Family Television: Cultural Power and Domestic … · FAMILY TELEVISION: CULTURAL POWER AND...

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FAMILY TELEVISION:

CULTURAL POWER ANDDOMESTIC LEISURE

by David Morley

A Comedia bookpublished by RoutledgeLondon and New York

First published 1986 by Comedia Publishing Group

Reprinted 1988, 1993, 1999by Routledge

11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

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1986 Comedia and David Morley

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproducedor utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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ISBN 0-203-98904-X Master e-book ISBN

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Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the help and support given to me by anumber of people, without whom this book would not have beenwrittenalthough that does not mean that any of them are to blamefor the inadequacies of the final product. First, I must thank the IBA,and Bob Towler in particular, for funding my research when no otheragency was prepared to do so. I must also thank Philip Corrigan, withwhom a number of the initial ideas were formulated; RichardPaterson, Valerie Walkerdine and Charlotte Brunsdon, all of whomoffered valuable comments and criticisms of earlier drafts; and StuartHall, whose encouragement has always been invaluable. I must alsothank everyone at Comedia for their support during the very longperiod of gestation of this book, but especially Sue Field Reid, who hasretyped it so often that she could probably recite large chunks of it inher sleep. Finally, my thanks must also go to the families whocooperated with me in the research.

Contents

Introduction v

Foreword ix

1. Understanding the uses of television 1

2. Television in the family 7

3. Research development: from decoding to viewingcontext

29

4. Objectives, methodology and sample design 39

5. Family interviews 45

(i) Unemployed families 45

(ii) C2 families 76

(iii) C1 families 102

(iv) B families 117

6. Television and gender 139

Afterword 169

Notes 171

Introduction

In spite of its modest claims, this is in fact a seminal piece of researchinto the question of the social uses of television. It delivers newinsights and genuinely provides what many other studies misleadinglylabel as findings. More significantly, it makes us look again at whatwe thought was obvious, thereby opening up new questions. Like allgood research, it does not appear out of the blue but is part of anunfolding project of work on which David Morley has been engagedfor over a decade. Those not already familiar with its earlier stageswill want to set this latest instalment in the context of the study ofNationwide, with Charlotte Brunsdon (BFI Monograph, 1978:Brunsdon and Morley), Morleys own follow-up, The NationwideAudience (also a BFI Monograph, 1980) and the article in Culture,Media, Language (1980) entitled Texts, Readers, Subjects, whichcritically reflected on the evolving theoretical line of argument.

This body of work helped to bring about the long-overdue demise ofold-style audience surveys, with their monolithic conception of theviewer and simple-minded notion of message, meaning and influence,which for so long dominated media studies. It helped to inaugurate anew set of interests in a more active conception of the audience and ofthe codes and competences involved in establishing variant readings.This approach was differentiated from other work on texts (fromwhich it nevertheless learned a good deal) by its persistent attention tothe social dimensions of viewing and interpretation, alongside thetextual aspects.

Despite this suggestive line of inquiry, Morley has had to hustlearound to persuade anyone that the project was worth funding, andthe whole line of inquiry has thus been subject to unnecessary anddamaging fits and startsan episode which does little credit to thoseorganisations which currently dispose of research funding in the field.The fact that the pilot research for this monograph was completed atall is due to the support of Bob Towler, director of research at the IBA,to whom credit is due; and, of course, to Comedia, which Morley

helped to found and which, far from being simply the publisher of thereport, is itself part of the whole project in a larger sense.

Morley has now considerably extended the range of researchtraditions on which he is drawing. This current piece of research showsthe influence, inter alia, of recent work on texts, readers anddiscourse, further work on the encoding-decoding model, feministwork on romance, family studiesas well as more mainstream workon leisure activities, time budgets and the factors which influenceviewer commitment, choice and switching.

The central idea behind this piece of work was simply to explorefurther the increasingly varied uses to which the television set cannow be put. Television viewing has to be seen less and less as anisolated and individual, more and more as a social, even a collective,activity. Typically, it takes place in families (or whatever intimatesocial group now substitutes for them). However, we know next tonothing about how this everyday domestic context influences what weview, how we view, or what sense we make of it. We know almost aslittle about what role television plays in family relationshipshowfamily interactions influence the choices we make about viewing orthe uses to which we put what we view. We know even less, if this ispossible, about how we actually behave (as opposed to how we wouldlike to think we behave) when the set is oneither our conducttowards the screen or towards each other.

David Morley has tried to find out by interviewing in depth asample of families from different social backgrounds. Suspecting, quiterightly, that the standard techniquesfixed-choice questionnaire,sample survey and self-recorded diarywould tell us more aboutwhat producers and advertisers wanted to hear than what was actuallygoing on, he has gone instead for the extended, unstructured interviewand a qualitative methodology. The monograph reports, in a clear butnecessarily tentative way, what he discovered, setting it succinctly inthe context of related research (much of it new to critical researchers,who are sometimes too impatient of mainstream work) and giving usthe benefit of extensive verbatim quotes from the interviewees so thatwe can see for ourselves how they framed, in their own words, theviewing experience.

Television viewing, the choices which shape it and the many socialuses to which we put it, now turn out to be irrevocably active andsocial processes. People dont passively absorb subliminal inputsfrom the screen. They discursively make sense of or producereadings of what they see. Moreover, the sense they make isrelated to a pattern of choices about what and when to view which isconstructed within a set of relationships constituted by the domesticand familial settings in which it is taking place. The rational

vi

consumer in a free and perfect market, so beloved of advertisers,audience research departments and rational-choice economists alike,is a myth. The activity has to be understood, analysed and explainedin terms of the everyday domestic settings in which itcharacteristically occurs. In this way, Morley very suggestively bringstogether two lines of critical inquiry which have tended to be kept instrict isolationquestions of interpretation and questions of use.Viewing, he insists, has to be seen as a constitutive part of thefamilial or domestic relations through which we construct our lives.This point is reinforced by the variety of uses other than viewing towhich we put the setand the variety of other activities we seemperfectly capable of sustaining while we view. Viewing is almostalways accompanied by argument, comment, debate and discussion.Programmes are surrounded, if not totally submerged, by an incessantflow of other activity and talk, only some of it television-related. Thetalk about television is both criticalit is comment on and aboutsomething we do not in any simple way confuse with realityandat the same time sustains involvement and identification (in varyingdegrees of intensity) with what is on the screen, as well as maintaininginteractions with other people. These different dimen-sions and modesof viewingcontrary to received psychological wisdomare notmutually incompatible. Moreover, the comment, far from destroyingpleasurable identification, seems to be actually part of the pleasure: weenjoy the way the televisual flow is incorporated into the flows ofeveryday domestic life. This should oblige us to rethink many of ourcommon-sense ideas about the so-called confusions between realityand fantasy in television. People seem to be perfectly well aware ofthe fact that EastEnders is not real life. However, this does not seemin any way to diminish their capacity for involvement in the fabricatedworlds of fictional television. Our actual modes of relating totelevision are far more complex than the protocols of most researchsuppose.

So are the uses we normally make of the medium. Even in thispilot research Morley is able to demonstrate how various are theactivities which accompany television viewing and how varied are thesocial uses to which it is put. Viewing can be used to provide theoccasion for family interaction, or to create space, even when theliving-room is crammed with other people. It can forge solidarities,establish alliances between family members or just provide a much-needed excuse for cuddling up. The medium thus has becomeintegrated into the everyday processes and codes of family interaction.Around it a complex web of customary procedures and rituals, rulesand principles develop. It is enveloped by the tensions of negotiationswhich accompany any form of decision-making in families. Choices

vii

about what and when to view, and control of the switch, arelikeeverything elseallocated along the lines of power and relationshipwhich intersect all families (havens in a heartless world, indeed). Aswe might have predicted, gender turns out to be one of the mainprinciples which structure and shape this field.

