A Companion to Television is a magisterial collection of original essays that chart the history of television from its inception to the present day. Over thirty leading scholars across the humanities and social sciences look at television scholarship as it responded to technological, institutional, and aesthetic changes around the world.

The essays cover a myriad of topics and theories that have led to television’s current incarnation, and predict its likely future. From technology and aesthetics, television’s relationship to the state, televisual commerce, texts, representation, genre, internationalism, and audience reception and effects, A Companion to Television is an invaluable reference for understanding the significance of television in the modern and postmodern world.