Accounting for viewing styles. Viewers' negotiation with TV as a cultural offering

Summary: This article, based on observations from interviews, focuses on viewer/television relationships in the making, rather than on existing ones or on televiewers as such. These relationships represent the different forms of negotiation with television as a cultural offering. Taking as his departure point television's lack of legitimacy, expressed by most viewers in the form of a denial, the author defines four styles of relationship. These are represented as combinations of the poles of two opposite axes - those of social negotiation and of emotional investment. He concludes with a