Throughout all this, Morley makes subtle use of the notions ofvariability, diversity and difference. We are not viewers with asingle identity, a monolithic set of preferences and repetitive habits ofviewing, all exposed to a single channel and type of influence andtherefore behaving in predictably uniform ways. We are all, in ourheads, several different audiences at once, and can be constituted assuch by different programmes. We have the capacity to deploydifferent levels and modes of attention, to mobilise differentcompetences in our viewing. At different times of the day, for differentfamily members, different patterns of viewing have differentsaliences. Here the monolithic conceptions of the viewer, theaudience or of television itself have been displacedone hopes foreverbefore the new emphasis on difference and variation. It is thesevariant mappings between these different factors in the social contextsof viewing which Morley has begun to trace. What the mappingsreveal, in sum, is the fine-grained interrelationships between meaning,pleasure, use and choice.

The study offers many other rich and illuminating insights whichwill reward the reader who is prepared to read and work with the text.It is sufficiently open-ended, displaying the basis of its own evidenceand inferences, to withstand contrary interpretation and positively toinvite criticism and further development. In this exceedinglycomplicated territory, these qualities are the only guarantees we haveof honest, original and scientific work. Who, in the well-heeled worldof research centres of excellence, is currently offering more?

1986 Stuart Hall

viii

Foreword

This book is based on a pilot research project funded by theIndependent Broadcasting Authority, which was conducted in thespring of 1985, investigating television viewing in a small number offamilies from different social backgrounds. Because of the small size ofthe sample (and the restricted definition of household type employedin its construction) care must be taken in attempting to generalise frommy findings. The research was of a preliminary nature, and usesqualitative techniques, aiming to pursue issues about programmepreference and viewing behaviour in depth, so as to raise questionswhich could usefully be pursued at a later stage, both in extendedqualitative work with a broader sample and in survey work.

In particular it must be borne in mind that this research was basedon a sample of respondents who were quite deliberately selected asbelonging to one specific type of householdthe traditional nuclearfamily, with both parents living together with their dependentchildren. Moreover, all the families were white, and all lived in onearea of inner London. All research samples must have their limits andthese were the particular limits which I adopted. I am well aware thatmatters may well be quite different in households of other types (andthe nuclear family is now in a distinct minority) and among familiesfrom different ethnic and geographical backgrounds. Furthermore,while my sample was intended to include a mix of families fromdifferent class backgrounds, in practice the sample is dominated byfamilies from a working-class or lower middle-class background. Thusthe findings presented below can only be claimed to be representative,at most, of viewing patterns within one type of household, drawn fromone particular ethnic and geographic context and from a relativelynarrow range of class positions.

1Understanding the uses of television

Centrally, this project was designed to investigate two different typesof questions, concerning, on the one hand, how television is usedwithin different families and, on the other hand, how televisionmaterial is interpreted by its audience.

Questions of interpretation and questions of use have not previouslybeen investigated in relation to each other. In the past they have beenthe exclusive provinces of different research traditionsthe onewithin the realms of literary/semiological perspectives, the otherwithin the field of sociological leisure studies. My project wasdesigned to overcome this unproductive form of segregation, in thebelief that only a more holistic research perspective- which takesaccount of both kinds of issuescould successfully pursue theseurgent questions about the television audience.

My central thesis was that the changing patterns of televisionviewing could only be understood in the overall context of familyleisure activity. Previous work in this area has tended to focus toonarrowly on one or another side of a pair of interlinked issues whichneed, in fact, to be considered together: these are the issues of howviewers make sense of the materials they view, and the social (andprimarily familial) relations within which viewing is conducted.

One tradition of work (in film cultural studies) has concentrated onthe semiology of the text/image and the problem of textual meaning,only latterly registering the problematic status of the reader to whomthe text/image is addressed, and that largely in isolation from thesocial context of viewing. On the other side, the sociological/leisurestudies perspective has concentrated (as has much of the broadcastingorganisations own research) on counting patterns of viewing behaviourwith scant regard for how meanings (and thus choices) get made inthis process.

My premise here was that the respective strengths of these twodifferent perspectives needed to be combined, so as to considerproblems of audience decoding/choice in the context of family leisure.Too often, the fact that television is predominantly a domestic medium

and that viewing is largely done in the family is either ignored, or isregistered only to be assumed away as a pre-given backdrop to theactivity, rather than being directly investigated. Television viewingmay be a privatised form of activity, by comparison with cinema-going for example, but it is still largely conducted within, rather thanoutside of, social relationsin this case the social relations of thefamily or household.

My own increasing interest in the analysis of the domestic viewingcontext can best be understood in relation to my previous involvementin the Nationwide research project at the Centre for ContemporaryCultural studies in Birmingham.1 Originally it had been hoped tofollow up the investigation of differential patterns of decoding ofNationwide in that project with supplementary interviews withrespondents at home. In the end, because of the practical limitations oftime, funding, etc., that dimension was never pursued and theNationwide project stopped short at the analysis of the pattern ofdifferential decodings offered by groups of respondents wheninterviewed in groups (primarily in the context of educationalinstructions).

While I would, of course, argue that the findings in that projectremain of considerable interest, I had subsequently come to feel that itwas vital to pursue finally the question of how people watchedtelevision in its more natural setting, at home with their families. Inshort, my focus of interest has thus shifted from the analysis of thepattern of differential audience readings of particular programmematerials, to the analysis of the domestic viewing context itselfas theframework within which readings of programmes are (ordinarily)made.

This research project was also designed to investigate theincreasingly varied uses to which the television set can now be put.We are now in a situation where people can do a number of thingswith their television set besides watching broadcast television. Thisquestion goes beyond the implications of the increasing range ofoptions in broadcast television (Channel Four, breakfast television)and beyond the implications of cable and satellite television inproviding yet further choices.

We now confront a situation where the television set, whileremaining the family hearth, can be used to videotape broadcasttelevision and watch this at a later time; to watch rented and boughtvideotape material; to call up electronic pages of information(Teletext, Prestel, Oracle); and as a space on which either to playinteractive video games or to display computerised data and to makecalculations.

2 FAMILY TELEVISION

Audience research needs to explore the implications of this set ofchanges if we are to understand the changing significance of the boxin the corner, in the context of the growing impact of newtechnology, both in diversifying the nature of the home-basedleisure opportunities and in re-emphasising the existence of the homeas the principal site of leisure.

A further premise of the analytical framework of the research projectis that the social dimensions of watching televisionthe socialrelations within which viewing is performed as an activityhave tobe brought more directly into focus if we are properly to understandtelevision audiences choices of, and responses to, their viewing.

Here I have attempted to build upon some of the insights of theuses and gratifications approach to audience researchasking whatpeople do with the mediabut taking the dynamic unit ofconsumption to be more properly the family/household rather than theindividual viewer. This is to raise questions about how the televisionset is handled in the home, how decisions are madeby which familymembers, at what times, as to what to watchand how responses todifferent kinds of material are discussed within the family, etc. Inshort, this represents an attempt to analyse individual viewing activitywithin the social (and primarily household/familial) relations inwhich it commonly operates. Audience research which ignores thesocial/familial position of the viewer cannot comprehend a number ofkey determinations relating to both viewing choices and responses.These involve questions of differential power, responsibility andcontrol within the family, at different times of the day or evening.

The further premise is that the use of the television set has to beunderstood in the wider context of the other, competing andcomplementary, leisure activities (hobbies, interests, pastimes, etc.) inwhich viewers are engaged. Television clearly is a primary leisureactivity, but previous research has tended merely to investigate leisureoptions as a range of separate and unrelated activities to be listed,rather than to investigate the relations between watching televisionand other leisure activities. This project was designed to investigatethe relations in which television viewing can be seen to structureandbe structuredby other leisure activities, in different ways for viewersin different social/familial positions.

Watching television cannot be assumed to be a one-dimensionalactivity which has equivalent meaning or significance at all times for allwho perform it. I was concerned to identify and investigate thedifferences hidden behind the catch-all description watchingtelevision; both the differences between the choices made bydifferent kinds of viewers in relation to different viewing options, andthe differences (of attention and comprehension) between different

UNDERSTANDING THE USES OF TELEVISION 3

viewers responses to the same viewing materialsdifferences whichare masked by the finding that they all watched a given programme.

