The age of television: experiences and theories

As television threatens to intrude upon our daily lives more than ever before, through cellular phones with broadcasting capabilities and thousands of new and previously unimaginable channels on digital TV, The Age of Television takes a careful look at the impact of this media form on modern life.Milly Buonanno analyzes the way in which televised entertainment has radically altered human perception of place and time, multiplied opportunities for indirect social experience, and fueled the collective imagination.

Drawing on classic media theories but offering a fresh look at television’s dominance of Western culture, this book provides an optimistic perspective on the possibilities of the small screen. “One of the most stimulating endorsements of Coronation Street and The Sopranos that anyone has ever written. And good for Buonanno . . . for eschewing some of the grimmer accounts of the effects of ‘junk’ TV which many other commentators offer.

Gleefully and consistently she rebuffs those who see the export of US TV shows as ‘cultural imperialism,’ by which Hollywood pumps out soul-destroying pap to numb the minds of idiot consumers.”—Financial Times “Some say that the age of television is over.

If that is so, then the medium has found its ideal historian and critic in Milly Buonanno.

I have read her work with pleasure over many years. It culminates with this book—a stunning tour de force. And if TV indeed has a future—as I firmly believe—then this tough-minded but subtly-expressed volume will be our best guide to what lies ahead, in addition to what went before.”—Toby Miller, Editor of Television & New Media“In this elegantly written and highly original re-examination of television, its narrative forms and its key analytic texts, Milly Buonanno provides an exciting and philosophically sophisticated study of television in all its rich complexity.

An astonishing and ground-breaking work.”—Manuel Alvarado, University of Luton“In this wide-ranging and always insightful book, Milly Buonanno takes us on a journey from the beginnings of television in 1936 to the present day, and indeed beyond to the digital future which awaits us all.

En route she interrogates a number of theories which have traditionally dominated television analysis and offers an exhilarating counter-analysis to theories of cultural imperialism.

A refreshingly open and searching approach to a medium in constant evolution.”—Hugh O'Donnell, Caledonian University