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Chapter 6
Television and Cable: The Power of Visual Culture
In this chapter, we examine television and cable’s cultural, social, and economic impact. We
will:
• Review television’s early technological development
• Discuss TV’s boom in the 1950s and the impact of the quiz-show scandals
• Examine cable’s technological development and basic services
• Explore new viewing technologies, such as computers, smartphones, and tablets
• Learn about major programming genres: comedy, drama, news, and reality TV
• Trace the key rules and regulations of television and cable
• Inspect the costs related to the production, distribution, and syndication of programs
• Investigate the impact of television and cable on democracy and culture
Preview Story: Many media analysts and traditional network executives view Netflix as a
disruptive force, turning the TV and cable programming business on its head. First, streaming
services like Amazon and Netflix are financed mostly by inexpensive monthly subscription
packages. They are not subject to the TV ratings game and advertiser pressures that have dictated
what was available on network TV for half a century. Second, Netflix has a stable of executives
authorized to find good stories all over the world. Third, in doing original programming, Netflix
is not locked into the old network dictate of making 22–24 shows per season, often shooting a
single episode in less than two weeks. Netflix, however, has adopted the cable model of HBO
and Showtime, producing series with as few as six and usually no more than ten or twelve
episodes per season. This kind production schedule promotes quality—fewer shows and more
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time to do each show. Netflix is promoting and releasing new programs—some original
productions and some licensed from other countries—pretty much every week.
Netflix’s enormous subscriber base demonstrates its appeal to viewers who ultimately
appreciate the wide international choice of stories. Netflix, probably better than any
entertainment company, understands the crosscultural power of storytelling. The questions now
are: How are the traditional networks adapting to the Netflix model and what will happend to the
TV networks over the next decade or so?
I. The Origins and Development of Television
A. Early Innovations in TV Technology
B. Electronic Technology: Zworykin and Farnsworth
1. Setting Technical Standards
2. Assigning Frequencies and Freezing TV Licenses
3. The Introduction of Color Television
C. Controlling Content—TV Grows Up
1. Program Format Changes Inhibit Sponsorship
2. The Rise and Fall of Quiz Shows
3. Quiz-Show Scandal Hurts the Promise of TV
II. The Development of Cable
A. CATV—Community Antenna Television
B. The Wires and Satellites behind Cable Television
C. Cable Threatens Broadcasting
D. Cable Services
1. Basic Cable Services
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2. Premium Cable Services
E. DBS: Cable without Wires
III. Technology and Convergence Change Viewing Habits
A. Home Video
B. The Third Screen: TV Converges with the Internet
C. Fourth Screens: Smartphones and Mobile Video
IV. Major Programming Trends
A. TV Entertainment: Our Comic Culture
B. TV Entertainment: Our Dramatic Culture
1. Anthology Drama and the Miniseries
2. Episodic Series
C. TV Information: Our Daily News Culture
1. Network News
2. Cable News Changes the Game
D. Reality TV and Other Enduring Genres
E. Public Television Struggles to Find Its Place
V. Regulatory Challenges to Television and Cable
A. Government Regulations Temporarily Restrict Network Control
B. Balancing Cable’s Growth against Broadcasters’ Interests
1. Must-Carry Rules
2. Access-Channel Mandates
3. Cable’s Role: Electronic Publisher or Common Carrier?
C. Franchising Frenzy
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D. The Telecommunications Act of 1996
VI. The Economics and Ownership of Television and Cable
A. Production
B. Distribution
C. Syndication Keeps Shows Going and Going . . .
1. Types of Syndication
2. Barter versus Cash Deals
D. Measuring Television Viewing
1. The Impact of Ratings and Shares on Programming
2. Assessing Today’s Converged and Multiscreen Markets
E. The Major Programming Corporations
1. The Major Broadcast Networks
2. Major Cable and DBS Companies
3. The Effects of Consolidation
F. Alternative Voices
VII. Television, Cable, and Democracy
Examining Ethics: MeToo and TV Station Policy
Global Village: Telling and Selling Stories around the World
Media Literacy and the Critical Process: TV and the State of Storytelling
LECTURE IDEAS
I. The Origins and Development of Television
• Early television’s black-and-white tubes were so primitive that to create the proper contrast
under studio lights, actors had to wear green face makeup and purple lipstick.