I was concerned to explore both differences within families, betweentheir different members, and differences between families in differentsocial and cultural contexts. I would argue that it is only in this contextthat of the wider fields of social and cultural determinations whichframe the practices of viewingthat individual choices andresponses can be understood.

My argument is that the viewing patterns for broadcast televisioncan only be comprehended in the context of this wider set of questionsconcerning life-style, work situation, and their interrelation with thescheduling limitations of broadcast television. Availability is thus adynamic concept which relates which groups can (or wish to) watch,when (and with how much attention)? and what types of programmeare being broadcast and at what times?plus the availability ofcertain types of televisual material from off-air or hired/purchasedvideo recordings.

As Mallory Wober has argued,2 most television research is in factmeasurement, i.e., quantitative registration of how many people ofwhat kinds are watching particular programmes and to what degreeparticular samples of people thought certain prograrrtmes interestingand/or enjoyable. The results, as he argues, offer bases for research,but are not research in and of themselves.

Moreover, the ways in which the information is gathered for thesesurveys ignore the contexts of use of television. By asking individualsto complete diaries (for the audience appreciation measurements) ofwhich programmes they watched, reasons for such choices are notdiscovered. Moreover, the placing of the television set in a context ofdifferential users (and differential uses) is never raised. Measuringdoes not address issues like this. Even that minority of audienceresearch which is concerned with evaluation as opposed tomeasurement, is insufficiently comparative. By comparative I amreferring to four types of comparisons:

(a) Comparisons as between channels(b) Comparisons as between different types of programme(c) Comparisons as between different groups of viewers(d) Comparisons as between different uses of the television set (in

terms of different types of televisual material and different groupsof viewers).

This research programme was designed, then, to pursue a number ofrelated concerns:

4 FAMILY TELEVISION

(i) the need for a fuller and more flexible understanding of (ratherthan simply measuring) viewers reactions to materialtrans mitted. One important question here is that of developingdifferential appreciation-indexes in relation to the life-styles andcultural backgrounds of different categories of viewers.

(ii) the need for an understanding of the grounds of such individualchoices and reactions, which takes account of the ways in whichindividual choices and viewer reactions are situated in andaffected by particular social and cultural contexts.

I was also concerned to generate a comparative study of specific socialgroups in relation to channel-choice and programme-typecommitment:

Choice: the significance of scheduling in relation to (a) televisionuse, (b) channel switching and channel loyalty, and (c) life-patterns ofdifferent social groups, and different members of families within thesame social group.

Commitment: the significance of the internal characteristics andstructure of different types of programmes within television use inrelation to different social groups and different members of familieswithin the same social group.

The objectives were:

(1) to complement existing measurement data;(2) to deepen our understanding of what patterns of viewing relate to

which social groups;(3) to reconceptualise notions of appreciation in relation to types of

programme.

In particular, this project was designed to explore in detail, with adeliberately limited universe, the factors which frame viewingbehaviour. The focus was on the how and why questions whichlie unexplained behind the patterns of viewing behaviour revealed bylarge-scale survey work (as discussed, for instance, in Goodhart et al.).My objective was to produce a fuller understanding of the questions(for example, the grounds for and differential criteria employed inparticular viewing choices) which need to be understood in order topave the way for more productive large-scale survey work across alarger sample.

In short, by investigating how factors such as programme type,family position and cultural background interrelate to produce thedynamics of family viewing behaviour and responses, I aimed toproduce a more developed conceptual model of viewing behaviour in

UNDERSTANDING THE USES OF TELEVISION 5

the context of family leisure which would then be available for testingacross a wider sample.

6 FAMILY TELEVISION

2Television in the family

Despite frequent moral panics about television and the family westill know very little about how families as distinct from individuals(who, after all, mostly live in families or households of some kind)interact with and use television in their everyday lives. Theperspective employed in this project has been one which attempts toredress this imbalance and to consider television viewing as a socialactivity, one which is conducted within the context of the family as aset of social relations, rather than as a merely individual activity, or asthe activities of a collection of individuals who merely happen to livein the same household. The need for this approach is surely nowbeyond argument. As the introduction to Communication ResearchTrends issue on TV and Family Communication put it:

As long ago as 1972 the US Surgeon Generals AdvisoryCommittee Report on TV and Social Behaviour requested that TVbe studied in the home environment. Ten years later, the updateof the Surgeon Generals report Television and Behaviour calledonce again for more studies on family interaction with TV and fora research approach which uses the family or peer group as theunit of analysis.1

This perspective has a number of implications. First, let us return tothe comments above on the disjuncture between my findings in thisproject and the generally accepted thesis that people are just as likelyto view types of programme which they claim not to like as they are toview their claimed programme preference. James Webster and JacobWakshlag go some considerable way towards explaining why statedpreferences fail to match up with observed viewing behaviour by thesimple expedient of taking into account the influence of others (othermembers of the family or household) on programme choicethat is,the role that group viewing plays in mediating the free exercise ofindividual preference.2 As they explain, many theorists have assumedthat television programme choice is a direct result of individual

programme preference, and that, as a consequence, patterns of statedprogramme preference should be manifest in viewing behaviour. Asthey note, Goodhart et al. concluded that in terms of recordedviewing behaviour there is no special tendency across the populationfor people who watch one programme of a given type also to watchothers of the same type.3 This conclusion has led many to believethat statements of programme type preference, given that they are poorpredictors of viewing behaviour, are of little interest or significance.

In fact, as Webster and Wakshlag show, when respondents viewalone, their programme choice is more consistent with reference toprogramme type (as indeed it is when they view consistently with thesame group of other people). A large part of the gap betweenindividuals stated programme preferences and their actual viewingbehaviour is to be accounted for by the effects of others, and the needto accommodate and negotiate with their preferences as to what is tobe viewed. In short, a lot of peoples viewing is not of their ownchoosing. As they put it, contrary to their original hypothesis that anincreased incidence of group viewing would result in a reduction ofprogramme type loyalty:

Group viewing per se did not reduce programme type loyalty.Rather, it appeared that when a composition of the viewing unitvaried across time [for example, when a respondent viewed withvarying combinations of family members], programme typeloyalty declined. When the viewing unit was constant, as was thecase with a solitary viewer or an unchanging group, programmetype loyalty was heightened.4

We are, in short, discussing television viewing in the context ofdomestic life, which as we all is a somewhat complex matter. Toexpect that we could treat the individual viewer making programmechoices as if he or she were the rational consumer in a free and perfectmarket is surely the height of absurdity when we are talking of peoplewho live in families (unless my own experience of families is, forsome reason, unrepresentative). After all, for most people, viewingtakes place within the context of what Sean Cubitt has called thepolitics of the living room where, as he puts it, if the camera pulls usin, the family pulls us out, and where the people you live with arelikely to disrupt, if not shatter, your communication with the box inthe corner.5

Let us consider the problem from another angle. Herman Bausingersresearch provides the following account of what switching on thetelevision can meanand it clearly doesnt necessarily mean that onewants to watch the television: Early in the evening we watch very

8 TELEVISION IN THE FAMILY

little TV. Only when my husband is in a real rage. He comes home,hardly says anything and switches on the TV.6 As Bausinger notes, inthis case pushing the button doesnt signify I would like to watchthis, but rather I would like to see and hear nothing or I dont wantto talk to anybody. Conversely, he notes, later the opposite casewhere the father goes to his room, while the mother sits down next toher eldest son and watches the sports review with him. It does notinterest her, but it is an attempt at making contact.7

By way of a protocol, Bausinger also helpfully provides us with anumber of points to bear in mind in relation to domestic mediaconsumption:

1) To make a meaningful study of the use of the media, it is necessaryto take different media into consideration, the media ensemblewhich everyone deals with today The recipient integrates thecontent of different media

2) As a rule the media are not used completely, nor with fullconcentrationthe degree of attention depends on the time of theday, or moods, the media message competes with other messages

3) The media are an integral part of the way the everyday isconducted [for example, the newspaper as a necessary constituentpart of breakfast] and [media] decisions are constantly crossedthrough and influenced by nonmedia conditions and decisions.

