ABSTRACT
Despite apparent differences in focus and approach, there has been a strong line of continuity within David Morley’s research and writing over the years. In his three major publications, Everyday Television: Nationwide (with Charlotte Brunsdon), The Nationwide Audience and Family Television,1 he has worked through different aspects of the ‘encoding/decoding’ model of communications developed at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in the 1970s. These texts also attempt to integrate semiotic and ethnographic approaches to the study of culture, a project which was also a feature of the Centre during the same period. Whatever the problems with the various stages of this work, the line of development from Everyday Television to Family Television can be described as a movement of focus from the text to the context.
