TV Living Television, Culture and Everyday Life

"TV Living" presents the surprising results of the largest survey of television viewing habits ever completed. For five years, 500 people kept a diary of their television viewing, their lives, and the relationship between the two. The results upset and confirmed commonly held beliefs about audiences, such as: television is not a masculine domain, the elderly audience has diverse tastes, and people regulate how much violence, sex, or bad language they watch. This clear and engaging book, which includes actual quotes from diaries, presents an exciting, literate, and thoughtful picture of the complex and fascinating relationship between mass media and people's lives today.

TV Living presents the findings of the BFI Audience Tracking Study in which 500 participants completed detailed questionnaire-diaries on their lives, their television watching, and the relationship between the two over a five year period.Gauntlett and Hill use this extensive data to explore some of the most fundamental questions in media and cultural studies, focusing on issues of gender, identity, the impact of new technologies, and life changes. Opening up new areas of debate, the study sheds new light on audiences and their responses to issues such as sex and violence on television. A unique study of contemporary tv audience behaviour and attitudes, TV Living offers a fascinating insight into the complex relationship between mass media and people's lives today.

1 Introduction 2 Television and everyday life 4 Transitions and change 5 Television’s personal meanings: companionship, guilt and social interaction 6 Video and technology in the home 7 The retired and elderly audiences 8 Gender and television 9 Television violence and other controversies 10 Conclusions

David Gauntlett is Lecturer in Social Communications at the Institute of Communications Studies, University of Leeds. He is the author of Moving Experiences: Understanding Television's Influences and Effects and Video Critical: Children, The Environment and Media Power, and edits the website www.theory.org.uk.Annette Hill is Senior Lecturer in Mass Media at the Centre for Communication and and Information Studies, University of Westminister. She is the author of Shocking Entertainment: Viewer Response to Violent Movies and is editor of the journal Framework.