ABSTRACT
Up to this point our discussion of television style has dealt primarily with visual
elements: mise-en-scene, the camera, and editing. But television is not solely a visual medium.
Sound has always been a crucial component of television’s style. This is not surprising when
one remembers that, in economic and technological terms, television’s predecessor and closest
relation is radio-not film, literature, or the theater. Economically, television networks
replicated and often grew out of radio networks. Technologically, TV broadcasting has
always relied on much of the same equipment as radio broadcasting (microphones, transmitters,
and so on). With these close economic and technological ties to radio-a sound-only medium
—it is almost inevitable that television’s aesthetics would rely heavily on sound.
