The history of television celebrity: a discursive approach

Abstract

This article makes a critical contribution to recent discussions of television celebrity. In particular, the article argues against the use of ‘celebrity’ as a general concept (with, in some accounts, a 250-year history) – of which the ‘TV personality’ is a particular variant. The focus here is on specific meanings of ‘celebrity’ alongside other terms that have been used to define ‘media people’ on television. Taking as its case study the UK TV listings magazine TV Times between 1955 and 1964, the analysis shows that the term ‘celebrity’ was used, alongside ‘personality’ and the much more ubiquitous ‘star’, to describe TV performers sometimes interchangeably but, as the nascent TV culture developed, with meanings that became increasingly specific. In this context, the term ‘celebrity’ was used to characterise the relationship between media performers and outsiders/ordinary people – where these people encountered TV performers or were themselves involved in TV programmes. Here ‘celebrity’ is not a general historical concept, but rather a term used to define an emerging popular culture, with TV a key focus for the development of contemporary ‘media rituals’.