Television: Technology and Cultural Form

by Williams,Raymond

• ISBN13: 9780415314565
• ISBN10: 0415314569
• Edition: 3rd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-10-20
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Twenty-first century TV offers an apparently endless stream of images, unfolding at high speed. We no longer watch individual programs but flick from channel to channel, absorbing a continuous flow of news, game shows, comedy, drama, movies, advertising and trailers.Television: Technology and Cultural Formwas first published in 1974, long before the dawn of multi-channel TV, or the reality and celebrity shows that now pack the schedules. Yet Williams' analysis of television's history, its institutions, programs and practices, and its future prospects, remains remarkably prescient. TV offers an apparently endless engagement with a flood of Williams stresses the importance of technology in shaping the cultural form of television, while always resisting the determinism of Marshall McLuhan's dictum that "the medium is the message". If the medium really is the message, Williams asks, what is left for us to do or say? Williams argues that, on the contrary, we as viewers have the power to disturb, disruptand to distract the otherwise cold logic of history and technology - not just because television is part of the fabric of our daily lives, but because new technologies continue to offer opportunities, momentarily outside the sway of transnational corporations or the grasp of media moguls, for new forms of self and political expression.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Routledge Classics Edition	p. vii
Foreword	p. xiv
Foreword to the Second Edition	p. xvi
The Technology and the Society	p. 1
Institutions of the Technology	p. 26
The Forms of Television	p. 39
Programming: Distribution and Flow	p. 77
Effects of the Technology and Its Uses	p. 121
Alternative Technology, Alternative Uses?	p. 139
Notes	p. 158
Selected Bibliography	p. 162
Index	p. 167
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