Gray, Jonathan and Amanda D. Lotz. Television Studies.

Crandall, Heather

Gray, Jonathan and Amanda D. Lotz. Television Studies. Malden MA: Polity Press, 2012. Pp. 200. ISBN 978-0-74565-098-2 (cloth) $64.95; 978-0-74565-099-9 (paper) $22.95.

Television Studies is a fantastic resource for scholars because it is an essential look back at the formation of the field, which makes the road ahead easier to see. To accomplish this backward look, Gray and Lotz "mined a rich array of articles and chapters that offer drips and drabs of events that retrospectively might be considered as the origins of television studies" (p. 16). As you read their book, you imagine that they began writing together to answer questions they field about their own scholarship. As the process unfolds, and as they trace the history of television studies in the U.S. and Britain from the 1960s through the 1990s, Television Studies becomes a kind of guidebook. Television Studies is comprehensive and concise divided into four chapters in the sub-areas of programs, audiences, industries, and contexts.

Gray and Lotz ask, why television studies and why now? People don't watch television like they used to. The answer is, "while patterns of use and the screens we use are changing, the need to understand the relationship of television as a business, cultural storyteller, and object of popular interest remains as crucial as ever" (p. 2).

Television Studies is easy to engage and useful to read. For example they write, "Here's a bit of a mindbender: someone can study television and not be doing 'television studies,' while someone else can also be studying something other than television (like YouTube) and be doing 'television studies'" (p. 3). The authors then identify that television studies research includes at least two of the three areas among programs, audiences, and industries, and always includes a discussion of context.

In setting the context for Television Studies, Gray and Lotz trace the historical shifts from the 1960s through the 1990s. In the 1960s, for example, media effects research dominated until the 1970s when television studies changed paradigms to dwell on questions of pleasure in viewing rather than questions about television's impact on reality. The 1970s is also when academics began to take television studies more seriously. Since the publication process takes time, sharing ideas from research did not occur until the 1980s, and when it did, it had the added advantage of "cross-fertilization" between U.S. and British scholars. By the middle of the 1990s, course offerings of television studies were common and television studies became academically institutionalized.

In addition to historical shifts, Gray and Lotz include the key intellectual influences of television studies, which are social sciences, humanities, and cultural studies. They cover these intellectual influences to provide the "backstory for contemporary conditions." From social sciences came funding for effects research because of the existing radio, film, and newspapers. The social sciences also prompted questions about the relationship between mass media and social movements. From humanities came literary, film, and rhetorical studies methods and theory that could be applied to this new, influential, storytelling, meaning-making medium. From cultural studies came theory and methods about class, gender, race, youth, and nation. Cultural studies also included a focus on power and ideological control. As Gray and Lotz describe early theorists and thinkers in television studies, they also discuss what bothered and motivated these early thinkers about cultural issues of the time. Television Studies is useful then, for scholars who need to situate their own philosophical questions against this history of the field of inquiry and within an intellectual tradition.

Each chapter, be it programs, audiences, industry, or context follows a pattern: how the topic has been studied, the places those studies began, reasons for certain approaches, and the approaches that endure. Each chapter lists seminal research in that area. Gray and Lotz also discuss each area's peculiarity. For example, programs research could not gain intellectual traction until the 1970s, and audience research was bound for some time by a polemic argument over active audience theory. Each chapter concludes with future research directions and questions for that topic. In all, the chapter structure supplies the field-shaping questions, authors, theories, methods, and important readings. In Gray and Lotz's words, "knowing something about the formation and trajectory of television studies ... promises a fast track to developing more sophisticated approaches over time" (p. 3). Those doing media studies research will find this book useful. If you are teaching media studies, cultural studies, mass media and society, or even research methods, you will find this book a handy companion text.

Gray and Lotz pull together a coherent past that becomes a newly visible and useful present. They are then able to offer suggestions for how television studies might move forward productively from this fresh location and perhaps through different mediums. They identify the need to speed up conversations that new technologies offer. In their words, "a thriving television studies must be one in which scholars can also discuss the here and now in the here and now" (p. 144). Two current locations where you can see examples of these conversations among scholars are flowtv.org and In Media Res.

In the end, Gray and Lotz reflect on their own book and ask, "Have we made television studies impossible?" The answer is no but the caveat is that television studies researchers must be "mindful." Mindful as in filling in your mind, reading widely, becoming aware of the possibilities, becoming attuned to asking what each research decision leaves out and at times, explaining those choices (p. 144). These are good practices for all scholars.

--Heather Crandall

Gonzaga University