本着电视研究跨学科、多视角的特点，《读解电视》的编者宋云峰、尼克·佩里选取了20篇电视研究学者的重要文章(或章节)，从五个主要方面全面剖析电视的本质与特点，供读者和研究者对西方的电视研究领域进行深入、系统的认识或借鉴。这五个主要方面分别是：组织电视广播的产业和企业(industries and enterprises which organizes television)；实现电视广播的文本(texts that realize television)；接收电视的观众(audience that recognize television)；管理电视的机构(agencies that regulate it)；影响电视传播的技术手段(technology that shapes television)。

宋云峰、尼克·佩里编著的《读解电视》精选西方电视研究领域的20篇经典之作，从文化研究的视角全方位深入解剖电视作为大众传媒的本质和特点，不仅涵盖电视研究的理论，而且展示电视研究的方法，内容涉及：1.组织电视广播的产业与企业；2.实现电视广播的文本；3.接收电视的观众；4.管理电视的机构；5.影响电视传播的技术手段。《读解电视》为每篇选文提供了导读、注释、思考题和参考书目，为读者提供了最大程度的方便。

Unit 1 : Domestic Location

 Text I Television and Family

 Text II Television in the Family

Unit 2 : Medium Characteristics

 Text III Broadcast TV as Cultural Form

 Text IV Remediation: Understanding New Media

Unit 3 : Cultural Form

 Text V Programming as Sequence or Flow

 Text VI Television / Sound

Unit 4 : Cultural Economy

 Text VII The Political Economy of the Television (Super) Text

 Text VIII Inside the Prime Time

Unit 5 : Genre / Format

 Text IX Genre Study and Television

 Text X Producing (Post-)Trendy Japanese TV Dramas

Unit 6 : Intertextuality

 Text XI Bardic Television

 Text XII Television as a Cultural Forum

Unit 7 : National Broadcasting Systems

 Text XIII Public Service Versus the Market

 Text XIV "Democracy as Defeat": The Impotence of Arguments for Public Service Broadcasting

Unit 8 : Going Global

 Text XV Adapting US Transnational Television Channels to a Complex World:From Cultural Imperialism to Localization to Hybridization

 Text XVI The De-Centering of Cultural Imperialism: Television and Globalization in the Latin World

Unit 9 : Encoding / Decoding

 Text XVII Decoding and Recoding Audiences

 Text XVIII Dallas as an Educational Game

Unit 10: Audiences

 Text XIX Living Room Wars: Rethinking Media Audiences for a Postmodern World

 Text XX A Typology of Television Use

Glossary