AUDIENCE CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF LATE-NIGHT WITH LETTERMAN,DAVID

Audience conceptualizations of Late Night with David Letterman were ex amined through a two-step process that included a mail survey and focu s group interviews. Letterman fans associated the program with a wide range of activities and viewer interactions that occurred during and a fter viewing. Focus group participants indicated that competent viewer s interpret the program as a sophisticated parody of conventional tele vision talk. These results reinforce the notion of an active audience that interprets television texts according to genre-derived meanings.