ABSTRACT
IT IS becoming increasingly difficult to talk about the mass media in the late twentieth century without discussing what people vari- ously tag the “new,” “emerging,” or “developing” technologies, referring to a gamut from cable television, to video cassettes, to video discs, and much beyond. Several writers have contended that we are moving into a new era, a post-television era. Some have called the era the “post-indus- trial age,” the “information age,” or the “home video age.” They, and many others, have speculated about the consequences of these changes for U.S. society (Maisel, 1973; Schiller, 1981; Williams, 1982; and Dizard, 1982).
