Television as New Media: Post-Network Reception Practices and the Splintering of the Mass Audience.

The proliferation of original programming on cable networks and the emergence of digital technologies has led many observers to claim that contemporary American television is in the midst of its third “golden age” (the first two are associated with the 1950s and 1980s, respectively). Yet, simultaneously, the medium increasingly comes to resemble other forms of new media as audiences become more fragmented and more variable. This dissertation employs critical audience analysis to address the ways in which orientations to post-network era television vary within the formerly mass audience of the American middle-class.