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• Discuss the ways in which corporate sponsorship of news and entertainment programming
affected the content of those programs in the early days of broadcasting (e.g., the smoking
news anchors, the quiz show scandals), and discuss whether things have changed since then.
To illustrate the corporate sponsor’s power over newscasts in the days when single corporations
sponsored entire programs, consider this: During the Camel News Caravan programs, news
anchor John Cameron Swayze smoked while delivering the news, and a pack of Camel cigarettes
and a Camel ashtray were always in sight. Another stipulation was that no person on the
program, including the news anchors, could be shown at any time smoking a cigar. The only
exception was Winston Churchill, the British prime minister, who was a famous cigar smoker.
No Smoking signs were also forbidden. As other news programs were established, it was
considered undignified not to smoke while delivering television news. Anchors sometimes took
the ultracasual/suave approach, sitting on the front of the news desk (instead of behind it) with a
cigarette in one hand and the news copy in the other. Sometimes the anchors would also pace
back and forth as they read the news (see Barnouw, 1990, p. 170).
• Television, like the Internet today and radio before it, was sold as a “world university” that
would collapse spatial boundaries and bring knowledge and democracy to all.
Advertisements for television in the early 1950s positioned TV sets in front of scenic
backdrops to convey the exploratory potential of television, which brought the world to the
home. In 1953, Emerson TV even placed an ad in publications like Better Homes and
Gardens that showed a TV set with a picture of New York City on its screen in front of a
backdrop displaying the planets (see Spigel and Mann, 1992, p. 9). Even early broadcasters
seemed to be in awe of television’s power to collapse space and time. For example, the first
episode of CBS’s See It Now in November 1951 featured a first-time-ever split screen of live
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shots of the Brooklyn Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge, with broadcaster Edward R. Murrow
expressing his amazement at television technology that could unite the country from the
Atlantic to the Pacific (see Barnouw, 1990, p. 171). It was also thought that television could
effectively replace teachers, especially during the teaching shortage of the 1960s.
• Explain how television news has changed from its beginning as Movietone newsreels to the
development of local stations, national network news anchors, and twenty-four-hour news
cable channels such as CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC.
• Play a clip from Quiz Show (1994, dir. Robert Redford) or from the documentary The Quiz
Show Scandals (1991, dir. Julian Krainin and Michael Lawrence) to illustrate the impact of
the quiz-show scandals on American television. Compare the early quiz shows and their
ethical problems to the potential ethical problems of today’s quiz shows and reality TV
programming.
• Here’s a prescient quote from Robert Pinsky, the U.S. poet laureate from 1997 to 2000 that
can just as easily apply to reality programming:
Television’s great moments have had to do with presence, immediacy, and unpredictability:
Oswald wincing at Ruby’s bullet; Carlton Fisk dancing his home run onto the right side of the
Fenway foul pole; Joseph Welch shaming Joseph McCarthy;
Richard Nixon and Charles Van Doren sweating; athletes in agonies and ecstasies of
struggle; funerals; congressional hearings; men on the moon or in a white Bronco; political
conventions in the days before they were scripted and rehearsed. . . . The quiz show, no matter
how banal the form, no matter what scandals taint its history, cannot die because—like sports
programming—it offers predictable unpredictability.
