Televiewing Audience : The Art and Science of Watching TV

This book won the Ohio Professional Writer’s, Inc. 2014 Communication Competition Award

Now in its second edition, The Televiewing Audience is a user’s guide for the only household appliance that doesn’t come with one. Watching television seems relatively effortless – it is, after all, a major form of entertainment in the U.S. and overseas – yet this book argues that there is nothing simple about watching television; it is a learned activity which is in a constant state of revision and upgrading. Now more than ever, televiewing requires the generation and application of critical thinking to guide program selection, inform appreciation, generate greater pleasure, and inspire dialogue after consumption. This book is about becoming a more thoughtful and informed consumer, designed to shatter the anonymity of the televiewer, and to create a sense of community, for we rarely think of ourselves as instrumental in the televiewing experience or think of the experience as a shared event.
Designed for courses related to broadcasting, media effects, media literacy, and audience studies, this book provides a comprehensive overview of the ways in which television influences the way we think about ourselves and our culture. It places us center-stage in the extremely complicated, competitive, creative, and costly endeavor that is television.

Robert Abelman (PhD, University of Texas-Austin) is Distinguished Professor in the School of Communication at Cleveland State University. His scholarship has focused on the cognitive psychology of mass communication and, more specifically, television literacy – that is, how children learn to watch and comprehend television programming and develop critical viewing skills that distinguish reality from fantasy and educational fare from entertainment. Dr. Abelman has been recognized as one of the «Top 100» most prolific scholars in communication since 1915 by Communication Quarterly and «Top 100 Researchers in the Field of Communication Studies» by Communication Monographs; Dr. Abelman’s work with intellectually and artistically gifted children and learning disabled children has been honored with three «Excellence in Research» awards from the International Mensa Education and Research Foundation. He serves as a program consultant for numerous television production houses.
David J. Atkin (PhD, Michigan State University) is Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Connecticut. His scholarship has focused on the uses and effects of new media as well as communication policy and telecommunication (where he respectively ranked among the two most prolific scholars during the 20th century). Dr. Atkin has been recognized as one of the «Top 100» most prolific scholars in communication since 1915 by Communication Quarterly and «25 most prolific since 1995» by Communication Research Reports. He has done grant-supported work on the adoption, use, and regulation of new media, and received the field’s Krieghbaum «Under 40» award, granted annually to a junior scholar for distinction in research. His other books include Communication Technology & Society (2007) and Communication Technology and Social Change (2002).