Communities of Reception: Television Esthetics and Locality in Midcentury America. Issue 1 (2nd January 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hutchison, Phillip J.
• Is Part Of: GeoHumanities. Volume 6:Issue 1(2020)
• Page Start: 106
• Page End: 121
• Publication Date: 2020-01-02
• Subjects: local television -- media rituals -- mediated geography -- placemaking -- television history; 当地电视台 -- 媒体仪式 -- 中介地理 -- 地方制造 -- 地方制造; construcción de lugar -- geografía mediada -- historia de la televisión -- rituales de los medios -- televisión local; Arts and geography -- Periodicals; Human geography -- Periodicals; 304.2
• DOI: 10.1080/2373566X.2019.1691465
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2373-566X

Abstract

Abstract : This historical study examines the cultural impact of local television communities in the United States from the 1950s through the 1970s. These signal-defined communities, although traditionally addressed in terms of government policy, are noteworthy for their synergistic esthetic and technological attributes. Theories of ritual illustrate how these factors enabled signal-defined television communities to structure and define local life throughout the United States during this era. Most notably, in ways that have been largely overlooked, early local television rituals situated cultural experience in time and space. The study fortifies its historical insights by engaging contemporary viewer testimonies about these programs. This ethnographic perspective illustrates how these rituals reflected virtual and material attributes that shaped audiences' perceptions of local geography and structured social memories that persist today. For these reasons, now-extinct local television programs remain very important to former audiences.