—Robert Pinsky, “Creating the ‘Real’ in Bright Yellow and Blue,”
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New York Times, November 5, 2000, pp. 12, 17
• FCC head Newton Minow’s famous “vast wasteland” speech to the National Association of
Broadcasters in 1961 about the state of television programming had an impact on the public
consciousness and is still often quoted. Minow asked listeners to sit in front of a TV set for
an entire day’s worth of programming and “discover” the vast wasteland of broadcast
television. This wasteland is, he said,
a procession of game shows, violence, audience participation shows, formula comedies about
totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad
men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons. And endlessly,
commercials—many screaming, cajoling, and offending. . . .
And most of all, boredom. True, you will see a few things you will enjoy. But they will be
very, very few.
He also said, “I am here to uphold and protect the public interest. Some say the public interest is
merely what interests the public. I disagree.” The question of a broadcaster’s role as a public
utility with public responsibilities still underlies many debates about broadcasting regulations
today. By 1967, and in part because of Minow’s speech, Congress approved funding for the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Minow published a book in 1995 titled Abandoned in the
Wasteland: Children, Television, and the First Amendment. Minow’s speech is available at
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/newtonminow.htm.
II. The Development of Cable
• Consolidation has been a constant feature of the cable television industry. In 2015 alone, the
following cable and broadcast mergers or acquisitions were announced (pending regulatory
approvals): Media General bought Meredith Corp. (the combined company has eighty-eight
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television stations); Gray Television has coverage in forty-nine markets with its acquisition
of Schurz Communications; Altice, a French company, will purchase Cablevision; Atlantic
Broadband purchased MetroCast, becoming the twelfth largest U.S. cable operator; and
Charter Communications announced its plans to buy Bright House Networks and Time
Warner Cable (after Comcast withdrew its bid to buy Time Warner Cable). In addition,
AT&T’s purchase of DirecTV was finalized in 2015.
• The employees of cable channel Comedy Central probably don’t like to think of their
network as the channel that was saved by Mr. Hankey, the talking Christmas poo. Yet it was
the gross-out humor of the animated series South Park (especially fan favorites like the “Mr.
Hankey, the Christmas Poo” episode) that secured Comedy Central’s position on cable
systems across the United States in the late 1990s. But sustaining a competitive schedule was
difficult, and the second-largest cable operator in the United States, TCI, dropped Comedy
Central from millions of households on cable systems around the country. From its debut in
the summer of 1997, South Park quickly gained a huge share of the eighteen-to twenty-four-
year-old audience, and a year later it trailed only ESPN’s Sunday Night Football game as
cable’s most-watched program. With the smart-alecky and scatological humor of the show’s
foul-mouthed fourth-grade characters (which earned it a “mature audiences” rating) and one
of the Internet’s most active entertainment websites, South Park developed a heavy following
on college campuses and created a multimillion-dollar product licensing business. The
show’s success came even though fewer than half of American households had access to
Comedy Central. The channel has since developed a reputation for what TV Guide critic Matt
Roush calls “dangerous comedy.” This new image, combined with some of cable’s most
popular television programs—including shows The Daily Show and The Colbert Report—
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made Comedy Central a top cable channel. In 2011, Comedy Central was the nineteenth most
popular cable network. The network had fallen to twenty-sixth by 2014. In 2015, Comedy
Central’s total viewership was down 19 percent, and it fell out of the top thirty cable
networks. (See http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/top10s.html, http://deadline.com/v/tv, and
http://www.tvinsider.com.) Comedy Central’s recent drop in ratings might be due to the
departure of Jon Stewart from The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert moving from the cable
network to broadcast TV as host of The Late Show on CBS.
• MTV started airing more than music videos in the 1990s. By 1997, its regular programming
had begun to lean more toward in-house productions, with shows like The Real World, the
Jenny McCarthy Show, Singled Out, Oddville, MTV Sports, Road Rules, Beavis and Butt-
Head, Daria, Loveline, and MTV’s Spring Break extravaganzas. The channel was no longer
an exclusive showcase for videos, a development that tweaked both the music industry and
music video viewers. Thus MTV launched MTV2 in 1996 as a free-form music format
station with a broad music video playlist. MTV2, in other words, would replicate the earlier
MTV. For many years, MTV programming was almost exclusively reality-based, with
popular shows such as Jersey Shore, 16 and Pregnant, and Teen Mom; now they program
more scripted series, but still rarely music-related. In 1991, University of Massachusetts
professor Sut Jhally produced a video called Dreamworlds that critiqued images on MTV.
