INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

Our view of the world is arguably influenced more by the media than our personal experience. We rely to a large extent on both the broadcast and printed media as communicators of politics, of culture and of ‘information’, and, as such, the media exercise great power in our lives.

Though both the ‘popular’ and ‘quality’ press continue to exert influence, increasingly the broadcast media of radio and especially television have come to the fore. As long ago as 1967, it could be seen that ‘television can be shown to stand out among mass media in its influence on our lives’ (Blumler and Madge 1967: 5) while thirty years later television was said to have become ‘the defining medium of the age’ (Herman and McChesney 1997: 2). While technological and commercial developments continue to change our viewing habits, there is little doubt that television viewing remains the central media experience across the globe. There is a real sense in which some combination of ‘reality TV’ and live news feeds has truly come to represent reality for many viewers. With this in mind, it is both inevitable and proper that the focus of a study of media regulation should be pre-eminently on television, though, as will become apparent, even television exists in an increasingly multimedia and cross-media environment.