Liveness, Hyper-stlye, and the Tube.

ONE DIFFICULTY of television studies is that even the best critical work can quickly seem dated, at least in terms of the programs discussed and the examples utilized. (Our fascination today with ER will likely go the way of Magnum, PI or Dallas.) Some of the books below were important to the development of the field, and their insights and critical methods may require some extrapolation to apply them today. But all broke new ground, and serve as models of eye-opening critical thinking about popular culture.

E. Ann Kaplan, editor, Regarding Television (University Publications of America, 1983) Part of a series of books published by the .American Film Institute, Kaplan's anthology was the only one devoted to TV. Jane Feuer's insightful essay on liveness," which builds on Stephen Heath and Gillian Skirrow's work on British TV, first appeared here.

Neil Postman. Amusing Ourselves to Death (Penguin, 1985)-One of the most prominent detractors of television, Postman offers an analysis of the tube that is teleological and ultimately self-defeating (i.e., the very technology of television ensures that it can only be nonsensical). But his notion that TV culture may represent an epistemological shift from print-based knowledge to television-derived knowledge is provocative and useful.

Robert Allen, editor, Channels of Discourse, Reassembled (University of North Carolina Press, 1992) The second edition of this exceptional anthology ot essays from some of television theory's brightest lights. It is not only an impressive survey of approaches to studying TV but also one of the best and most accessible introductions to post-structuralist theory.

Horace Newcomb, editor, Television: The Critical View (Oxford University Press, 1994) This is already the fifth edition of Newcomb's anthology, which covers a broad range of interdisciplinary approaches, incorporates recentwork, and is aimed at a wide audience.

John Caldwell, Televisuality (Rutgers University Press, 1995)- This detailed, sometimes daunting, study of contemporary TV suggests some of the causes and effects of today's hyper-stylized television aesthetics. It is one of the first important studies of TV in the era of cable-channel proliferation and digital technologies.

Williams