Jhally strung together various MTV clips to emphasize some of the sexually charged and
misogynistic elements in typical music videos and attempted to open up a dialogue on gender
issues in the media. In 1995, Jhally produced Dreamworlds II, which updated the earlier
version and drew on more than two hundred music videos. The latest update, Dreamworlds
III, came out in 2010.
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III. Technology and Convergence Change Viewing Habits
• In some ways, the proliferation of third-screen technologies has contributed to bringing back
the viewing technology of the 1950s—antennas. Because viewers can now watch popular
shows and films online, many consumers are combining a set-top box like Roku (where they
can access Amazon OnDemand, Hulu Plus, and Netflix) with a digital antenna for the
broadcast channels. This option is becoming increasingly attractive to consumers as cable
subscriptions get more expensive and the variety of online viewing options increases.
Although the growing popularity of services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu Plus, and
devices like Roku and Apple TV, has led to speculation of mass “cord cutting” (consumers
giving up their cable subscriptions for streaming options), a 2011 Ad Age survey suggests
that consumers are actually fairly evenly split on whether or not they would drop their pay
TV service. In fact, it seems that consumers would prefer to add more and different options
for watching television rather than eliminating services. Recent developments have focused
on consumers increasingly accessing television content via OTT (over-the-top) platforms like
Apple TV, Roku, and Netflix.
Cable providers like Time Warner are countering the new streaming options by offering
streaming apps for their subscribers so that their subscribers can access real time cable
programming on their iPads. However, programmers like Discovery and Viacom fought to get
their channels removed from such apps, arguing that their contracts with the cable providers did
not include mobile devices. Cable providers argue that they’ve already paid for the
programming, so who cares what the distribution channel is? (See “Fight over Time Warner
Cable’s iPad Service Comes Down to Philosophical Differences,” Los Angeles Times, April 11,
2011.)
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• Time-shifted viewing accounted for 53 percent of all television viewing in 2015. Most of the
time shifting was through DVR and VOD technologies. (See Jack Loechner, “Time Shifted
TV Viewing Is the Default,” Media Post, April 16, 2015, available at
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/247581/time-shifted-tv-is-the-default.html.)
While time shifting might not be good news for advertisers, it can mean excellent exposure for
the TV shows themselves. A 2007 Nielsen Media Research study of eighteen- to forty-nine-year-
olds watching The Office confirmed TV advertisers’ fears. Viewers who watched the episode in
real time skipped 6.2 percent of the commercials; viewers who watched the episode on a DVR
skipped 51 percent of the commercials. More recent studies have confirmed these behaviors.
This news, however, was not entirely disheartening for network executives, for although DVR
viewers skipped half the commercials, they also watched half of them. Still, compared with real-
time viewing, the difference is drastic.
Ironically, the technology that seemed to be hurting advertisers is also valuable to them: Digital
set-top boxes, video-on-demand, and digital video recorders can tell advertisers who we are and
what we watch. They can track viewers’ choices as effectively as clicks through the web. One
idea advertisers are experimenting with is the swapping of new commercials into shows taped on
a DVR: If a user tapes a show using a DVR but doesn’t watch it until a few days later,
commercials will be inserted to appeal directly to the viewer’s marketing profile. For example,
people who have ordered on-demand Westminster dog shows are categorized as a dog lovers, so
subsequent programming that they order is peppered with pet-food advertisements. Another
option is a pay-rate scheme whereby viewers can pay more in return for ad-free programming:
The more advertisements viewed, the smaller the cable bill. Some companies are also developing
digital set-top boxes that segment audiences by demographic characteristics, enabling advertisers
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to target viewers with specific types of commercials. Similar technologies would be able to
customize messages for particular geographical regions, cities, streets, and even homes by
customizing the last few moments of an ad (“Visit your Ford dealer on Spring Street!”).
