本书对戏剧、电影、广播和电视等各种类型美国娱乐业的受众进行了全面深刻的考察和分析。对我国当前文化产业的从业人员和文化研究者具有极强的启发意义。理查德·布茨在书中为我们提供了全面的历史和精良的分析，他用优秀的传统精巧打造了这部勘查史。

本书目的旨在提供一个受众的历史，尤其是通过比较年代较早的争鸣状况来揭示20世纪争鸣状况的历史。民众或学者对受众的讨论长期以来缺乏一个历史的语境。例如，对看电视的关注很难上溯到对听广播或看电影的思考，更不用说联系到流行于19世纪的娱乐方式，如：情节剧、乌脸戏、汇艺秀等。而作为当今论争核心的那些议题曾经被翻来覆去地倒腾过，有时名目相同，有时花样翻新。作者希望本书能为有关中国和亚洲娱乐观众的研究以及比较研究提供借鉴。

(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.