Global Television: An Introduction

In this book Chris Barker situates television as a cultural phenomenon in the context of global modernity. Barker offers the first introductory multidimensional and multiperspectival approach to the understanding of television. In so doing, Barker connects with a number of significant current debates in both media and cultural studies, providing useful summaries of these debates and offering reflections of his own.

A particular strength of this book is the way in which Barker ranges across both cultural and media studies literature. The book describes the major contemporary economic, technological and cultural developments in global television placing them within the wider context of global modernity. It provides readers with useful summaries and evaluations of key arguments relating to the development of television as an industry across the globe and its potential cultural impact.

Preface and acknowledgements.

Part I: The Global Institution of Television:.

1. Modernity and Global Television.

2. What is Global Television?.

Part II: Primetime Goes Global: Programmes and Audiences:.

3: Global Soaps and Global News.

4. Television and Global Audiences.

5. Television, Identity and Global Audiences.

6. The Global and the Local: Cultural Imperialism.

7. Conclusion: The Future of Global Television?.

Index.

"At last, here is a really stimulating and carefully organised new book which theorises the interpenetration of the medium of television with public and private culture in the age of globalisation, offering some clear thinking while shuffling into a single pack the whole range of postmodern ideas." Anthony Smith, Times Higher Education Supplement