Roberta PEARSON is professor of film and television studies at the Institute of Film and Television Studies, University of Nottingham, UK, where her teaching and research encompass a wide variety of topics. She has developed a particular interest in the scheduling, marketing and distribution of American television drama in the UK. The co-editor of an anthology on cult television, she is currently completing a co-authored manuscript that focuses on Star Trek as a television show. Fascinated with Frank Sinatra as a cross-media popular icon, she is beginning a project concerned with his television career and his performance style. A theme that runs through much of her research concerns culturally iconic figures, i.e. the cultural significance of particular historical or fictional figures such as Shakespeare, Custer, Batman or Sherlock Holmes. Another of her current projects concerns trans-media storytelling, that is the development of ancially texts like mobisodes and webisodes that accompany many American television shows. She holds a B.A. from Duke University, an M.Phil. from Yale University (both in political science) and a Ph.D. in cinema studies from New York University.