I HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE AND IT IS NOT HERE YET...; OR, ON BEING AMBITIOUS FOR AUDIENCE RESEARCH

`Audience research, after a promising period during which some crucial advances were made, seems to be in decline in several ways, yet its tasks remain as important as ever. This article, originally a presentation at the 2003 Versailles Conference on the Future of Audience Research, makes the case for expanding our vision of the field’s possibilities. To do this, it revisits some of the forgotten achievements of the Uses and Gratifications tradition, offers a critique of the dominant “Hall model” for conceiving media/audience relations, and outlines the key concept of an alternative approach: the concept of a “viewing strategy, ” which has been at the heart of the 2003–2004 international project on the reception of The Lord of the Rings. This essay is an elaborated version of an opening presentation made to the Versailles International Conference on the Future of Audience Research, 23–25 November 2003. It is not identical with that presentation for several reasons. First, that was a presentation, rather than a read-out paper, and one cannot “footnote ” a presentation. Second, the available technologies successively jinxed the presentation—meaning, among other things, that the quotes from interviews which I had intended to use became invisible, with consequences for some other parts. Third, and most important, conversations with colleagues afterwards led me to clarify or develop some points—thanks in particular to David Buckingham, David Morley, Milly Williamson, and Lyn Thomas for their comments. This essay was previously published in Comment sont reçues les oeuvres? Actualites des recherches en sociologie de la réception et des publics. Charpentier, I. (ed.). Paris: Creaphis (diffusion: Le Seuil)