ABSTRACT
This chapter involves three moves. It involves an interrogation of a previous study of television documentary in the light of more recent work on television audiences and media consumption. It involves an interrogation of contemporary audience theory in the light of a concern with the nature of television’s textuality. And it involves the beginnings of an attempt to rethink the nature of television’s mediation in the light of the changing media environment, which is no longer dominated by, or dependent upon, broadcasting. All of these moves involve, of course, a consideration of the relationship between television and its audience. The chapter has, then, as its aim a modest sketch of an epistemology. Television documentary will be the focus of an effort to address the ways in which television itself is an address. The aim is to question how television grounds its appeal and how it can be seen to construct its own common ground.
