Desperately Seeking the AudienceMillions of people all over the world are avid members of the television audience. Yet, despite the central place television occupies in contemporary culture, our understanding of its complex and dynamic role in everyday life remains surprisingly limited. Focusing on the television audience, Ien Ang asks why we understand so little about its nature, and argues that our ignorance arises directly out of the biases inherent in prevailing official knowledge about it. She sets out to deconstruct the assumptions of this official knowledge by exploring the territory where it is mainly produced - the television institutions. Ang draws on Foucault's theory of power/knowledge to scrutinize television's desperate search for the audience, and to identify differences and similarities in the approaches of American commercial television and European public service television to their audiences. She looks carefully at recent developments in the field of ratings research, in particular the controversial introduction of the `people meter' as an instrument for measuring the television audience. By defining the limits and limitations of these institutional procedures of knowledge production, Ien Ang opens up new avenues for understanding television audiences. Her ethnographic perspective on the television audience gives new insights into our television culture, with the audience seen not as an object to be controlled, but as an active social subject, engaging with television in a variety of cultural and creative ways. |
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actual audiences advertisers American commercial television assumption audience measurement audience members audience research BBC’s become Beville Blumler Brandon Tartikoff British broadcasting institutions broadcasting organization cable channels concept concrete context Cosby Show cultural defined demographic diary diversity Dutch empirical epistemological everyday example fact fundamental Gitlin Hill Street Blues ibid industry’s institutional knowledge institutional point interest largescale listening meter Netherlands networks Nielsen Nielsen ratings normative object objectified people’s perspective philosophy pillarized point of view political popular practices and experiences predict problem production programme makers public service broadcasting public service institutions radio ratings discourse Reith relationship result sense Silvey situation social world streamlined audience structural taxonomic collective television audience television audiencehood television industry television institutions television landscape television viewers television’s Todd Gitlin VARA’s variables viewing behaviour watching television world of actual