An Unstructured Introduction to an Amorphous Area
While most of the research dealing with the mass media generally, and television in particular, has focused on direct or mediated learning from communications messages--from factual materials as such, or lessons and generalizations derived from fictional presentations--one of the more salient facts of media consumption has been overlooked. Most of the deliberate exposure of most people to TV is motivated less to seek information, as such, but in search of something generally referred to as "entertainment." This cardinal fact is reflected with great consistency in audience ratings in the United States, in similar data from other countries, and in the perennial popularity of certain American and British programs across diverse foreign cultures. It is also reflected in some of the data contained in the "uses and gratifications" type of research wherein respondents are asked to reflect on why they use the medium. Although there is reason to suspect some of the data collected in the latter type of research--if anything they probably inflate the actual incidence of active information seeking and deflate the entertainment function--there is still abundant support for a significant incentive to be "entertained."

There has, nevertheless, been very little research on the entertainment functions of the media--indeed, a paucity of research on the significance of entertainment in everyday life, quite apart from the media per se. It is one of those phenomena that is around us all the time, a kind of activity shared by most individuals on almost a universal basis, and yet it continues to be neglected. Scholars of television, particularly, avoid this phenomenon at their own peril--in terms of understanding why so many people use television to such a great extent and what some of the main influences of the medium are on vast numbers of individuals.

This volume is an indirect product of the activities of the Committee on Television and Social Behavior of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). Although its main activities were directed elsewhere, the Committee recognized fairly early in its deliberations that among the neglected items on the communication research agenda was the great appeal of the public media in general and television in particular as means of disseminating entertainment fare on a broad basis. In focusing on TV as a socializing device forging attitudes and behavior patterns (see, for example, the companion volume edited by Withey and Abeles, 1980), the Committee did not completely forget the entertainment content of the medium, but the nature and form of that content, its apparent appeal, its antecedents and its consequences--in short, the entertainment function of television --was hardly touched on.

The Committee collectively realized that if we are to more fully understand and appreciate the television medium and its functions in our contemporary society, a more systematic study of its role as a popular entertainment device is called for. Indeed, one wonders how it has been so neglected for so long, especially considering how dominant sheer entertainment is on television and that, one way or another, the effect of television has probably been among the most researched social science phenomena to date. The time had clearly come, to use the phrase of Elihu Katz ( 1977), "to take entertainment seriously."

It is not the practice of the SSRC to undertake and conduct research. Rather, its main role is as a mediator, initiator, and broker. It functions through its constituent committees to foster and promote established and potential new areas of social research, primarily by assembling involved scholars with mutual interests at conferences and through the publication of appropriate books--conference reports, research compendia, theoretical speculations, etc.--for dissemination to the social research community at large. That was the pattern followed in the present case as well. The Committee first convened a small conference of interested researchers. This volume is a direct development of that conference.

BACKGROUND TO THE CONFERENCE
As with most other such gatherings, there were two issues that had to be addressed early in our planning for the conference: an appropriate agenda and who to invite. Clearly the two are not independent. Participation
Regarding the composition, we opted for a relatively small group made up primarily of social psychologists who had demonstrated an interest in and/or had conducted research on some aspect of entertainment in the media. We had earlier discussed the desirability of a more broadly based collection of scholars who would address the issue of entertainment from the perspectives of a wider variety of disciplines. However, the judgment was that a more narrowly focused collectivity of psychologists and sociologists--reflecting the composition of the SSRC Committee and, in fact, substantially overlapping with it--was more appropriate for such an initial undertaking. As is often the case with such events, not everyone invited could attend--most unfortunately, perhaps the two foremost workers in this fledgling area were prohibited from participating due to illness--and we ended up with a group of 14 participants almost equally divided between those invited from the outside and Committee members...