ABSTRACT
As I have indicated in the introduction, audience research and reception studies are moving away from attempts to locate an identifiable audience group for a specific text or popular genre into a more general concern with consumption of a range of cultural products, via different communication technologies, set within the routines of daily life (Hermes 1991; Moores 1991; Morley and Silverstone 1988). When I embarked on this study in 1984, my intention was to carry out some empirical research on the significance of the VCR for women, using qualitative methods. What emerged from my conversational interviews with women, as the research progressed, was the need to extend the study in the very directions which now form the basis of the more recent studies indicated above. It is important to emphasize, therefore, that while the method I adopted has quite severe limitations it nevertheless has the potential to open up new and hitherto uncharted areas of study.
