本書對戲劇、電影、廣播和電視等各種類型美國娛樂業的受眾進行瞭全麵深刻的考察和分析。對我國當前文化産業的從業人員和文化研究者具有極強的啓發意義。理查德·布茨在書中為我們提供瞭全麵的曆史和精良的分析，他用優秀的傳統精巧打造瞭這部勘查史。

本書目的旨在提供一個受眾的曆史，尤其是通過比較年代較早的爭鳴狀況來揭示20世紀爭鳴狀況的曆史。民眾或學者對受眾的討論長期以來缺乏一個曆史的語境。例如，對看電視的關注很難上溯到對聽廣播或看電影的思考，更不用說聯係到流行於19世紀的娛樂方式，如：情節劇、烏臉戲、匯藝秀等。而作為當今論爭核心的那些議題曾經被翻來覆去地倒騰過，有時名目相同，有時花樣翻新。作者希望本書能為有關中國和亞洲娛樂觀眾的研究以及比較研究提供藉鑒。

(Ph.D. Rutgers University) teaches in the areas of Media, Culture Studies and Social Psychology. He has served as chairperson of the Department of Sociology and president of the Rider AAUP. He was 2008 Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Italy and a recipient of the Iorio Scholarly Achievement Award. He authored The Citizen Audience: Crowds, Publics and Individuals (Routledge, 2007) and The Making of American Audiences from Stage to Television, 1750-1990 (Cambridge University Press, 2000), which received the American Culture Association Cawelti Prize and the International Communication Association’s Best Book Award for 2000-2001. He is editor of Media and Public Spheres (Palgrave, 2007), and For Fun and Profit: The Transformation of Leisure into Consumption (Temple University Press, 1990); and has published numerous articles in American studies, sociology, history and communication journals. He is a member of the advisory boards of Popular Communication, a journal of the International Communication Association, and Particip@tions, an on-line journal of audience research. He is currently writing a global history of screen culture, a history of representations of manual labor and laborers in Twentieth-Century American culture, and an introduction to sociology textbook.