Viewers Like You: How Public TV Failed the People

by Laurie Oullette

Overview

How "public" is public television if only a small percentage of the American people tune in on a regular basis? When public television addresses "viewers like you," just who are you? Despite the current of frustration with commercial television that runs through American life, most TV viewers bypass the redemptive "oasis of the wasteland" represented by PBS and turn to the sitcoms, soap operas, music videos, game shows, weekly dramas, and popular news programs produced by the culture industries. Viewers Like You? traces the history of public broadcasting in the United States, questions its priorities, and argues that public TV's tendency to reject popular culture has undermined its capacity to serve the people it claims to represent. Drawing from archival research and cultural theory, the book shows that public television's perception of what the public needs is constrained by unquestioned cultural assumptions rooted in the politics of class, gender, and race.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231529310
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	07/24/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
Lexile:	1650L (what's this?)
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Laurie Ouellette is assistant professor of media studies at Queens College, City University of New York. She has written for the Utne Reader, The Independent Film and Video Monthly, Cultural Studies, and Television and New Media, among other publications

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Cultural Contradictions of Public Television;

Oasis of the Vast Wasteland;
The Quest to Cultivate;
TV Viewing as Good Citizenship;
Something for Everyone;
Radicalizing Middle America;
Epilogue: Public Television, Popularity, and Cultural Justice;

What People are Saying About This

Justin Lewis

Laurie Ouellette has written a classic that will breathe fresh air into the way we understand television and popular culture. This smart, lucid, and well-researched book cuts right through the current debates about television in the United States, exposing the limits of much of the traditional advocacy of public television as well as the arguments of free-market critics. With great skill and verve, Ouellette's historical analysis forces us to address the future, presenting us with a vision of public television that embraces rather than eschews the popular. The book's scope and originality makes it compulsory reading for everyone from hard-headed policy analysts to students of media and cultural studies.

— Justin Lewis, professor of communication and cultural industries, Cardiff University

Toby Miller

Ouellette brings a fresh perspective to bear on the matter. When added to her extraordinary archival research and elegant interlacing of theory and history, the result is a landmark in cultural studies. Hurrah!

— Toby Miller, professor of cinema studies, NYU

Pat Aufderheide

A powerful recasting of the fundamental issues in public broadcasting, this important book analyzes public television's failed promise in a way that allows us to imagine a more successful future.... An excellent model for research on reception and popular culture generally.

Pat Aufderheide

A powerful recasting of the fundamental issues in public broadcasting, this important book analyzes public television's failed promise in a way that allows us to imagine a more successful future.... An excellent model for research on reception and popular culture generally.

— Pat Aufderheide, professor and director, Center for Social Media, American University

Editorial Reviews

Conservatives have branded public television as elitist, while liberals decry its dependence on corporate sponsorship. As with television itself, however, the issues are rarely black and white. Seasoned writer/ producer Smith and Ouellette (media studies, Rutgers) agree that public TV has failed miserably, but they disagree on just what it has failed to do. Ouellette sees in public broadcasting the potential to correct social injustice. PBS, she argues, has historically projected the views of the dominant (white, male) culture, while minorities, women, and blue-collar workers have been either ignored entirely or depicted as humorous or pitiable. She believes that public TV should embrace mass culture rather than trying to rise above it. Her ideas, though intriguing, are frequently obscured by social science jargon ("The history of KTCA problematizes geographic essentialism"), making the book appropriate for academic libraries. A refugee from the world of public broadcasting, Smith sees public TV as an art form whose potential has been repeatedly squelched by lawmakers and business executives. In sharp contrast to Ouellette's pleas for cultural sensitivity, Smith cites political correctness as a major obstacle to innovative programming. The authors' divergent views are best illustrated by their attitudes about the early-1970s program The Great American Dream Machine: Ouellette complains that the show poked fun at "the lowly, feminized masses," while Smith praises the show's "verve, style and originality" and intimates that it was dropped because of its controversial content. Smith envisions a national production center that would develop programs with backing from a national trust fund, unconstrained by government oversight. Smith's opinionated rant is more fun to read than Ouellette's work, but too much of the text has only marginal relevance to his thesis. The extraneous diatribes against affirmative action, local school boards, etc., make this an optional purchase for public libraries, though it may be appropriate for communications collections.-Susan M. Colowick, North Olympic Lib. Syst., Port Angeles, WA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Thought-provoking.

Booklist

An academic, thoroughly researched cultural studies analysis of PBS.

Columbia Journalism Review - Lawrence K. Grossman

An academic, thoroughly researched cultural studies analysis of PBS.

— Lawrence K. Grossman

Columbia Journalism Review