4) It is not a question of an isolated, individual process, but of acollective process. Even when reading a newspaper one is nottruly alone, it takes place in the context of the family, friends,colleagues

5) Media communication cannot be separated from direct personalcommunication. Media contacts are materials for conversation.8

This last point is also germane to the hoary old question as to whethertelevision is killing (or indeed, has already killed) the art ofconversation. Simon Hoggart, writing in New Society, put the pointwell:

What TV does furnish is a shared experience which actuallyincreases the amount of conversation. In factories and officesacross the land people earnestly debate what they saw on thescreen last night [compare this with my own family interviews]where once they might have discussed the sales managers lovelife, the weather, or the shortcomings of the head of faculty.9

In fact, the whole basis of the predominant cultural snobbery whichsees almost any activity as superior to watching television (and

FAMILY TELEVISION 9

which confers prestige on not watching television almost as anactivity in itself) lies in the assumption that television is capable,somehow, of obliterating the processes of domestic communicationthat would otherwise occur in the home. As my findings indicate, thisis far too simple a picture of a process in which (as Bausinger shows)media and domestic communications exist in all manner of symbioticintertwinings.

Even those who would argue that television has somehow harmeddomestic conversations are sometimes forced to admit that televisionitself has also made significant contributions to the art ofconversation. Here is Nancy Banks-Smith, writing in the Guardianabout the contribution of situation comedies to the development of theart:

Television has not exactly killed conversation; it has eaten italive, woofing it down wholesale as a cat might a canary. Wherehas it gone? thinks the bereaved owner, looking wildly round theliving-room. It was here a moment ago, chirruping away. Andthen the television set starts to sing.

The best conversation heard around most homes in the lasttwenty years has been in situation comedies. People with nothingbetter to do talk best. Hancock alone on a Saturday night, Dudand Pete in a wardrobe discussing the womb, Foggy, Clegg andCompo in their second childhood, Fletcher in prison.Conversation actually seems to improve in captivity.10

As Thomas Lindlof and Paul Traudt argue,11 many media scholarshave tended to view television viewing as somehow supplantingfamily functions, rather than investigating how media resources areadapted to families economic and cultural (or psychological) needs.This can involve quite elementary considerationssuch as, forinstance, the use of television to create personal space in a restrictedphysical environment. As Lindlof and Traudt note,12 in higher,density families TV viewing may function as a way of avoidingconflicts or lessening tensions in lieu of spatial privacy. Theseauthors also make most convincingly a very basic point about theproblems with a lot of media research to date. They note that muchresearch has concentrated on questions of why, to the exclusion ofwhat and how. [Scholars] have attempted to describe causes andconsequences of televiewing without an adequate understanding ofwhat it is and how it gets done. They rightly argue that in orderfor many of the central theoretical and policy questions to besatisfactorily framed, let alone answered, a number of prerequisite


questions concerning what the act of TV viewing entails [my emphasisD.M.] for all family members, need to be posed and investigated.13

The dominant image of the relationship between the family andtelevision (or the media in general) is one in which the media are seenas having a primarily disruptive effect on household routines andfamily relationships. In this picture the medias influence is seen asprimarily negative and disruptive. However, it is perfectly possible topose this issue the other way round. Rather than simply thinking oftelevision having a disruptive effect on the household, one canexamine the ways in which television provides family members withdifferent schedules for gathering, the ways in which televisionprovides acceptable zones for private pursuits, the ways in whichtelevision programming does not so much intrude on existing familyactivities as provide organising centres or focuses for new types ofcommunicative contexts. As Lindlof and Traudt put it, Familymembers eat and drink with their television viewing, engage incontent-related and content-unrelated talk, iron clothes, study, dress,undress, daydream and so on. James Lull has also provided us with amore useful way of thinking about the relationship between televisionand the family. He provides a model of this relationship in whichtelevision can be seen to play a central role in the methods whichfamily members and other social units employ purposefully to interactnormatively within their own special everyday realities.14

The point here is that, considered in this way, television can be seento provide in one sense an alibi, in another sense a context, forencounters between family members, where the content of thetelevision programme they are watching together may often simplyserve as a common experiental ground for conversation. In this kind ofinstance, television is being used for something which is more thanentertainment. It is being used as a focus, as a method for engaging insocial interaction with others. So, far from simply disrupting familyinteraction, television is being used purposefully by family membersto construct the occasions of their interactions, and to construct thecontext within which they can interact. It is being used to provide thereference points, the ground, the material, the stuff of conversation.

Family studies

In this connection it is especially interesting that some of the bestrecent work on television and the family has been generated notwithin the orbit of media studies but within the orbit ofpsychology and family studies. Thus, Irene Goodman writing in theJournal of Family Issues15 provides a very interesting perspective. Asshe puts it, the primary focus of much work in the past has been on

FAMILY TELEVISION 11

the effects of television viewing on behaviour. By contrast, she arguesthat what is important in examining the role of television in family lifeis not simply the matter of studying effects on family members. It alsoinvolves looking at television as a phenomenon that serves a wholerange of social purposes, the study of which can shed light on generalfamily functioning. As she puts it:

The working assumption [of] traditional research dealing withthe effects of television is that television is a medium ofinformation, entertainment, education, and/or an indirectinformative agent in the area of values and behaviour. However,if it is assumed that television not only is used by familymembers for these traditional reasons but also has other functions(for example, as a companion, scapegoat, mediator, boundarymarker between family members, to schedule their otheractivities, as a reward or punishment, as a bartering agent, and soon) then a new set of research opportunities present themselves.By studying the role that TV plays in the realisation of theseother purposes, we are in effect looking at television use as a toolfor understanding family interaction.16

The fundamental point which Goodman makes is that previousresearchers have tended to concentrate on individual members of thefamily, rather than studying the family unit as a whole. In the past theresearch model was often a linear one, in which television was seen tohave direct effects on viewers. Things got a little better when peoplethought in terms of mediationwhere, rather than television havingdirect effects on people, televisions effects were seen to be mediatedby the familyso that, in effect, the family structure was taken to be acomplex of intervening variables, which acted as a filter between theindividual and the screen. Where Goodmans work is particularlyimportant is in encouraging us to think about the familys use oftelevision: that is to say, the way in which the family constructs themeaning of television within the home, the ways in which the familymembers construct their uses of the television set. This is not to denythat television programmes have their own structure, and indeed thattelevision generates a whole set of meanings, rules, values and so onwhen it enters the home. However, as Goodman notes, Each familyinterprets the set in its own terms, viewing television through its ownscreen of family rules. It is a kind of family assimilation/accommodation process17

In many houses the television is kept on continuously, as a kind offiller going on continuously behind conversations and domesticevents. It will be watched for quick snatches, listened to in moments


of quiet and then ignored. Turning off usually signifies a major familytragedy or confrontation.

