An Introduction to Television Studies

In this comprehensive textbook, now updated for its third edition, Jonathan Bignell provides students with a framework for understanding the key concepts and main approaches to Television Studies, including audience research, television history and broadcasting policy, and the analytical study of individual programmes.

Features include:

• a glossary of key terms
• key terms defined in margins
• suggestions for further reading
• activities/assignments for use in class

New and updated case studies feature:

• ‘Every Home Needs a Harvey’ ad
• approaches to news reporting
• television scheduling
• CSI Crime Scene Investigation
• animated cartoon series

Individual chapters address: studying television, television histories, television cultures, television texts and narratives, television genres and formats, television production, television and quality, television realities, television you can’t see, television audiences, beyond television.

Jonathan Bignell is Professor of Television and Film at the University of Reading. He is the author of Beckett on Screen: The Television Plays, Media Semiotics: An Introduction, Big Brother: Reality TV in the Twenty-first Century and Postmodern Media Culture, and co-author of The Television Handbook, 2nd edition. He is the editor of Writing and Cinema, and joint editor of Popular Television Drama and British Television Drama: Past, Present and Future.