Introduction: Television in the Afternoon

Abstract

Rachel Moseley is Associate Professor in Film andKeywords: address, afternoon, everyday, housewife, schedule, women These days it seems retrograde to think about television through the organisation of the schedule, despite the fact that the industry still works hard to secure it, and that viewing figures are nurtured through prime scheduling space. As television scholars, we have become much more interested in the way that television has been liberated from time and space as it has been converted to digital media to be downloaded to various devices, avoiding the television set altogether. This is despite evidence from viewers' use of social media and programmes like Gogglebox (2013-present) which insist on the significance of co-presence and the schedule i . Yet at the centre of traditional arguments about the specificity of television has been its particular relationship to spatio-temporal arrangements: the domestic space of consumption and its quotidian rhythms. As Brunsdon has argued, the configurations of 'woman', and more specifically 'the housewife', have been central to that narrative, and it has been central to the feminist research agenda on soap opera ii . However, we have rarely reflected on the shifting status of those definitions throughout broadcast history or their relationship to other genres. In this special issue, we take the afternoon as a specific scheduling slot through which there has been, and continues to be, a deliberate and shifting address to women at home. This allows a particular purchase on the historically struggledover category of woman and the related, often contradictory, discourses of feminism and femininity. Importantly, this special issue of Critical Studies in Television also makes a case for historical television research to look back at programming rendered invisible by the turn MOSELEY, WHEATLEY AND WOOD: 3 away from the everyday and the ordinary and towards the 'high end', 'quality' content that thrives in the broader digital environment.'Daytime' television has not really been noted for its critical acclaim, relying mostly on a diet of soap opera, magazine programmes, quiz shows and talk shows, as well as news, sport, and schools' programming. 'Daytime' is a remarkably broad portmanteau term for a large portion of the broadcast schedule. Despite the shifts towards personalised viewing arrangements, and the consequent side-lining of issues related to scheduling, 'daytime' has

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