As Peter Collett of Oxford University puts it: Television is whatpeople talk about, while it is on, as well as at work the next day. Itbuttresses social relationships in the sense that it gives peoplesomething to discuss. Often, it provides a kind of focus for people totalk about other things. Janet Brown, a member of one of the Oxfordfamilies filmed by Peter Collett, says:

When me and Marie want to have a mother and daughterdiscussion we will just turn down the television and sit and chatfor a couple of hours. I still know what is happening ontelevision, but when Im having a heart to heart with Marie my soleattention is on her. Actually, a lot of times the programme willactually spark off the discussion. We turn it down so we arewatching it and having a discussion at the same time.18

Goodmans fundamental point is that the family is not just a collectionof individualsit is greater than and different from the sum of itsmembers. Furthermore, she urges us to think about the family in thecontext of its social milieu and in the context of its own life-cyclethat is to say, the stage of life of the family, the age of the childrenand so on. Her fundamental interest is in family processes and hermain point is that we should use the family as the unit of analysis andbe concerned to understand family processes as they relate to viewingbehaviour. Goodman notes that among psychologists studying thefamily the dining-room table has often served as the focal point for anunderstanding of family functioning. However, she suggests that giventelevisions acknowledged pervasiveness in the lives of so manyfamilies, the familys use of television may well provide us with abetter starting-point than their dining-room table behaviour as a key toa better understanding of the way in which the family functions. Herinterest is in understanding the ways in which families develop andnegotiate rules or principles governing areas of behaviour, and shesuggests that this occurs in the field of television viewing as much asanywhere else in the domain of family life. If we looked at the familyseating habits, one might be interested in the way in which the familysits round the table, the rules it has regarding manners, the question ofwho serves the food, who cooks or prepares it, who carves the meat,what topics of conversation are allowed round the tableall thesequestions will give us valuable insight into family life. Her suggestionis that if we think about television watching, one can produce equallyinteresting questions which will likewise allow insights into the wayin which the family functions, and into the way in which the family


uses television. Her point is that family processes tend to be consistentacross different domains of activity. Thus the decision-makingprocesses the family uses in respect of television will probably besimilar to those which it uses in relation to other areas of family life. Herpoint is that given televisions central position in the home, rulemaking, decision making, conflict and dominance in relation totelevision are naturally major aspects of family process.

Goodman suggests that we look at this situation as one in which wecan expect the family to be a rule-governed system whose membersbehave among themselves in an organised and repetitive manner, andthat this patterning of behaviour can be analysed so as to discover thegoverning principles of family life. This is in respect of family rules oftwo kinds, both explicit or overt rules, and implicit or covert rules. Asshe notes, research on the familys uses of television has focused onrules for television viewing, particularly the explicit rules parents mayhave for the content and quantity of programming that their childrenare allowed to watch. But, as she notes, these studies are focused on theoutcome for the child, rather than the process of rule making. Theyhave not been sensitive to important implicit rules that govern familyprocesses. To understand this, one would have to ask how the rulesabout television are made in the family, who formulates and whoenforces the rules, and whether these rules are simply followed and/ornegotiated. As she points out, some rules may be spelled out and wellunderstood by all. Others may be unclear and understood by no one,or only some family members. The prohibition of the specifictelevision programme is a clear rule, but the prohibition of a generalcategory of unsuitable content may be difficult to define andenforce. She goes on to note that some implicit rules may revolvearound the permissable social interaction of family members when thetelevision set is on. For instance, in some families, watching televisionis the OK time for husband and wife to be in close physical contact,or for other family members to express affection if they have difficultyin doing so at other times. In a family where the members say We donthave rules about television, she suggests that this simply means thatone has to look a little further in order to understand the ways inwhich implicit rules are operated because, from her perspective, thenotion of a family operating without rules of some kind (whetherexplicit or implicit) is in fact a nonsense. As she points out, televisioncan be used as a controlling mechanism. It can regulate theenvironment by providing background noise, punctuating time, orscheduling other activities. It can also be used by family members tocontrol one another, or as a means of bartering, as in I wont watchsuch and such a programme today if youll help me do somethingelse. It is hardly uncommon, she suggests, for viewing choices to take


the rather displaced form in which someone chooses to watch a certainprogramme not because they particularly wish to watch thatprogramme, but because they wish to make contact with anothermember of the family who does want to watch that programme, andwatching it together provides a way of having a conversation, having acommon talking point.

It is commonly believed that adults use television as a reward orpunishment in relation to their children, allowing children to watchtelevision if they are good, or saying to the child, You cant watchthis programme because you didnt eat your greens/clear up yourroom, or whatever. However, it is also true that adults do this witheach other. A husband can use television to get even with his wife inthe course of a family dispute simply by watching all the sports eventson the television, because he is angry with his wife and knows thatwatching all this sport will annoy her. Likewise, people can usetelevision in the home to cope with the stresses and strains of theexternal world. If someone is experiencing dissatisfaction with theirjob, when they get home they may well not want to interact with otherfamily members. One simple way of achieving this is simply to turn onthe television set and tune out of the family context.

Goodman also contends that the family is transformed over timeitmoves through a number of stages as the children grow up, each ofwhich require restructuring of the family. Thus one can expecttelevision to be used in a variety of ways, depending on the phase offamily development, given that television rules and decision-makingprocedures will need to be constantly revised and updated accordingto the level of understanding of the children and the needs of thefamily unit. Clearly, one cant use the same rules for a nine-year-old asone can do when the child is five; or rather, if one does, it is likely tocause conflict within the family!

Of course, it is not simply a question of relationships within thefamily; one has to think also of the way in which people feel the needto watch certain programmes in order not to be left out at work the nextdayif they havent watched the programme which everyone else istalking about. With children, if all their friends at school habituallywatch a certain programme they may well feel that they have to viewit if they are not to feel left out by their peer group. Conversely, if thepeer-group pressure playing upon adults and children leads them tofeel they need to watch different types of programmes, there is thenthe problem of the parents and children having less common subjectsabout which to talk. All of this has rather major implications, forinstance if we return to the old chestnut concerning the effects ofviolent television programmes on children. If a family uses televisionto suppress conflict and aggression between family members (that is,


retreating into television viewing so as to avoid interaction, which is afairly common use of television within the home), then this use oftelevision will itself interact with the effects of the programming onthe childs behaviour. Thus, to take this one question of the effects ofviolent programming on childrens behaviour, one immediately seesthat replacing the question within the context of the family as a system,as a process governing and providing a context in which viewing isperformed, allows us to approach the question in ways which aremuch more likely to provide us with adequate answersor at least toprovide us with sensible questions for research.

Television and family interaction

In the same vein Jean Brodie and Lynda Stoneman have developedwhat they call a contextualist framework for studying the influenceof television viewing on family interactions.19 Their interests lie inunderstanding the ways in which roles within the family interrelatewith programme choices and with varieties of response to programmematerial. Their basic interests lie in the understanding of thecontextual variables that determine the salience of televisionprogrammes to different members of the family. They are furtherconcerned with the effect of this salience (and therefore the level ofinterest which different members of the family display towardsparticular types of television programmes) on the nature of familyinteractions during different types of programmes. The variables theyare concerned with are contextual, such as the question of competingactivities in the home, the physical arrangement of the domesticsituation; which family members are present; and the specifics of thetelevisual material which is being viewed at a given time. All thesecontextual variables, in their view, operate in combination with whatthey describe as person variables (by which they mean theinformation processing skills of the different family members), theirroles, their emotional state at a particular time, and so on. Their thesisis that the salience of a television programme is determined by acombination of person and contextual variables and that the salience ofa television programme for a family member will determine how muchhe or she will interact with other family members while that particularprogramme is being viewed.

As Brodie and Stoneman put it:

Family members select programmes to view and theseprogrammes in turn serve to organise family interaction. In somecases a television programme will decrease interaction betweensome family members: in other cases a different programme will


increase or maintain family interactions. Thus, the televisionviewing context actually consists of many contexts, each ofwhich may create different family interaction patterns.20

Returning to the question of research that has been done in relation tothe effects of television on children, they note that one of the majorlimitations of much research up to the present has been the focus onthe individual child. They note that little attention has been paid tothe possibility that television viewing influences family relations andthe socialisation process in the family.21 In short, they are trying todevelop a model of television viewing which is sensitive to thedifferent levels of attentiveness which are paid to the set by differentfamily members in different roles, in relation to different types ofprogramming. They are trying to get away from any notion of thetelevision set simply dominating family life, for all its members in anequal way, whenever it is switched on. They are also trying to getaway from the notion that people are either living in their socialrelations or watching televisionas if these two activities weremutually exclusive. Rather, what they are interested in is the way inwhich the familial roles influence television viewing.

