Gitlin (1979), "Prime-time Ideology"

Gitlin (1979) argues that contemporary American mass media are one cohesive cultural system that promotes the reproduction of social relations. For Gitlin (1979), the study of texts must precede any study of how those texts impact the audience; before we study what a program does, Gitlin (1979) argues, we must examine what a program is.

1. Ideology is relayed through various features of American television. In turn, television programs register larger ideological structures and changes.

Importantly, Gitlin (1979) points out that ideology is not invented by the mass media. Instead, as Gitlin (1979) argues, the mass media repackages and channels ideologies that circulate though social elite circles, media industries, and social movements in general. As such, Gitlin (1979) argues that the most complete studies of media circulated hegemony should take into account both the ideologies involved in producing media and the ways these ideologies reach audiences.

2. Ideologies are structured into television culture in a variety of ways including format and formula, genre, setting and character type, slant, and solution.

3. Hegemony in liberal capitalism produces consent by being sensitive to audience desires and tastes.

The system of cultural hegemony is leaky, and never closed. It absorbs opposition into the structure. Hegemony is always changing in order to maintain dominance. 

Williams (1974), "Programming: Distribution and Flow"

1. Previous cultural communication forms were discrete. Meetings and plays, for example, have set beginnings and endings.

2. Television introduces fluidity into this process. Television programs are interspersed with advertisements and promos for other programs and films. These are all structured similarly, so that they flow into one another.

3. This creates a confusing structure in which communications flow into one another without boundaries and without regular intervals. Williams (1974) believed that this would contribute to restructuring of all cultural communication.

Newcomb and Hirsh (1983), "Television as a Cultural Forum"

1. Social scientific and aesthetic perspectives are incomplete

2. Television is a place where various issues are discussed from various perspectives

3. Television therefore can be a platform for imagining social change

Newcomb and Hirsch (1983) note that television had primarily been studied from two distinct perspectives: social scientific and aesthetic. They argue that the social scientific perspective was often reductive, since these studies attempted to simplify television's nuances in order to create a cleaner understanding of television's effects. While the aesthetic perspective attended to television's nuance, it ignored television's social and political influence. Therefore, Newcomb and Hirsch (1983) propose a perspective of television studies that sees television as a public forum.

Newcomb and Hirsch (1983) explicitly note that their concept of the television "forum" is not intended as a metaphor. Instead, they believe that television functions as a public space in which issues are hashed out from all perspectives. This happens through a conversation between producer and consumer. Producers often address social issues in television narratives. Consumers may then sympathize with one side or another of the issue. Newcomb and Hirsch (1983) use an example of women's rights issues on television, describing a narrative in which a woman is restricted from some activities due to gender. This narrative, they argue, that be presented in a way that encourages viewers to sympathize with her or against her. The audience, in turn, can read the program, consider its meaning and implications, and choose whether to sympathize with the woman in the narrative or against this position.

Newcomb and Hirsch (1983) argue that television presents narratives that allow viewers to explore public issues from a variety of perspectives. In doing so, television offers a forum for discussion of social change and growth.

Adorno (1954), "How to Look at Television"

Adorno's (1954) "How to Look at Television" bemoans what he sees as the standardization of dominant ideology across all forms of media.

1. As all types of media (Adorno cites jazz and the detective novel) are being produced by an increasingly narrow group of producers, ideologies are becoming standardized across all formats. Though some of these messages are not new (Adorno cites the subjugation of women, for example), in a context of media standardization, these messages become a priori arguments that must be acknowledged implicitly before media content become intelligible.

2. Since we are getting the same message from all of these different areas, the message gets woven all throughout culture. Therefore, we are less likely to see the message as a message at all.  Instead, it just becomes ingrained in our culture.

3. Adorno (1954) believed that this dominant ideology tamped down resistance and prevented consumers from protesting against unfair treatment.

Fiske (1987), Television Culture

Fiske's (1987) Television Culture is often noted as germinal text in the development of a television studies perspective (e.g. Gray and Lotz, 2012). Fiske (1987) is concerned with the ideological messages of television programming. Though Television Culture focuses most specifically on television programming, Fiske (1987) draws from the cultural studies tradition that puts media in a cycle of production. Therefore, Fiske (1987) understands television as a system of codes that the audience uses to navigate culture. This understanding of television leads Fiske (1987) to propose a three-part perspective on television studies.

