An Introduction to Television Studies

In this comprehensive textbook, newly updated for its second 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 for the second edition include:

• a glossary of key terms
• key terms defined in margins
• suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter
• activities for use in class or as assignments
• new and updated case studies discussing advertisements such as the Guinness ‘Surfer’ ad, approaches to news reporting, television scheduling, and programmes such as Big Brother and Wife Swap.

Individual chapters address: studying television, television histories, television cultures, television texts and narratives, television and genre, television production, postmodern television, television realities, television representation, television you can’t see, shaping audiences, television in everyday life.

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