In another piece of research by the same authors, they produce veryinteresting results about the way in which family interaction varies inrelation to different types of programmes. This research establishedthat children were less responsive to other family members duringprogrammes such as cartoon shows. This was not surprising, giventhat this material addressed them most directly, and most effectivelycaptured their interests. At the same time, they noted that fathers wereless responsive to other members of the family during the news. Ofconsiderable interest in relation to my own research was their findingthat mothers retained a responsive parenting role across programmetypes (for details of my own findings in relation to gender-specifictype viewing styles, see later). The authors premise here is that to theextent that a family member becomes engrossed in a televisionprogramme, we would expect that person to initiate fewer interactionswith other family members and, in addition, to be less contingentlyresponsive to initiations by others.22

Continuing with the theme of gender-specific viewing behaviour,the authors note that family members tend to assume roles thatto some extent determine their behaviour in the television viewingcontext. These authors findings seem to support the thesis that infamily interactions mothers will often assume a managerial oroverseer role, while fathers will assume the playmate role inrelation to their childrenthat is, fathers will tend to join theirchildren in activities while mothers sit and monitor the situation. This


also applies to the television viewing context. Thus we see again thepattern in which men become engrossed in viewing in a very directway, which obliterates their concerns with the presence of othermembers of the family (or rather, that it is much more common forfathers to do this) and that, conversely, it is very uncommon formothers to assume this position and much more common for them tomaintain their managing, supervisory role in the family in relation to allprogramming. Here these authors are attempting to explain how aperspective can be developed that understands the ways in whichfamily communication in role patterns can explain television use, andcan explain the varieties of response to televisual material which aredisplayed by different family membersprecisely in relation to theirfamilial roles. Thus, the authors, quoting research by Brodie, note thatFathers, while viewing television with their wives and children, tendto become engrossed in the television programme, relying on mothersto enact the parenting role with the children.23

What is of further interest here is these authors understanding ofthe varied uses to which television can be put. They bring to theiranalysis an understanding of the very different functions that watchingtelevision can perform within the family. Among these functions theynote the use of television by parents as a babysitter for fatigued orirritable children, thus providing a way of avoiding the kind ofconflict that often arises between parent and child when the child istired. They also note the not surprising tendency for tired familymembers to position themselves in front of the television set for longperiods of time, only minimally processing the television content, andbasically using watching television as away of tuning out input fromother family members. This is clearly similar to the incident recountedby Bausinger in the article quoted earlier.

Television can also function as a cause of family conflict. This mayarise due to disagreement among family members about whatprogramme to watch, or whether even or not the television set shouldbe on at all. Equally, television viewing may function as a means ofescape from family conflict. Brodie and Stoneman quote research thatclaims to have found a strong relationship between the amount of timethat television sets were reported to be on in a household and selfreports of tension and conflict within the family. Thus, it is plausiblethat television programming can take on increased salience for one ormore family members as a mechanism for withdrawing from negativefamily interaction.24

What these authors also point to as a discriminating device is therecognition that most television programming does not demandcomplete attention. They note that many programmes are designed sothat the viewer can engage in other activities, such as conversing with


another family member, without missing programme content.However, they note that other programmes require careful attention inorder to understand the information being presented. So we have herethe recognition that not all television programmes demand the samelevel of attention, and indeed not all are designed in such a way as toneed the same kind of attention from the viewer. As we all know fromour own experience, it is perfectly possible to understand the contentof many kinds of programmes by means of intermittent listening, orscanty visual attention. One often sees children playing in a room withthe television set on and can note that the children monitor thesoundtrack of the programme, looking round towards the screen whenthe soundtrack gives them a clue that something of particular visualinterest is about to occur in the programme. Brodie and Stonemansuggest that even by the age of five children have developedsophisticated strategies for television viewing that allow themeffectively to divide their visual attention between television andother competing activities.25

So these authors basic thesis is that the greater the family membersinterest in the television programme being viewed, the less they willattend to competing activities and, conversely, the greater theirinterest in the competing activity, the less they will visually attempt towatch television. Their point, however, is also that this will work indifferent ways for different family members. As they put it, thepresence or absence of certain perceptual features in the televisionprogramme may be accompanied by attention directed toward or awayfrom a programme by various family members. These programmefeatures thereby influence family interaction patterns by commandingthe attention of certain family subgroups, diverting attention frominteractions with other family members.26

Returning to the theme of how people use television in various waysfor their own purposes, it is interesting to consider the research ofMichelle Wolf, Timothy Mayer and Christopher White.27 They presenta qualitative study of how one particular couple make use of thecontent of television as a way of constructing conversations betweenthemselves, and with their friends who come round to visit themwhile they are watching television. As these authors note, this couple,like many others, frequently use television material in order to createtopics for talk or to create a common ground with co-viewers. In casessuch as these, television content is used in order to facilitateconversation, in order to provide themes around which interaction cantake place. As they note, this may take the form of conversationrunning parallel with the programme, commenting directly ontelevision material as it is presented or, indeed, it may be that thetelevision content brings to mind stories, possible anecdotes or jokes


which can be saved up to be exchanged during the next commercialbreak, or at the end of the programme. In either case, although theseprocesses may be unconscious, we can reasonably speak of anintentional use of television for the purposes of furthering interaction,rather than once more falling back into the notion of televisionviewing as an alternative way to social life. These authors are preciselyconcerned with the ways in which the viewing of television is itselfconducted as a social activity. Their concerns are with understandinghow television content is used by people to establish and maintaintheir interpersonal relationshipsmost often by the way in whichtelevision is used to stimulate conversation about past experiences andimportant day-to-day activities. This may, for instance, take the formof someone being motivated when watching the television to say, Oh,that reminds me of when. Here the viewer is using the occasion oftelevision viewing to provide the context in which reminiscences canbe exchanged. Or, more argumentatively, it may take the form of theviewers commenting adversely on programme material being viewedat its simplest, validating each others sense of themselves as criticalviewers, people who will not easily allow the wool to be pulled overtheir eyes, or people who are aware when they are watching badacting.

All this is simply to say that one has to understand televisionwatching as something rather more than the individual search eitherfor information or entertainment. That perspective leaves usconsidering the viewer as an individual consumer, outside of socialrelations. The perspective being advanced here is one which isprecisely interested in the viewers activities in viewing as part of (andindeed as a constitutive part of) the social and primarily familial ordomestic relations through which they construct their lives.

The social uses of television

Another researcher who has investigated the nature of the social useswhich audience members make of television is James Lull of theUniversity of California. In his article The Social Uses ofTelevision,28 Lull refers back to some previous research conducted byBechtol in 1972. Bechtol argues that television viewing doesnot occur in a vacuum, it is always to some degree background to acomplex behaviour pattern in the homeno doubt an aim of futureresearch is determining the relationship among viewing time, viewingstyles, and the larger framework of a familys life-styles.29 Lull isconcerned with the social uses of television, as the title of his articlesuggests. In particular, he is interested in the ways in which televisionis used as what he describes as an environmental resourcein order


to create a flow of constant Dackground noise which moves to theforeground when individuals or groups so desire. As Lull says:

TV is a companion for accomplishing household chores androutines. It contributes to the overall social environment byrendering a constant and predictable assortment of sounds andpictures which instantly creates an apparently busy atmosphere.The activated television set guarantees its users a non-stopbackdrop of verbal communication against which they canconstruct their interpersonal exchanges.30

What Lull is concerned to investigate is the way in which televisionviewing contributes to the structuring of the day, punctuating time andfamily activitysuch as meal times, bed times, homework times andso on. His point is that we need to understand the differential timeswhich different members of a family construct for their viewing inrelation to their domestic roles and obligations. In particular Lull isconcerned with the ways in which television can be used to facilitatecommunication. He notes that televisions characters, stories andthemes are employed by viewers as ways of illustrating experiencecommon references which other people can be expected to understand.As he points out, people often use television programmes andcharacters as references known in common, in order to clarify issuesthat they discuss. Television examples are used both by children andadults to explain things to each otherto give the examples andinstances which will illustrate the point that someone is trying tomake. Within the home, children often use television in order to enteran adult conversation. A child being ignored by several adults talkingto each other can gain access to the conversation if he or she can thinkup an example which illustrates a point being made by one of thepeople involved in the conversationvery often that example will bedrawn from the world of television. In this case the child is using thereference to televisual material as a way of gaining entry to aconversation from which he or she otherwise would have beenexcluded. More fundamentally, Lull points to the way in which theuneasiness of prolonged eye contact between people can be lessenedby the use of the television set, which so ably attracts attention duringlulls which occur in conversation. Moreover, the programme beingwatched at any given point of course creates an immediate agenda fortalk where there may otherwise have been none. Thus the medium canbe used as a convenient resource for entertaining outside guests in thehome. As Lull puts it, To turn on the set when guests arrive is tointroduce instant common ground. Strangers in the home may thenindulge in television talk.31 Thus hosts and guests, in their common


role as viewers, can become better acquainted but invest minimalpersonal risk.

