Split signals : television and politics in the Soviet Union

Bibliographic Information

Split signals : television and politics in the Soviet Union

Ellen Mickiewicz

(Communication and society)

Oxford University Press, 1988

  • pbk.

Available at  / 25 libraries

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Note

Bibliography: p. 227-263

Includes index

Description and Table of Contents

Volume

ISBN 9780195054637

Description

In television terminology, broadcast signals are split when they are divided and sent to two or more locations. The title of this book refers in part to the fact that the Soviet Union is now sending out video signals to a huge area - covering eleven time zones - and in part to the effects of the television revolution in the Soviet Union, with a rather ambiguous message being sent by the widespread and changing use of the medium. Television, Mickiewicz argues, has created the first mass public in Soviet history, and is replacing other means the Soviet leaders use to inform and indoctrinate. Indeed, the rationale of the institution of the agitator depended precisely on the lack of a truly mass medium; television has effectively put the huge corps of agitators out of business. Even since before Gorbachev, television was having a revolutionizing effect, and now with glasnost, Soviet television is coming to resemble our own - the look of the programming has become more contemporary, there is a marked willingness to report on previously off-bounds subjects and a new openess to multiple points of view and on-air debate.
Volume

pbk. ISBN 9780195063196

Description

Television has changed drastically in the Soviet Union over the last three decades. In 1960, only five percent of the population had access to TV, but now the viewing population has reached near total saturation. Today's main source of information in the USSR, television has become Mikhail Gorbachev's most powerful instrument for paving the way for major reform. Containing a wealth of interviews with major Soviet and American media figures and fascinating descriptions of Soviet TV shows, Ellen Mickiewicz's wide-ranging, vividly written volume compares over one hundred hours of Soviet and American television, covering programs broadcast during both the Chernenko and Gorbachev governments. Mickiewicz describes the enormous significance and popularity of news programs and discusses how Soviet journalists work in the United States. Offering a fascinating depiction of the world seen on Soviet TV, she also explores the changes in programming that have occurred as a result of glasnost.

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