Tele-ology: Studies in Television

Tele-ology brings together John Hartley’s writings on television. Hartley assesses TV as a global and local force, a cultural and textual system and a corporate and domestic, political and artistic object of study. He draws on current critical theory in cultural studies to develop a wide-ranging and thought-provoking view of television broadcasting in Britain, Australia and the USA. The collection includes writings on TV truth and propaganda; on populism in the news; on mythologies of the audience, who, John Hartley suggests, are as fictional as the shows they watch; on TV drama as a photopoetic’ genre in the tradition of Shakespeare; on the peculiarities of TV continuity and TV advertising and on the cultural politics of Kylie Minogue and Madonna, The Beverley Hillbillies and Bonanza , and gardening programmes. Tele-ology will not only be of interest to media professionals and lecturers but to TV viewers who are ambitious enough to want to do their job better.