Television viewing is of course something which in many families isprecisely done together. In this case the medium can be used to provideopportunities for family members or friends communally toexperience entertainment or informational programmnes. To quoteLull again: A feeling of family solidarity is thus achieved throughtelevisioninduced laughter, sorrow, anger, or intellectualstimulation.32 And these forms of interaction may not necessarily beexpressed through talk. Other researchers have noted that during theviewing of certain types of programmes, while one could come to theconclusion that family interaction is decreasedin the sense that theflow of talk may have dried up (for instance, during the viewing ofcomplex informational programming)it may well be that while thetalking has decreased, the level of touching and other forms of personalintimacy may have increased. That indeed is a fairly common familyrule, that touching or cuddling up together is indeed more commonwhen watching the television with other members of the family thanon any other occasion. Indeed, the suggestion that we should watchthe television may well be one in which the content which we areabout to watch could well be the secondary consideration, where theprimary consideration may be precisely the opportunity which doingthis will provide the family members to sit close together (clearly thisdoes not only apply to family members).

Lull tries to systematise his observations by suggesting that the socialuses of television can be understood along two dimensions: thestructural dimension and the relational dimension. Along thestructural dimension he distinguishes two particular uses: theenvironmental use (provision of background noise, companionship,and entertainment) and regulative (punctuation of time and activity,talk patterns). On the relational dimension he distinguishes fourdifferent social uses. The first of these is what he calls communicationfacilitation (experience illustration, provision of common ground andagenda for talk, etc.). The second function he refers to is that ofaffiliation/avoidance (physical, verbal contact, family solidarity). Thethird is what he calls social learning (which is the use of television forprovision of role models, value transmission, all the dissemina tion ofinformation). The fourth relational use medium which Lull identifiesis that of the demonstration of competence or dominance (roleenactment, role re-enforcement, gate-keeping). Indeed he goes further,and ends his article by suggesting that it may be possible to constructindices based on these major divisions (especially of the relationaluses of television) so as to develop user types and family types. He issuggesting that it may be possible to determine if a particular family


predominantly uses television for one or another of the relationalfunctions which he has identified. As he argues, if we coulddistinguish family types along this dimension (in terms of thepredominant use to which they put the television set), one would havegone a long way toward systematising what would otherwise be acomplex web of otherwise unaccountable findings.

However, it may be that this typology should itself be used in adifferent way, which would allow us to see that different families maywell engage in various different uses of the television; and far fromthere being a direct linkage from one family type (whichpredominantly uses the television set for one or other of the structuralor relational uses which Lull has identified), it may rather be the casethat any given family uses the television for different purposes atdifferent times, and indeed that different members of the same familymay well wish to use the television set for quite different functions.

Lulls own main attempt to extend his work, in terms of this type ofsystematisation of the social uses of television, is explored in Family,Communication Patterns and the Social Use of Television.33 Thestarting-point of this article is his observation that one factor whichinfluences the way families process television is the nature of theinterpersonal communication which takes place in the home.

In this article Lull distinguishes between two types of families. Thefirst of these types is the socio-orientated family, in which parentsstrongly encourage their children to get along well with other familymembers and friends, and the child is advised to give in on argumentsrather than cause conflict (in my own view, this may have more to dowith gender than any other factor). The other family type is the concept-orientated family, where a communicative environment is created inwhich parents stimulate their children to express ideas and tochallenge other beliefs. In general the difference between the familytypes is the preoccupation in the socio-orientated family with othersfeelings, compared with an emphasis in the concept-orientated familywith presenting and discussing ideas. Clearly this distinction is not amillion miles away from some of Bernsteins formulations of thedifferent socialisation styles of working-class and middle-classfamilies respectively, as laying a basis for the different formsof cultural competence or communicative code (namely, restricted andelaborated code) which Bernstein identifies as characterising thesedifferent types of families from these different class backgrounds.Lulls other point is that family members from socio-orientated asopposed to concept-orientated families differ radically in their uses ofthe mass media. Parents and children in socio-orientated families willtend to have high levels of total television viewing but low levels ofnews viewing. (Compare this with some of my own findings later.)


Conversely, parents and children in concept-orientated families willtend to use the mass media primarily for news and comparatively littlefor escape or entertainment. Concept-orientated family members arealso held to have relatively low overall television viewing habits; thatis, quite simply, a low level of television consumption. In effect,concept-orientated families are those that value the presentation ofpersonal points of view of the issues under description and do notdiscourage disagreement or argumentation about these issues. Socio-orientated families, on the other hand, are characterised by anenvironment where social harmony is prized, and children are told torepress expression of ideas if it would cause interpersonal friction.

However, Lulls attempt to develop this family typology seems tohave run into some difficulty. In a later article34 Lull claims that, notsurprisingly, concept-orientated family members view less television,do so more selectively, and are less satisfied with television as a formof family entertainment. However, as he notes:

Concept-orientated individuals are also more likely than thosewith a socio-orientation to report their sensitivity to the needs ofothers who exist in their interpersonal interaction aboutprogramme selection. Further, socio-orientated family memberssaid that arguments about programmes prevailed more often intheir homes than did people from concept-orientatedhouseholds. The conclusion then is that members of socio-orientated families are less sensitive to the needs of others, andmore argumentative when television programmes are selectedthan are individuals from the less harmonious concept-orientatedhomes.35

While the contradictory nature of some of Lulls findings may give uspause when considering the usefulness of the concept-orientatedversus socio-orientated family typology, none the less a number of hisother findings reported in this particular article are of considerableinterest. What Lull investigates here is Who is responsible for theselection of television programmes at home, how programme selectionprocesses occur, and how the roles of family position and fundamentalpoint at issue here concerns the fact that viewing is often non-selective. That is to say that viewers often watch programmes that areselected by someone else in the family. This is often referred to asenforced viewing, hardly an uncommon situation in any context inwhich there is more than one person involved in the viewing group!The point is that programme selection decisions often are complicatedinterpersonal communication activities involving inter-family status


relations, temporal context, the number of sets available and rule-based communications conventions.

Here we approach the central question of power. And within anypatriarchal society the power at issue will necessarily be that of thefather. This perspective involves us in considering the ways in whichfamilial relations, like any other social relations, are also andinevitably power relations. Lulls central finding, in his survey ofcontrol of the television set, was that fathers were named most often asthe person (or one of the persons) who controlled the selection oftelevision programmes. Children and mothers were more likely toregard fathers this way than were the fathers themselves. Lull found thatfathers controlled more programme decisions than any other singlefamily member (or combination of family viewers) and that they weremore than twice as likely as their wives to control such decisions.Indeed, fathers were found to act alone on their programme decisionsin more than ninety per cent of the cases observed. One of the childrenwas the next most likely to turn the set on (or off) or change thechannels. Mothers were observed to be far less involved in the actualmanipulation of the set (compare this with my own findings later) thanwere either their husbands or children. Indeed, mothers were initiatorsof programme decisions or actions of this type in a very smallpercentage of cases, and they were less likely than either fathers orchildren to undertake such actions or decisions alone. In essence, asLull puts it, The locus of control in programme selection process canbe explained primarily by family position.37 Thus, to consider theways in which viewing is performed within the social relations of thefamily is also, inevitably, to consider the ways in which viewing isperformed within the context of power relations and the differentialpower afforded to members of the family in different roleswhether interms of gender or in terms of age.

