The revised edition of this unique work, now a standard text, John Ellis combines an examination of the cinema and television industries with a detailed analysis of their aesthetic and semiotic characteristics. John Ellis uses new developments in theory of narrative and the place of the spectator to re-explore his definition of cinema and broadcast TV as interdependent rather than interchangeable cultural forms, with their own distinct social roles. In a new chapter, he discusses the meaning routines’ fundamental to television broadcasting in TV news and soaps, and explores the legacy of the home video boom of the eighties and the replacement of the drive-in with the stay-in’. Considering whether, as its cultural importance diminishes, television is now about to experience a kind of liberation, he expresses his notion of an unfolding and unpredictable revolution in broadcasting.