Popularizing Japanese TV

<p>Over the past years the view has emerged that Japanese TV is dominated by an infotainment mode of discourse. The book extends this view detailing and interpreting the cultural economic and emotional dimensions of this communication phenomenon from an ethnographic perspective. It examines the complex ways in which infotainment works in an advanced capitalist society. As such this is more than a book about Japan; it is a work that fits within media ethnography and cultural studies and appeals to readers interested in the question of how television at the heart of the global media stream successfully turns into a persuasive intimate and powerful member of a televisual audience-family through carefully engineered televisual discourses linguistic/non-linguistic component audiovisual strategies and economic and cultural elements.</p><p></p><p>Drawing on ethnographic observations in TV stations in two major cities Sendai and Tokyo the book reveals several essential components embedded within infotainment discourse. Thus this book not only provides a panoramic picture of a core phenomenon in Japanese broadcasting since the 2000s but also discusses how both cultural discourses and economic considerations influence contemporary television broadcasting.</p>