Television has changed drastically in the Soviet Union over the last two decades. Ellen Mickiewicz's compelling volume challenges us to consider how television has become Mikhail Gorbachev's most powerful instrument for paving the way for major reform. Offering an insider's view into the world seen on Soviet TV, Mickiewicz explores the changes in programming that have occurred as a result of glasnost. Containing a wealth of interviews with major Soviet and American media figures and eye-opening accounts of Soviet TV shows, Split Signals also compares over one hundred hours of Soviet and American television news programs broadcast during both the Chernenko and Gorbachev governments.