Dear Jeremy
 
I really enjoyed you email which I think does accurately sketch out the changes that have taken place within television studies over the past 10-15 years. Perhaps outlining the shifting debates (as you sketch here but in more detail) would be the perfect way to deal with your predicament. It is useful when looking at early television studies research to have an understanding of the ways in which they were situated as a reaction against mass-comm approaches. So an exploration, acknowledgement and historicisation of this would seem to be a very useful way of beginning a survey of television research methods.
 
Best wishes and good luck,
 
Cathy Johnson

________________________________

From: Film and TV Studies Discussion List on behalf of Jeremy Butler
Sent: Tue 29/06/2010 22:41
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [SCREEN-L] TV Critical Studies Vs. Mass Comm Research?



When Bobby Allen compiled the original edition of *Channels of
Discourse*(1987) -- the TV-studies manifesto for those of us trained
in film studies
-- he felt compelled to define television studies as a reaction to
mass-communication research. And when I first put together my TV-studies
textbook, *Television: Critical Methods and Applications* (1994), I elected
to do the same. I constructed a TV-studies methods chapter that begins by
explaining the mass-comm approach and then explains how critical studies of
television are different.

But now, some sixteen years later, as I ponder the revisions for *Television
*'s fourth edition, I wonder if this is still necessary. Can't television
studies stand on its own two feet? Must it continue to think of itself in
negative, reactive terms -- as providing what MC research cannot?

Certainly the flurry of books that have appeared in the past 12 years with
"television studies" in their titles (see below) suggests that the
discipline is quite well defined and that it need not present itself as
"analyzing TV, but not from that mass-comm angle." Sure, it's hard to *
precisely* define television studies and, sure, we all wonder what
"television" will be in the near, media-converged future; but the
discipline's general parameters are clear and network television refuses to
die, despite the pundits' eulogies.

Second, the use of ethnographic methods *within* television studies
illustrates that it's now less of an "us-versus-them" scholarly environment.
In both audience studies and production studies, we are seeing the
profitable blending of empirical methods with critical methods. The
imperative to define television studies in opposition to old-school,
statistics-based empiricism is quickly eroding.

So, I take the opportunity of this textbook revision to ask the practical
question:

Can/should a survey of television studies' research methods begin without
first explaining, "Here's how television studies is different from mass-comm
research"?

As I stumble through this revision, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

-- "Television Studies" books, 1998-2010 --

    1998:  The Television Studies Book
    1999:  Critical Ideas in Television Studies
    2002:  Television Studies:  The Key Concepts
    2002:  Television Studies
    2004:  The Television Studies Reader
    2004:  An Introduction to Television Studies
    2009: Television Studies After TV
    2010:  Television Studies: The Basics



--
Jeremy Butler

www.TVStyleBook.com
www.ScreenLex.org
www.ScreenSite.org
www.TVCrit.com
www.ShotLogger.org
www.AllThingsAcoustic.org

Professor - TCF Dept. - U Alabama

----
Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the
University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu <http://www.tcf.ua.edu/> 



----
Learn to speak like a film/TV professor! Listen to the ScreenLex
podcast:
http://www.screenlex.org