriage in 2017.

Heather Ann Thompson, Ph.D., is a native Detroiter and historian on the faculty of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in the departments of Afro-American and African Studies, History, and the Residential College. She is the author of the book, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy. The severe heat in Texas prisons is linked to several deaths and lawsuits.  A new court order is forcing authorities to move over 1 thousand Texas prisoners to cooler cells, saying the inmates need air conditioning.  In fact, the judge ruled that temperatures in some of the prisons are unconstitutional.   Do prisoners deserve the same human and constitutional rights as those of us that are outside of prison? Heather Ann Thompson explains some issues surrounding the US prison system and why we should know more about what is going on behind prison walls.