Mature audiences
Subtitle: television in the lives of elders
By: Karen E. Riggs.
Series: Communications, media and culture
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: New Brunswick, N.J
Language: eng
Number of pages: 197
Subjects: Television and older people -- United States; Mass media and older people -- United States; Older people -- United States -- Psychology; Older people -- Communication -- United States
Description: In Mature Audiences, Karen Riggs challenges traditional ideas about older viewers as passive, vulnerable audiences for television. She tells the stories of seventy elder Americans who have worked television into their lives in specific and practical ways.

In particular, Riggs studies older women fans of Murder, She Wrote, the impact of news and public affairs programming in an affluent retirement community, the efforts of several older African Americans to produce and telecast their own public-access shows, and the role of television in the daily lives of minority elders, including gays, American Indians, and immigrants from Russia and Laos.

Although television's own images of the elderly are nearly nonexistent or frequently negative, this collection of interviews provides a portrait of viewers who are often deliberate, thoughtful, and seasoned in their responses to questions about the role of television in their daily lives.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 177-190) and index.