Victoria E. Johnson. Heartland TV: Prime Time Television and the Struggle for U.S. Indentity. New York: New York University Press, 2008. 262 pages.

Abstract

Since its beginning in the 1970s, the field of Television Studies has often struggled to distinguish itself amongst older and more prestigious fields of humanistic research. Leading research universities have provided it with little institutional support or scholarly attention, and too often it has been relegated to the back offices of English or Cinema Studies departments. To some degree the poor regard given Television Studies is the fields own fault: its textual objects have tended either to be obscure or crassly popular, its approach to audiences condescending or overly celebratory, and its methodology a contradictory mix of MBA-style industrial research and progressive, leftwing politics. Indeed, it is often difficult to place the project of television studies, which is absent the kind of claims for formal distinction (as with the literary or the cinematic) that serve as the foundation for English or Cinema Studies.