"The study of television, still the most powerful of modern media, has long been fascinated by its capacity for ′liveness′. Marriott offers an insightful analysis of the complexities of this phenomenon, particularly its increasingly vital connection with the use of new media. A timely contribution to our understanding of media events, 24 hour news and the phenomenology of mediated experience."

- Andrew Tolson, De Montfort University

"In the steps of Marshall McLuhan and Alfred Schutz, Stephanie Marriott offers us a timely and sustained reflection upon the nature of mediation and the changing qualities of the live experience made possible by television. Elegant, lucid, witty and thought-provoking, her account will become a canonical text in television studies."

- Martin Montgomery, University of Strathclyde

In a fragmenting multichannel and multiplatform global broadcasting environment live television continues to attract huge audiences, bucking the trend towards narrowcasting and niche markets, yet little of a comprehensive nature has been written about the live television event.

In this fascinating book, Stephanie Marriott engages in a close and detailed analysis of the nature of live television. She examines the transformations in our experience of time and space which are brought about by the capacity of broadcasting to bring us the world in the moment in which it is unfolding, situating the live television event in the context of an expanding and increasingly complex global communicative framework.

Building her argument by means of a series of case studies of events as diverse as the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, the attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001, the 2005 London bombings, election night coverage and live sports coverage, Marriott provides a meticulous and articulate account of the way in which live television mediates the event for its audience.

This book will be essential reading for students and academics working in media, cultural studies, cultural sociology, and linguistics, and is an exciting new contribution to the field of broadcast talk and media discourse.