Description:
Television. Love it or hate it, watching it is still the most popular pastime ever. It reflects and shapes our knowledge of contemporary life across the economic, political, social, and cultural spectrum, and yet TV is still among the most criticized phenomena of modern life.
This engaging book, written by one of television's best-known experts, invites us to explore television's most controversial coverag and fascinating aspects: TV citizenship, live TV, "plebiscitary" shows reality TV, synchronized sports, and TV's own history. At a time of unprecedented change in technologies and business plans, Hartley explores television's evolving place and transforming role in our knowledge-based society.
Review Quotes: "The author describes this broad survey as 'a sustained reflection on the tensions produced by the problem of knowledge in and about television.' Hartley argues that television's history and historiography have not been well done thus far. The book as a whole offers something of a philosophy of television. Recommended." (Choice Reviews, December 2008)