Subtitle: Television and Commercial Culture
Author: Mike Budd, Steve Craig, and Clay Steinman
Subject: Media Studies/Cultural Studies/Environmental Studies
Paperback ISBN 0-8135-2592-6
Pages: 280 pp., 88 b&w images, 11 tables
Description: A revealing study of the consequences of television's power over our habits of material consumption and television's ultimate impact on the environment.

Foreword by George Gerbner

"The authors encourage individuals to turn off television, tune out the 'imaginary world of TV-land," stop consuming, and actively work to sustain the environment."-Sally J. McMillan, University of Tennessee

"Consuming Environments is an excellent introduction to the issue of commercial broadcasting, the peculiar culture it generates, and the political and environmental problems to which it contributes."

-Robert W. McChesney, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"Budd, Craig, and Steinman reach across the conceptual and methodological gulf between 'cultural studies' and 'political economy' to address the impact of commercialized television on our cultural and physical environments, highlighting the interconnectedness of the ostensibly discrete categories of culture, nature, and economics. . . . But they do not stop there--they foreground the social movements seeking to engage and ameliorate the influence of corporate commercialism. Read this book. Ask your friends to read this book. It's important."

-Jackie Byars, Wayne State University

"This important book skillfully draws readers' attention to what goes on 'behind' the TV set as well as in front of it."

-Ramona Curry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Whether we love it, hate it, or use it just to pass the time, most adults in the United States are watching more television than ever, up to four hours a day by some estimates. Our devotion to commercial television gives it unprecedented power in our lives.

Advertisers and television executives want us to spend as much time as we can in front of our sets, for it is access to our brains that they buy and sell. Yet the most important effect of television may be one that no one intends-accelerated destruction of the natural environment.

Consuming Environments explores how, with its portrayals of a world of simulated abundance, television has nurtured a culture of consumerism and overconsumption. The average person in the U.S. consumes more than twice the grain and ten times the oil of a citizen of Brazil or Indonesia. And people in less industrialized countries suffer while their resources are commandeered to support comfortable lifestyles in richer nations.

Using detailed examples illustrated with images from actual commercials, news broadcasts, and television shows, the authors demonstrate how ads and programs are put together in complex ways to manipulate viewers, and they offer specific ways to counteract the effects of TV and overconsumption's assault on the environment.

Mike Budd is a professor of communication and the director of the film and video program at Florida Atlantic University. He is editor of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Steve Craig is a professor and the chair of the department of radio, television, and film at the University of North Texas. He is editor of Men, Masculinity, and the Media. Clay Steinman is a professor and the chair of communication studies at Macalester College.

Communications, Media, and Culture Series

George F. Custen, Series Editor