The 1980s saw an explosion in the use of the domestic video cassette recorder (VCR), arguably the most significant new form of home entertainment technology since television. In Video Playtime Ann Gray investigates what women themselves felt about the VCR, both in terms of the ways these entertainment facilities were used within their households, and what kinds of programmes and films they themselves particularly enjoyed. Ann Gray draws heavily on verbatim quotes from discussions to provide a rich description of different types of household micro-cultures and to give readers more direct access to the women themselves and the ways in which they accounted for their own experience. Video Playtime addresses questions of domestic technology as well as those of taste and cultural preference, particularly in relation to class, addressing the dynamics of power within existing social and cultural relations and thereby setting the analysis within a much wider social context.

Audience studies - a key area in media/cultural studies

A young boy is awake before his moms and sister. It’s too early to make a sound...but what’s that noise?! Two rumbling tummies need to be fed! Letting themselves into the kitchen, the boy and his cat finish their breakfast just in time to say “Good morning” when the rest of the family wakes up. The cadence of this adorable rhyming board book will delight readers young and old.

The cadence of this adorable rhyming board book will delight readers young and old. A young girl is getting ready for bed when her puppy tries to play. First Rex brings his ball over, but she ignores him. Then he crashes story time, but she still doesn’t give in! Finally, as a last resort, Rex steals her teddy and the chase is on! Under the table, over the chair, her daddies give chase and, at last, rescue the bear. Now it’s really time for bed! Goodnight, Rex.

(Faber Piano Adventures ). Excellent introduction to the best-known symphonic and operatic literature of the great composers. The selections have been chosen for their appealing melodies and rhythmic vitality. Includes: Turkish March (from The Ruins of Athens ) by Beethoven * Romance (from A Little Night Music ) by Mozart * The Trout (Die Forelle) by Schubert * Lullaby by Brahms * La Cinquantaine by Gabriel-Marie * Country Dance (Finale from Symphony No. 3, 'Eroica') by Beethoven * Finale (from Symphony No. 1) by Brahms * Finale (from Carnival of the Animals ) by Saint-Saens * The Elephant (from Carnival of the Animals ) by Saint-Saens * Sleeping Beauty Waltz by Tchaikovsky * Finale (from Symphony No. 5, From the New World ) by Dvorak * March Slav by Tchaikovsky.

Playtime with Sophie is a delightful book about best-selling teether, Sophie the Giraffe. Inside is a charming little story about playtime at Sophie's house, featuring Sophie and her five special friends. Sophie plays with each friend in turn, bouncing a ball, riding in a train, sailing a boat, stacking bricks, and tapping a xylophone. Finally, Sophie blows bubbles, and everyone plays together. This DK Sophie la Girafe book is perfect for reading to a baby or a toddler.

Television has never been exclusive to the home. In Television at Work, Kit Hughes explores the forgotten history of how U.S. workplaces used television to secure industrial efficiency, support corporate expansion, and manage the hearts, minds, and bodies of twentieth century workers. Challenging our longest-held understandings of the medium, Hughes positions television at the heart of a post-Fordist reconfiguration of the American workplace revolving around dehumanized technological systems. Among other things, business and industry built private television networks to distribute programming, created complex CCTV data retrieval systems, encouraged the use of videotape for worker self-evaluation, used video cassettes for training distributed workforces, and wired cantinas for employee entertainment. In uncovering industrial television as a prolific sphere of media practice, Television at Work reveals how labor arrangements and information architectures shaped by these uses of television were foundational to the rise of the digitally mediated corporation and to a globalizing economy.