Television Studies - museum.tv/archives/televisionst:
Television studies is the relatively recent, aspirationally disciplinary name given to the academic study of television. .. The "television" of television studies is a relatively new phenomenon, just as many of the key television scholars are employed in departments of sociology, politics, communication arts, speech, theatre, media and film studies. If it is now possible, in 1996, to speak of a field of study, "television studies" in the anglophone academy, in a way in which it was not in 1970, the distinctive characteristics of this field of study include its disciplinary hybridity and continuing debate about how to conceptualise the object of study "television."
Television studies in the l990s, then, is characterised by work in four main areas. The most formative for the emergent discipline have been the work on the definition and interpretation of the television text and the new media ethnographies of viewing which emphasise both the contexts and the social relations of viewing. However, there is a considerable history of 'production studies' which trace the complex interplay of factors involved in getting programmes on screen. Increasingly significant also is the fourth area, that of television history. Not only does the historical endeavour frequently necessitate working with vanished sources--such as the programmes--but it has also involved the use of material of contested evidentiary status. For example, advertisements in women's magazines as opposed to producer statements. This history of television is a rapidly expanding field, creating a retrospective history for the discipline, but also documenting the period of nationally regulated terrestrial broadcasting--the 'television' of 'television studies'--which is now coming to an end.
-Charlotte Brunsdon