Here are some other ways networks are fiddling with content and ad delivery (beyond product
placement and show sponsorship) in light of increased DVR use:
1. Five-second commercials.
2. Entertaining “shorts” within commercial pods. In 2007, NBC hired Jerry Seinfeld to appear
in some of these shorts.
3. “Back loading” commercials: Shows will run without ads at the beginning but will contain
extra ads in the second half.
Another piece of information related to these developments: For the first time, Nielsen will
release ratings for commercial minutes. The ratings encompass viewings of a program and its
commercials for three days after the program is first broadcast. Some TV executives want ratings
over seven days after the first broadcast, to accommodate more viewers’ preferences (and
increase ratings reported to advertisers).
IV. Major Programming Trends
• Today, TV’s successful comedies—Modern Family, for example—tend to be shot with a
single camera, like film. There is no studio audience or canned laughter, and there is no
common, shared environment such as a living room, a couch, or a set of stairs in the
background leading up to an unseen second floor.
• A number of people in the television industry saw Home Improvement’s final episode in
1999 as the end of an era. Domestic comedies, which tend to celebrate family and appeal to a
broad audience, are no longer attractive to television executives looking for younger and
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more affluent audiences. One domestic comedy, Everybody Loves Raymond, faced enormous
resistance from network executives when they were presented with the show’s premise.
Creator and producer Phil Rosenthal said that executives were looking for something
“hipper, edgier, and not so family.” ABC Entertainment chairman Stu Bloomberg agrees that
the domestic comedies that will survive will not succeed without “an unusual point of view.”
Although it might be easy to dismiss the role of comedies in terms of social importance or
impact, a well-scripted comedy can address even the most difficult and complicated issues with
wit, humor, and valuable insight. To illustrate, consider a classic scene from the groundbreaking
comedy All in the Family in which the consummate bigot Archie Bunker is visited by African
American performer Sammy Davis Jr. In this brilliant ten-minute scene, the writers examine and
lampoon several positions related to racial prejudice, religious intolerance, and traditional gender
roles. You can find the clip on YouTube.
• Retrace the evolution of television entertainment from I Love Lucy to current reality shows.
Explain how and why certain TV shows have become cultural references. You might want to
show a clip from the original television series The Goldbergs (1949–1957) and the current
incarnation of The Goldbergs, which debuted in 2013.
• Dan Rather’s career is an interesting illustration of how television news has evolved since the
1960s. He was an impressive news reporter who quickly accelerated through CBS’s ranks as
one of the network’s young stars and became one of television journalism’s more colorful
characters. He was the first to get the scoop on President John F. Kennedy’s assassination; he
expertly handled the pressure of that event with a good deal of diligence and clarity and
moved on to cover the Nixon White House. Soon Rather landed a coveted spot on 60
Minutes, where the focus was investigative journalism. In 1981, Rather was chosen over
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Roger Mudd to become anchor for CBS Evening News, and he was one of the first to garner
an enormous salary—$2.2 million a year for ten years—that would be typical of network
news anchors to follow. Even as television news depended more and more on stars, Rather,
who was paid to be one, never did attract the highest ratings of the three network news
broadcasts.
• Although other countries regard CNN as having an unmistakably American perspective, the
network has tried to avert these perceptions by several means. In the 1980s, Ted Turner
announced that writers using the word foreign to mean “outside the United States” would
have to pay a $50 fine. Turner also promoted a unique TV show, CNN World Report, which
shows news reports produced by broadcasters from around the world. In addition to
providing an international flair for CNN’s programming, World Report contributors have
sometimes become key sources on international stories, giving CNN an edge over the
competition. Its newsroom is a mixed bag of nationalities, but people from English-speaking
countries are still the large majority. CNNI splits its signal in five regions (North America,
Latin America, Europe/Africa/Middle East, South Asia, and Pacific), but it targets principally
European and Asian audiences.
