The current state of disarray in mass communication research can be cleared up by the orderly application of more careful media research procedures. Semiotics and structural analysis promise some advances in media studies, but these methods are limited when applied to peculiar qualities of time in film and television. A more fruitful approach includes a consideration of existential and experiential media phenomena. If existential phenomena (light, space, time, motion, and sound) are juxtaposed with the experiential (the instantaneousness and irrevocability of "media moments," the irreducibility of experience, and media event context), it is possible to begin to make deeper, meaningful observations about the basic theory of various forms of media. The details of this approach remain to be developed. (CH)