4. The Uses and Meanings of Television History Question: Nick at Nite and TVLand have given the general public a highly selective and particular sense of what counts as "our television heritage." What about television scholars? What counts as television history? What should count? Histories of corporate and institutional decision making? Histories of audience reception? Histories of representations? Comparative histories of national and State approaches to the medium? Histories of regulation? Histories of technological change? Why do television history? How does our field, so often focused on the present state of the medium, its audiences, institutions, and regulatory climate, gain from various kinds of television history? What might television industry practitioners (current ones and the future ones we may be educating right now) gain from the histories we produce? |