Television production techniques as communication

In recent years, mass communication scholars have exhibited an increasing willingness to regard television programming as a visual text or message system. One approach to television as text is the encoding/decoding model of Stuart Hall. While a substantial body of research has grown from this model, it has tended to focus almost exclusively on the process of decoding. By comparison, the process of encoding has been virtually ignored. The significance of the encoding of televisual discourse is explored by examining two programs with distinct narrative structures, All in the Family and M∗A∗S∗H. It is argued that the communicative ability of any television narrative is, in large part, a function of this encoding process or, more specifically, the production techniques utilized in its creation.