ABSTRACT
Just as Julie Burchill has read Kurt Cobain and Ellis Cashmore read David Beckham so in the following extract John Fiske presents a more general and academic reading of that favoured television genre the Quiz Show. Reading the Popular is Fiske’s collection of popular cultural case studies, investigations into the meanings of cultural communication, offering such surprises (sic) as ‘The beach’, ‘Madonna’ and ‘the music video’. Here, in a chapter entitled ‘Everyday Quizzes, Everday Lives’, Fiske turns his attentions to the implications of certain kinds of quiz show.