Although CNN set new standards in TV news, it is no longer the most-watched twenty-four-
hour cable news network. It first started to get competition in 1996, when two other news
networks were launched: Fox News Channel and MSNBC. In the wake of the 2001 AOL-
Time Warner merger, CNN came under heavy pressure to cut costs, even though the network
had been turning a profit since 1985. It let go of four hundred people out of its workforce of
four thousand, including many senior employees, thereby relieving the budget of their high
salaries but also depleting the newsroom of the people with the most experience. During this
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period, CNN lost a third of its viewers, and Fox News jumped ahead in cable ratings. In
2015, Fox News was the most watched cable channel for news, with more than two and a
half times the number of people watching CNN and three times the number of people
watching MSNBC. Fox News ranked fifth among all basic cable channels; by comparison,
CNN was twenty-fourth, and MSNBC was thirty-first.
CNN still has a powerful presence worldwide, but it is not the only big name on the
international news stage. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has a powerful
international presence (not terribly surprising considering the geographic spread of the
former British Empire) and is featured on some U.S. cable and DBS systems (although
usually not in a basic package). Its content is also sometimes carried in the United States on
National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS).
• The forerunners of today’s reality TV are older than many people realize. As Charles Slocum
of the Writers Guild of America notes: “Reality-based television is not new, of course. Allen
Funt, with his 1948 TV series Candid Camera is often credited as reality TV’s first
practitioner. In fact, he started a year earlier with Candid Microphone on radio. Truth or
Consequences started in 1950 and frequently used secret cameras. Both of these two
pioneering series created artificial realties to see how ordinary people would respond; the
reality series of today borrow a lot from these precedents”
(http://writersguildtheater.org/organizesub.aspx?id= 1099).
Reality shows first became a force in the television industry because they were cheap to produce.
But because reality shows are among the most-watched television programs and because reality
TV personalities are becoming stars, they are demanding higher salaries. The cast of Jersey
Shore shared $25,000 for the whole first season; for the fourth season, they reportedly earned
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$100,000 per episode. Paul Farhi of the Washington Post has summarized the long-term
downside of reality programming. In his article “TV’s New Reality: Hit Shows Are Here Today,
Gone Tomorrow” (Washington Post, February 17, 2003, p. A01), Farhi points out that the
primary reason reality shows are so popular with networks is that they are relatively inexpensive
to produce. The average reality show costs about $600,000 per episode, compared with $5 to $13
million per episode for their scripted prime-time counterparts. Even though reality shows can
provide easy revenue for networks, the shows themselves often have a short shelf life, however.
Only a few programs such as American Idol and Project Runway have been able to retain their
popularity while bringing in advertising revenue.
Reality TV show writers are generally treated poorly by the networks and by television
production companies. In part, it’s because the television industry refuses to admit that there are
actually writers on reality shows. The networks at first tried to promote the idea that these shows
were unscripted and completely spontaneous, with no writers involved. When that argument
failed, they maintained that writing for reality shows—which includes plotting story lines,
editing interviews, and in many cases creating dialogue—is still not really writing. To maintain
this idea, reality show writers are called “story editors,” “story producers,” and “post producers.”
With barely any legitimacy, reality TV writers have consequently been unable to unionize, and
without unionization, they earn shockingly low wages ($800 a week on some shows) and have to
endure egregious working conditions. Such conditions include 90- to 120-hour workweeks with
no overtime, meal breaks, or holidays; time-card falsification; and other labor abuses. The
networks, in love with cheap programming, do everything they can to keep it as cheap as
possible.