An important contribution of Television Culture is Fiske's (1987) concept of television codes. For Fiske (1987), television's producers work to standardize the television program product in order to make their messages clear. This can happen at a narrative level, in which certain visual or aural messages have meaning based on cultural story-telling norms. For example, a woman in a black dress and pointy black hat may symbolize a witch for American audiences familiar with this common cultural depiction. Such imagery is standardized based on the circulation of this symbol in things like children's books, movies, Halloween costumes, and other television media. Television codes also include technological aspects like camera shots, lighting, and music cues. For example, the horror genre often employs swelling music just before a victim is attacked by a villain. This standardization across the genre communicates a preferred reading to viewers. As audiences grow more familiar with the genre, they are likely to understand that this technical cue points to the demise of the victim character. In order to maintain profitability, Fiske (1987) argues, television producers use and reuse this type of television code. The result is standardization across television programming. Fiske (1987) notes that television production is controlled by a relatively small segment of the population, and this group is likely to standardize television codes in a way that benefits their own ideological interests.

Though much of Television Culture focuses on television programming, Fiske (1987) also believed that the audience played an active role in consumption. The television audience does not have access to the same level of power and resources as television producers. Fiske (1987) therefore believed that the television audience struggled to make meanings within the codes offered to them by producers. To illustrate this idea, Fiske (1987) used de Certeau's concept of "making do." Fiske (1987) argued that television audiences used certain aspects of television codes to understand their roles in society, but that they also had the power to discard or contest ideas they did not find useful or acceptable. Television audiences could not make their own television media. Audiences therefore use television texts provided to cobble together meanings that they find acceptable.

Through Fiske's (1987) examination of television codes and audience readings of these codes, he propose three areas of study for television scholars. First, he emphasized the importance of the television text as a storytelling agent. He therefore saw television programs as an important focus for television studies. Second, Fiske (1987) believed that television codes were created through repetition across all television programming texts. Therefore, he encouraged television scholars to examine television texts as they related to one another. Finally, Fiske (1987) believed that the audience's readings of these texts were important to understanding their meaning in the culture. Fiske's (1987) concept of television studies therefore included a study of audience reception.

1. Television codes -- Industry has more resources

2. Industry in conversation with audience -- making do

3. Areas television studies should consider -- programs, programs' interaction with other media, audience reading practice

Gray and Lotz (2012), Television Studies

This book aims to concretize the television studies perspective. Other scholars have been using this perspective, and many even call themselves television studies scholars.  For Gray and Lotz (2012), though, the television studies perspective remains nebulous, primarily because it has yet to be cohesively defined.

Gray and Lotz (2012) book begins by tracing the historical trajectory of television studies. They attribute much of television studies' history to early social science approaches, now more often associated with a media effects perspective. Namely, Gray and Lotz (2012) argue that the social science perspective helped to legitimize the study of television as an important and meaningful medium. More obviously, Gray and Lotz (2012) attribute much of television studies development to cultural studies scholars. Cultural studies contributed things like a focus on historical, social, and economic context, an emphasis on the cyclical nature of television production, and a self-reflexive scholarly position.

Gray and Lotz (2012) divide television studies into four areas: programs, audiences, industries, and contexts. They note that research projects employing a television studies approach should consider at least two of these areas.

Gray and Lotz (2012) use the "programs" section to discuss television texts. They note that the study of programs is borrowed both from social science perspectives (including things like quantitative content analysis) and from humanities approaches like literary and semiotics studies.  Studies of programs usually involve more than a single television episode, and can even incorporate elements like the advertisements and promos that are interspersed in a television program's commercial breaks.

The "audiences" element of television studies originates from cultural studies' argument that audiences are not "cultural dupes." Drawing from scholars like Hall (1980) and Radway (1990?), the audience perspective Gray and Lotz (2012) describe emphasizes the television audiences' ability to read texts actively in a variety of ways.

Gray and Lotz (2012) use the term "industries" to describe studies of television production. This area is one of the more contentious aspects of television studies, as it includes some disagreement between the political economy approach and cultural studies perspectives. Political economists have accused cultural studies scholars of being too optimistic about audience activity and ignoring the power that industries have to determine how programming is shaped. On the other hand, cultural studies scholars have accused political economists of taking a deterministic perspective in which the industry determines audiences' use and understanding of texts. Gray and Lotz (2012) note that both of these perspectives are somewhat oversimplified. They suggest that the Critical Media Industry Studies (CMIS) approach proposed by Havens, Lotz, and Tinic (2012?) offers a more appropriate perspective for television studies, since it encourages scholars to place examinations of production processes in conversation with the resultant texts.

Finally, Gray and Lotz (2012) note that their "contexts" area is a wide umbrella that often unites their other three areas of study.  This area represents the importance of analyzing social, ideological, economic, and political climates that surround the production and consumption of television programs. Considerations under this umbrella include things like discussions of the historical period surrounding a particular program, examinations of television technology and the way in impacts the viewing experience, or even the influence of intertextual elements like promo clips and marketing materials on a viewers' reading of a television text.

Throughout the text, Gray and Lotz (2012) emphasize the importance of including at least two of these elements in conversation with one another. For Gray and Lotz (2012) a television studies perspective should be cognizant of the cycle of television production and consumption.