Permanence and discontinuity in working-class households’ relationship to television

Résumé 0

After having identified three elements characterizing the traditional relationship to television within the working classes, this article looks at continuity and change since the period spanning the sixties, seventies and eighties. It draws primarily on data from a set of monographs on television viewers, consisting of long and repeated interviews with members of working-class households. Two conclusions emerge. First, certain aspects of the relationship to television are reproduced: high levels of viewing time and diversity of programmes viewed still characterize working-class households, albeit in a variable way, depending on educational and financial resources. At the same time, there is also change, related primarily to gender and to family uses of television. Not only is television no longer essentially owned by men, it also no longer appears to be destined for an almost exclusively collective use.