ABSTRACT
For many of us, next to sleep and work or school, television is the greatest draw on our time. As Roger Silverstone points out, far from just being a shiny box in our living room or a strange “disembodied force,” television is remarkable precisely for its “daily” qualities, and for the presence it occupies in our everyday, humdrum routines and lives.Wake up, turn on the television, get ready, leave for work/school, go home, turn on the television, sleep: a fairly standard day in the life of an average person in a developed nation. And when we are watching, all available statistics suggest that entertainment is of particular interest to most of us: whereas Fox News boasts a Nielsen-projected viewership of approximately 1.38 million for the 9-10 p.m. slot in the US (Crupi 2006), for instance, CSI, Lost, or American Idol can bring in twenty to thirty times as many viewers without breaking a sweat, and even Simpsons reruns, a daytime soap, or a moderately successful Saturday morning cartoon can easily top such figures too. Many citizens may feel that the news is especially important, that such-and-such a documentary is especially enlightening, or may realize that the incessant stream of ads is what makes much of television tick, but we still watch entertainment programming in huge numbers.