The question of power and gender relations is of particular interest.Lulls work provides us with a picture of male power within thefamily, in relation to television viewing, which is very much borne outby my own research. His remarks on the extent to which women aredisempowered within the relations of television viewing are alsostrikingly pertinent. Morever this issue relates to the whole field offamily relations and indeed raises the further problem of howdifficult it is for most women to construct any leisure time space forthemselves within the homeany space, that is, in which they canfeel free of the ongoing demands of family life. In this connection thework of Janice Radway on womens reading of romance fictionprovides us with a number of helpful parallels. Essentially Radwaysresearch discovered that many of the women she interviewedconnected their reading of romance fiction with their rare moments of


privacy from the endless demands of family and work life. In effect,her respondents seemed to feel that romance reading was almost adeclaration of independence, in the sense that in picking up a bookthe woman was effectively erecting a barrier between herself and thearena of the regular family ministrations. As Radway puts it, Becausehusband and children are told this is my time, my space, now leave mealone they are expected to respect the signal of the book and to avoidinterrupting. Book reading allows the woman to free herself from herduties and responsibilities and provides a space or time withinwhich she can attend to her own interests and needs.38 Radwayconcludes that Romance reading functions for the woman as a kind oftacit, minimal protest against the patriarchal constitution of womenit enables them to mark off a space where they can temporarily denythe selflessness usually demanded of them.39

Radway develops this theme further in a second article WomenRead the Romancethe Interaction of Text and Context. In thisarticle she argues that we need to know not What the romantic textobjectively meansbut rather how the event of reading the text isinterpreted by the women who engage in it.40 Radway helpfullyreformulates the question of escapism. This derogatory term hasoften been applied to the consumption of romance fiction. Clearlyescapism in this sense is almost inevitably held to be a bad thingthe very term is pejorative. However, once we pose the question ofescapism in relation to power relations, and specifically in relationto the position of women within heterosexual power relations, thisactivity begins to acquire a whole different meaning. Indeed in thesituation in which many women find themselves, escape would seemto be a rather rational strategy. Radway says:

When asked why they read romances, the women interviewedoverwhelmingly cite escape or relaxation as their goal. They usethe word escape however, both literally and figuratively. On theone hand, they valued their romances highly because the act ofreading them literally draws the women away from their presentsurroundings. Because they must produce the meaning of thestory by attending closely to the words on the page, they findthat their attention is withdrawn from the concerns that plaguethem in reality. One woman remarked, with a note of triumph inher voice, My body may be in that room, but Im not. Thesewomen see their romance reading as a legitimate way of denyinga present reality that occasionally becomes too hard to bear.41

The women I interviewed often displayed guilt when talking about theirpleasures in watching romance or soap opera material on television.


Radways research, because it was concerned with the reading ofbooks rather than the viewing of television, brought to light anotherdimension of the problem. This is to do with the ways in which,because the reading of books has a generally higher cultural status thanthe viewing of television, there is a way in which for women in thisposition reading romance fiction in book form is a more acceptableand legitimate activity than viewing the same kind of material ontelevision. As Radway puts it, This particular means of escape isbetter than television viewing for these women, because the culturalvalue attached to books permits them to overcome the guilt they feelabout avoiding their responsibilities. They believe that reading of anykind is, by nature, educational. They insist accordingly that they alsoread to learn.42 The learning to which they refer is rather similar tothe kind of social learning which James Lull identified as one of thefunctions of television viewing. In Radways previous article sheprovides this formulation: Although the books are works of fiction, thewomen use them as primers about the world. The romance for them isa kind of encyclopaedia and reading a process of education.43

Again, clear parallels can be drawn here between the commentswhich Radways respondents make on what they feel they learn abouthuman relations from reading romance fiction and the way in whichmy own respondents talk about watching soap operas as an activitywhich is very closely related to their concerns in their own lives withfamily problems, the progress and difficulty of certain relationshipsand so on. This perspective dates back originally to the work ofLazarsfeld and Hertzog in the 1940s, who researched the response tosoap operas on the part of different women. Lull notes that Lazarsfeldand Hertzogs early studies of soap operas demonstrated that thesemelodramas provide practical suggestions for social interaction whichare widely imitated by audience members these imitations may beuseful in solving family problems which bear resemblance todifficulties resolved in television dramas. At the very least, televisionprovides an abundance of role models which audience members findsocially useful.44

These two ways of looking at womens viewing or reading of lowstatus soap opera or romance material are particularly instructive. Atits crudest, the woman viewer of Crossroads is a familiar object ofscorn in contemporary humour. This scornful attitude is alsodisplayed by several of the husbands I interviewed, who denigratetheir wives activities in watching this kind of material precisely asescapisman indulgence in fantasy which is an improper activity foran adult and, indeed, perhaps even an irresponsible activity. Certainlyit is an activity which is held to have very low status. However, if weunderstand the functions of romance or soap opera viewing as part of a


strategy of escapism, which can be seen to be very rational given theposition in which many women find themselves and, further, if weunderstand the ways in which many women use the viewing of thesetypes of material in order to learn more about the problems of sociallife and relationships, one can see that this activity is itself worthy ofsomething more than scorn.

Radways work clearly has parallels with that of other commentatorson womens viewing habits, such as Tania Modleski,45 DorothyHobson46 and Charlotte Brunsdon,47 all of whom have attempted tounderstand more fully what it is that women are doing when theywatch fictional programmes, and why it is that they watch them in theway that they do, and with the degree of attentiveness which they giveto them. I can only hope that my own work will go some little way inadvancing these arguments further.


3Research development: from decoding

to viewing context

In this short section I wish to attempt to outline in more detail theways in which this research represents a continuation of my previouswork on the Nationwide project. This work has already been subject tosome debate.1 My own concerns in relation to my previous work arethreefold and the major problems I would identify are the following:first, the difficulties arising from the fact that the Nationwide audiencestudy was conducted by interviewing groups of people outside of theirhomesi.e., not in their natural domestic viewing context. Second,the problems arising from the fact that the Nationwide study perhapsallows too little space for the consideration of the contradictory natureof the decodings which the same person may make of different typesof programme material. Thirdly, the need which I would see forfurther refinement of the arguments concerning the relationshipbetween specific genres of material and particular sub-categories of theaudience.

Let us take these problems one by one, starting with the question ofthe viewing context. This is a relatively simple matter in so far as inthe Nationwide study I recruited groups of individuals for interview inthe context either of colleges in which they were studying, or in otherpublic locations where they came together, already constituted asgroups. While this approach had the obvious advantages of giving meease of access to groups of people who already functioned as groups,at the same time this strategy had the disadvantage that I was nottalking to people about television in the context in which theynormally watch it. The problem is that viewing television is donequite differently in the home as opposed to in public places. Indeed, inher article The Rules of Viewing Television in Public Places2 DafnaLemish goes some way towards accounting the very different ways inwhich television is watched outside the homewhether it is ahusband watching a football game leaning on a couch which is for salein a department store while his wife is shopping, or a woman who haslunch in a store cafeteria and watches her favourite soap opera on a setfor sale in a shop, or the situation of travellers watching a

news programme in the lobby in an airport. All these are quite differentcontexts for watching television, and the way in which it is viewed inthese contexts will be quite different from the way in which it isviewed in the home. As I have already indicated, my own interests arenow focused on the how of television watchingin the sense ofunderstanding how the process of television viewing is done as anactivity. This is to say that I would prioritise the understanding of theprocess of television viewing (the activity itself) over the understandingof particular responses to particular types of programme material (thelevel at which the Nationwide audience study is pitched). It is for thisreason that in this new research project the decision was taken tointerview families, as family groups, in their own homesso as to geta better understanding of the ways in which television is watched inits natural domestic context. I would wish to argue that this is thenecessary framework within which we must place our understandingof the particularity of individ

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