Split Signals Television and Politics in the Soviet Union - Communication and Society

In television terminology, broadcast signals are split when they are divided and sent to two or more locations. The title of this book refers in part to the fact that the Soviet Union is now sending out video signals to a huge area - covering eleven time zones - and in part to the effects of the television revolution in the Soviet Union, with a rather ambiguous message being sent by the widespread and changing use of the medium. Television, Mickiewicz argues, has created the first mass public in Soviet history, and is replacing other means the Soviet leaders use to inform and indoctrinate. Indeed, the rationale of the institution of the agitator depended precisely on the lack of a truly mass medium; television has effectively put the huge corps of agitators out of business. Even since before Gorbachev, television was having a revolutionizing effect, and now with glasnost, Soviet television is coming to resemble our own - the look of the programming has become more contemporary, there is a marked willingness to report on previously off-bounds subjects and a new openess to multiple points of view and on-air debate.