ABSTRACT
During the 1980s, the notion of a new, powerful television viewer became widespread in both ‘administrative’ and ‘critical’ mass-communication research. Researchers within the industry have referred to increasingly selective viewers who zip, zap and graze their way through an expanding TV universe (Channels, 1988). Critical cultural studies, to varying degrees, have interpreted the prevalence of oppositional decodings as an assertion of viewer control over the medium.2 Perhaps, then, viewers may select, interpret and socially use programming for their own ends.
