Stay Tuned: Listening to the Network Era
Since the 1950s, television flooded the American soundscape with not just pictures but sounds, a constant aural stream infiltrating domestic life. In Stay Tuned, Patrick Sullivan treats network-era television sound not as background noise or auxiliary signal but as a formative texture of aesthetic life in postwar America. He theorizes how television’s sonic forms—asynchronous audiovisuals, noises, affective rhythms, what he collectively terms “network aurality”—trouble traditional aesthetic theory. Stay Tuned takes up critiques of television sound and repurposes them as evidence of a deeper philosophical discomfort: namely, that television sound does something to aesthetic categories that they weren’t built to handle. From the laugh track to the cartoon “boinks,” from noises to the jingle, Sullivan reads television sounds not as cultural detritus but as formal interventions—forcing a redefinition of what aesthetics means when form is mass-produced, commercial, and built for syndication. What emerges is not just a new theory and history of television sound, but a reimagined account of aesthetic experience itself—expanded, recalibrated, and a little wacky.

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Stay Tuned: Listening to the Network Era
Since the 1950s, television flooded the American soundscape with not just pictures but sounds, a constant aural stream infiltrating domestic life. In Stay Tuned, Patrick Sullivan treats network-era television sound not as background noise or auxiliary signal but as a formative texture of aesthetic life in postwar America. He theorizes how television’s sonic forms—asynchronous audiovisuals, noises, affective rhythms, what he collectively terms “network aurality”—trouble traditional aesthetic theory. Stay Tuned takes up critiques of television sound and repurposes them as evidence of a deeper philosophical discomfort: namely, that television sound does something to aesthetic categories that they weren’t built to handle. From the laugh track to the cartoon “boinks,” from noises to the jingle, Sullivan reads television sounds not as cultural detritus but as formal interventions—forcing a redefinition of what aesthetics means when form is mass-produced, commercial, and built for syndication. What emerges is not just a new theory and history of television sound, but a reimagined account of aesthetic experience itself—expanded, recalibrated, and a little wacky.

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Stay Tuned: Listening to the Network Era

Stay Tuned: Listening to the Network Era

by Patrick Sullivan
Stay Tuned: Listening to the Network Era
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Stay Tuned: Listening to the Network Era

Stay Tuned: Listening to the Network Era

by Patrick Sullivan

Overview

Since the 1950s, television flooded the American soundscape with not just pictures but sounds, a constant aural stream infiltrating domestic life. In Stay Tuned, Patrick Sullivan treats network-era television sound not as background noise or auxiliary signal but as a formative texture of aesthetic life in postwar America. He theorizes how television’s sonic forms—asynchronous audiovisuals, noises, affective rhythms, what he collectively terms “network aurality”—trouble traditional aesthetic theory. Stay Tuned takes up critiques of television sound and repurposes them as evidence of a deeper philosophical discomfort: namely, that television sound does something to aesthetic categories that they weren’t built to handle. From the laugh track to the cartoon “boinks,” from noises to the jingle, Sullivan reads television sounds not as cultural detritus but as formal interventions—forcing a redefinition of what aesthetics means when form is mass-produced, commercial, and built for syndication. What emerges is not just a new theory and history of television sound, but a reimagined account of aesthetic experience itself—expanded, recalibrated, and a little wacky.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781978842946
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Publication date: 06/09/2026
Pages: 168
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range: 16 - 18 Years

About the Author

PATRICK SULLIVAN is an assistant professor of performance and visual studies at Texas A&M University.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Trouble with Television Sound
Television’s Sonic Style
1: Hanna-Barbera’s Wacky Cacophony
The Jingle
2: Dark Shadows’ Noises
The Announcer’s Talk
3: Laughter’s Labor
Conclusion: The Formulaic     
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

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