The last chapter considered how television functions in the everyday or personal domain – how we feel guilty for watching too much TV, and yet keep watching it – how we sometimes have it in the background, what Gauntlett and Hill refer to as ‘electronic wallpaper’ (1999: 112) – how at other times it is seen as a friend or source of companionship. The last chapter also examined the ways in which this personalised medium is changing; how it is increasingly found in the public sphere and how viewers are viewing ‘irrationally’ with the invention of hand-held televisions, which invites questions regarding how these personalised TVs will help to further negotiate the individualised meanings we take from the screen.

We are in what has been referred to as ‘TV3’, which covers the period post-1995. As Nelson argues, TV3 ‘marks a new era hailing the triumph of digital-satellite capacity to distribute transnationally, bypassing national distribution and, in some instances, regulatory controls’ (2007: 8; see also Creeber and Hills 2007). This leads to questions, rehearsed before, about how one culture is received and understood in another. It also raises questions about how advanced capitalism affects viewing. As Nelson points out, ‘[i]n Western culture, the increasing affluence of consumer individualism has, for good or ill, promoted immediate over deferred gratifications and the pleasures of excess’ (2007: 168-9).