Raymond Williams: Television: Technology and Cultural Form (1974–)

“Twenty-first century TV offers an apparently endless stream of images, unfolding at high speed. We no longer watch individual programs but flick from channel to channel, absorbing a continuous flow of news, game shows, comedy, drama, movies, advertising and trailers. Television: Technology and Cultural Form was first published in 1974, long before the dawn of multi-channel TV, or the reality and celebrity shows that now pack the schedules. Yet Williams’ analysis of television’s history, its institutions, programs and practices, and its future prospects, remains remarkably prescient. TV offers an apparently endless engagement with a flood of Williams stresses the importance of technology in shaping the cultural form of television, while always resisting the determinism of Marshall McLuhan’s dictum that “the medium is the message”. If the medium really is the message, Williams asks, what is left for us to do or say? Williams argues that, on the contrary, we as viewers have the power to disturb, disrupt and to distract the otherwise cold logic of history and technology – not just because television is part of the fabric of our daily lives, but because new technologies continue to offer opportunities, momentarily outside the sway of transnational corporations or the grasp of media moguls, for new forms of self and political expression.”

First published by Fontana, London, 1974

Edited by Ederyn Williams
With a New Preface by Roger Silverstone
Publisher Routledge, 2003
ISBN 0415314569, 9780415314565
xvii+172 pages

Keywords and phrases
KQED, Fihn, Anacin, telegraphy, technological determinism, satellite television, Britain, Tony Hancock, Sesame Street, cable television, music-hall, Cathy Come Home, Masterpiece Theatre, analysis of flow, five channels, dumbshow, privatised, Golden Gate Bridge, Lord Lambton

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2015-7-10)