ABSTRACT
In recent years a new critical concentration on the audience rather than the textor at least on the relation between the two-has coincided with an attention to television in which both its institutional history and the absence of an adequate theoretical basis for criticism has been the focus of discussion.1 Pragmatism, it seems, can only go so far. Are critical models borrowed from cinema appropriate to the analysis of televisual texts? Are the generic models implicit in scheduling strategies a sufficient basis for critical activity? There is a general agreement now, I think, that one defining characteristic of television is its ceaseless flow, and that television narratives (could all television be regarded as a form of narrative?) are marked by the presence of the regular interruption. Both the narrative itself is interrupted for (commercial) ‘breaks’, and also the process of viewing is typically subject to interruptions. The widespread addition of the VCR to the domestic viewing situation further accentuates this characteristic as ‘zipping’ and ‘zapping’ become habitual elements of viewing practices. But, although these observations may enlighten our consideration of the conditions in which viewing takes place, none of them offers much to the student of the individual televisual text itself. We must still ask, what is it that is subject to these characteristic interruptions?
